Kassurina needed two more witches, and she did not know where to find them. Eleven robes stood in her coven. The rite to free Azkarath demanded thirteen. For centuries she had waited, burned, and risen again. Now the count stuck at eleven, and every day she stalled, the Order crept closer to her forest. She climbed to the high chamber of her dark-stone castle. Moss clung to the walls. Candles burned low. On the floor lay her working circle: pale salt poured into a five-pointed star, crimson stains dried along its lines, black candles ringing the edge. She stepped inside it and faced the tall golden mirror. The mirror had held her lover since the zealots sealed him away. He had taught her magic. He had taught her how to never die. Now only glass kept them apart. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall," she said. The glass rippled. A pale man took shape inside it, white hair loose, grey eyes bright as struck iron. Azkarath looked at her the way he always had, like she already belonged to him. "You are short two," he said. "I know the number." Her jaw tightened. "I need names. Faces. Where they sleep." "Then stop asking me to pity your delay." She pressed her palm against the salt and said the words of the finding-spell. The candles leaned as if a door had opened. Inside the glass, the pale man dimmed. Two visions rose in his place. The first showed a young woman in a stone tower, tears sliding down her cheeks. Where they fell, a dying plant turned green again. Healing tears. Only witch blood made them. "Rapunzel," Azkarath said. "Princess of Nachtburg. Her blood runs true." The tower faded. The second vision showed a woman kneeling at a hazel tree beside a grave. She wept, and the dead grass bent and grew. "Ella," he said. "Princess of Rosenwald. She does not yet know what she is." Kassurina leaned closer. Both women lived behind palace walls. Both had guards, husbands, royal names. One of them shared her own: Ella von Rosenfeld. Snow White’s daughter-in-law. The thought cut and pleased her at once. "Two princesses," she said. "Protected on every side." "You wanted names." The grey eyes held hers. "Now you have them. Bring them to me, Kassurina. Both. Then I walk out of this glass, and the world burns with us." The visions collapsed. The mirror showed only her own face, crown and all. She stood over the salt circle a long moment. The not-knowing was over. That was the one thing she had wanted when she climbed the stairs, and now it was gone. In its place sat a harder problem. She knew exactly where the last two witches were. Both stood guarded inside royal courts, watched by the very men who hunted her kind. To finish the rite, she would have to reach into those courts and take them out.

Kassurina knew the names now. Rapunzel and Ella. But names were not enough. Before she wasted a single spell on recruiting Ella, she had to be certain the girl carried true witch blood. She climbed again to the high chamber of her dark-stone castle, where moss crept down the walls and the salt pentagram waited on the floor. She sat inside the circle and crossed her legs. The crimson-stained salt pressed cold against her skin. She spoke the old words. One by one the black candles flared to life around the star's edge. The air thickened. Her body lifted from the floor until she hung above the salt, arms loose at her sides. Blood welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks in dark lines. The visions came. She saw a girl asleep in cold hearth ashes. She saw the same girl grown, weeping at a hazel tree over a headstone. Where the tears fell, dead grass turned green. A white bird dropped from the branches and laid a golden dress across the girl's arms. Kassurina's breath caught. The blood was real. Ella was a witch, and she did not know it. The vision shifted. Ella rode in a carriage through open country, a young man beside her. They passed through tall iron gates and climbed the steps of a sprawling stone manor. Not the palace. An old family estate, far from the court and its guards. Ella stepped down and walked alone toward the hazel tree. The candles guttered. Kassurina sank to the floor. She wiped the blood from her face and smiled. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall." The tall golden mirror rippled. The pale man took shape inside it, white hair loose, grey eyes fixed on her. "The girl is true," Kassurina said. "And she has left the palace. She is at her family’s abandoned estate. No walls I cannot pass. No hunters at the gate." "Then take her," Azkarath said. "Not by force." Kassurina rose and faced the glass. "Her magic sleeps. It only wakes through real grief. I cannot drag a sleeping witch into the rite. I must draw her out and make her open the door herself." "You know what wakes her." Kassurina looked at the fading vision of the hazel tree over the grave. The mother. The white bird. The one wound the girl had never closed. "Her mother," she said. "The dead woman under that tree. That is the lure." Azkarath's grey eyes did not move. "Then wear a face she will follow." The mirror went dark. Kassurina stood alone with the burnt candles and the blood drying on the salt. The obstacle was gone. She knew Ella was a witch, knew where she stood unguarded, and knew the one grief that would pull her close. Now she had a new task. To reach Ella, she would have to steal the shape of a dead mother.