Queen Icilia's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The spark lay frozen in the Mirror. Icilia stood before the cracked glass and knew the seal was not enough. Snow White had read her glass like a face. Briar Rose had sung the spark to sleep for one letter a season. Both her daughters knew how to hold a broken thing shut. She had lost them both to their own bargains, and she had never asked either how they lived with what they held. Now she needed both. So she would go to them. She left the frozen ballroom and walked into her forest. Snow White found her first. She stepped from behind a frosted tree, red gown dark against the snow. She held a shard of mirror in her pale hand. "You came looking," she said. "That's new." "Your mirror is breaking," Icilia said. "Mine cracked too. I want to know what you learned." Snow White turned the shard. Inside it, a face smiled that was not quite hers. "It stopped counting for me two weeks ago," she said, flat. "Every copy it made becomes real if it shatters. I've stopped trusting my own eyes." She paused. "You froze your spark with truth. That's why I came before. I need to know if truth holds a mirror shut, or only what's inside it." Briar Rose came without sound. She rose out of the roots, blue hair heavy, thorns curling up her arms. She carried the rose-wrapped scepter that had lulled the spark. "You owe me letters," she said. "You haven't sent one." "I know," Icilia said. Briar Rose looked at the shard in Snow White's hand, then at her mother. "You want us both to teach you the same thing. How to hold a broken thing and not let it out." She said it plainly. "I hold sleepers I can't release. She holds copies she can't kill. You want our trick. There is no trick. You just don't let go, and it costs you." Icilia looked at her two daughters. One held glass she could not trust. One held dreamers she could not free. Neither had thanked her for anything. Neither had come to be thanked. "I don't want the trick," Icilia said. "I want to trade. Snow White, I'll teach you how a mirror holds. Briar Rose, I'll answer every letter you've sent, not one a season. In return, you both help me bind the last spark forever." Snow White went still. Briar Rose's thorns stopped moving. "Every letter?" Briar Rose asked. "Every one." Snow White closed her hand over the shard. "Then teach me. But when my mirror shatters, you'll owe me the same help." She met her mother's eyes. "That's the price." Icilia agreed. The bargain sealed between the three of them there in the snow. She had gone to her daughters and come back with allies. But she had promised each of them a debt she would have to pay before winter could reign.