Staring across the moonlit street, I feel like I'm falling.

In moments like this, I always get a tingling in my stomach. It's part of the thrill of danger, or the helplessness of doom. It feels like I'm not even real, like my body has turned to air, leaving only naked nerves, and all those nerves are floating on a rising tide of cold adrenaline.

If anyone makes a move, everyone will explode into motion.

But for one long moment, there is silence, broken only by the gurgle of a stream. A stream? Water is flooding over my feet from the lightsmith's courtyard. Why...?

I see the liquid glittering as it spreads across the street, looking dark by moonlight, like the blood of a murdered mage. Fallen butterflies are tumbling in the flow, along with drowned mice, rose petals—dead remains of living things that needed the lightsmith's care.

I feel like one of them. Then a dread rolls over me: this water, these corpses—do they mean that El's power is already gone?

Are they all dead then? The immortal pets, the kittens and the pups...

And, are the defensive wards broken? What is this castle behind my back—a haven where I can rest, or a graveyard where I'll be run down and slaughtered?

Hesitantly, I steal a glance back at the castle where I grew up. The gateway is narrow, but I can see more than enough.

The courtyard used to be achingly magnificent. It was all a single ice sculpture, chiseled by light. There were entire hillsides and forests of ice, shaped in exquisite detail. It was beyond art. It was as if a real mountain vale had been transfigured into cold diamond. Half hidden among the pine-needles, live ice pixies danced and giggled, showing off their dragonfly wings. Liquid waterfalls splashed into sun-warmed bathing pools, and there were real roses with blooms as blue as an arctic sky. Sculptures of phoenixes and knights on horseback wandered in little clearings, each one filled to bursting with shafts of light. The whole place was a paradise of frost and radiance. Anywhere I walked, I would be lit up from every angle, making me as scintillant as the ice sculptures, and now it's dead.

Dead. The roses, fallen. The ice melted. Rotted like a corpse. Everything decayed into this featureless layer of thick, freezing water, as dark as a mirror at night. Colorless. Black. The spells of preservation are gone.

I turn my back on it. My mortal enemy, the assassin, is straight across from me, a mirror image. The baroness is still wearing her mask, but the rest of us have become our real selves. The masks are uncomfortable, and we removed them on the boat. Now I feel exposed, as if my sensitive eyes are being touched not just by my enemies' stares, but their fingers.

The assassin's gaze is fixed on my bare face, looking even more shocked than I feel, and more than shocked—anguished, confused, furious.

Then a shredded cloud blots out the moon, and the voice of the baroness slithers through the dappling dark. "Go on," she says. "Take them.

"... but kill the sneak."

There's a crack—the sound of the assassin launching.

At that exact instant, I bolt.

In one quarter-second, I'll be in combat. Before then I have two options.

I could dash through the gate and let the assassin slam into the wards (assuming there are wards!) Then I would be safe, and Jaden, the sneak, would be shredded meat. That's not one of my options—it doesn't count.

First option: shove Jaden inside and try to follow.

Second option: skid to a stop in front of Jaden, turn, and draw.

Instinctively I'm burning to draw. My saber is a glory, a masterpiece of the lightsmith. When El vanished, its light died. But if there is any spark of El's power still left in the castle, then I might see my saber shine again. Its light would prove that El is still alive. It might even strike the assassin blind. The sheath is specially made to keep the weapon from searing the eyes of passerby with its wall-piercing radiance.

But I take the option that's safer for Jaden, shoving him and sending him splashing into the courtyard. My momentum carries me a little ways into the gateway, which is a dark corridor that pierces walls five meters thick...

... and I feel something there. The sensation is icy, lively, beautiful, like I'm flying against a thunderous wind—except that this wind is alive and sinuous. It greets me by spiraling around my arms and legs, strong as a whirlpool. Its billion tendrils embrace me, each one glowing as brightly as a red-gold hair under an arctic sun. The lightsmith's wards. I've made it.

But my clothes are caught. My collar chokes me, dragging me backward. Then five powerful fingers lock onto the back of my neck.

I twist around, on the very brink of the wards, and fight.

The assassin and I have skirmished half a dozen times tonight, but this battle is nothing like before. Not just because we're grappling on the exact boundary of the castle's defenses, but because in all our previous skirmishes, I always managed to evade full melee combat. This is the first time we've actually fought.

And the assassin has changed, now that we're unmasked. In the burning light of the freezing wards, I can see every flicker of my enemy's expression, every flare of the eyes, every stream of broken breath. That dagger-smile from the ballroom has been replaced by gritted teeth, a swallowing throat, rebellious eyes—no longer a mysterious half-face, but a full human expression. I can read it well enough to see that the struggle to kill me has become painful, exciting, urgent.

Both of us are exhausted. We gasp and grapple desperately. Again and again, I try to leap back into the wards or draw my saber, but the assassin will not let me go. We're wrestling on our feet, entangled in the cold. And I'm losing.

Why? Because of the symmetry? Why is the assassin so strong? I thought we were equally exhausted. When we slept on the boat, we were both so helplessly tired that we never recognized the hardness of a warrior's body against our own. Yet now, not ten minutes later, the assassin is as fast as a cobra, as powerful as a constrictor, murderous, relentless, and tremendously skilled.

And worse, there's the symmetry—a mystic dread, a choking fist, a sinister sense that I must be defeated and will be defeated, in the same way that a person's reflection must and will fall if the person falls. It's an inevitability so total that it transcends prophecy and fate. It simply is. Against that, I shouldn't be able to resist even for an instant.

However...

My feet are on the lightsmith's ground, and the lightsmith is alive. I know that now. The castle is a part of El's body. Through it, a current of power is thundering into me like a waterfall into a teacup. My body burns. My heart flutters like a hummingbird. My veins seem to shine beneath my skin, and I feel powerful.

The assassin's gloved hand claws onto my throat, squeezing, crushing—but it's as pointless as wringing a steel pipe; I breathe freely. Instead of trying to break my enemy's hold, I answer it with a vicious throat-lock of my own.

In war, soldiers are forever struggling for turf, holding the line, standing their ground, pushing. Not assassins. Our triumphs are in mobility, not stability. But just this once, in this serpentine wrestling match, each of us strains to pull. If I get dragged out of the red-gold light, I'll be pinned or bone-snapped in an instant. But if I can pull myself backward into the courtyard, the assassin cannot follow: the wards will peel us apart like a sieve that catches stones while sand flows through.

Both of us are beginning to tremble and snarl in desperation. Whenever the struggle brings our heads close together, I hear quiet hissing in a language that I half recognize from long ago, cursing, cursing.

Suddenly, where moonlight and the wardlight meet, one of the assassin's hands twists free of mine, draws a crooked dagger—and plunges it at my heart.

What happened to taking me alive? Apparently, killing me is now more important than following the orders of the mirrormage.

I twist violently and grab the dagger with my mouth. The awful shriek of steel-scraping-teeth sends shivers through my jaw. But I don't flinch, I make it worse by grinding down, crushing metal, tasting venom, straining until the weapon snaps like a cinnamon stick.

If I expected this to earn me a moment of impressed disbelief, then I underestimated the vehemence of my enemy's drive. I've been attacked dozens of times since I came to this world—hundreds. But never with such all-consuming violence. The assassin fights me like a dynamite-maker beating out a fire.

I can't keep up. I'm too shaken by the look in my enemy's eyes. There's hatred in it, but it isn't hatred. There's fear, but—

a second, unbroken dagger suddenly gashes my face. I catch the handle, my hand on the assassin's fist, each of us straining to press the bladepoint away from ourselves, both of us focused so intently on each other that Jaden's fist comes out of nowhere.

It smashes into the assassin’s mouth. If the two of us had been fighting at high velocity, the flying punch would have oozed through the air with laughable slowness, and the assassin would have torn Jaden apart. But our velocity is zero. The assassin's head snaps back from the impact, and Jaden's whole body soars after his fist, airborne. The supposed coward must have taken a running leap to come in flying.

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I seize the opening to kick free, grab Jaden, and leap back.

We splash down ten meters inside the gate. Safe.

"Jaden!" I cry. "You—"

"We're mirrored!" He rasps. "Gods—"

I run a circle around him to build up strength, and then I grab his arms and swing him around and around like he's a weightless child. "You did it!"

I hear myself laughing as we spin. the stars turn from sparks to lines. Rotational speed is also a kind of speed, and it's nearly as glorious.

"Calm yourself you lunatic!" Jaden squawks. "Focus! Put me down! We're fully mirrored. Besieged! We have to get out, find a place to hide!"

I set him on his feet, and speak more quietly, "Hush. Our friend is listening." I tilt my dizzy head toward the gateway, where the assassin stands steaming in the fiery light, a wolf at the door. Suddenly, there's a flicker of metal. The knife that so recently cut my cheek whizzes toward us, faster than a crossbow bolt.

It doesn't make it even three meters. There's a blast of red-gold tendrils and an echoing spapp! The hilt of the knife vaporizes into fire. The blade becomes a spray of white-hot particles that patter into the water, sizzling to death amid tiny geysers of steam.

"Not bad, is it?" I ask Jaden, lifting an eyebrow. "We may be besieged, but the walls are strong. They can't get us in here. Can't starve us either. Light, in its liquid forms, is delicious, and it quenches both hunger and thirst. Come inside. I'll let you drink starlight from the starlight well. It's best to cup it in your hands, but I'll bring you a dipper if you hate the cold."

"We are mirrored," Jaden repeats in a hiss, shrinking expertly toward the nearest shadow. "The mirrormage will worm her way inside, and the assassin will follow."

"How soon?" I ask, keeping pace with him. "Can they pierce the wards? Storm the keep?"

"Of course not. This is a mirrormage. Large spells are beyond them unless they are full archmagi. No, their ways are subtle... insidious... and extraordinarily wormy. Oh, she'll find her way in alright. Does this castle have a secret escape?"

"Many," I admit. "But Jaden... I'm not leaving. Stay. Fight with me. This castle is—"

"Escape," Jaden whispers, melting into the shadow of a dead fountain. Whenever Jaden sneaks in earnest, he seems to become liquid, or even smoke. I have to stop myself from seizing him, because I'm afraid that if he gets fully into the shadow, he'll vanish like water down a drain, leaving me alone.

Would that be so terrible? Rationally, wouldn't it be better? How would I feel if I persuaded him to stay, and then the assassin tore out his heart?

Yet I have an instinctive dread: if he abandons me, I'm doomed.

Because if he goes where I can't protect him, he'll be caught. And then... then the mirrormage will use him as a spell conductor. She'll curse me. Even if the conduction is only slight, it will be enough. Because she has no reason to value him. She'll flat-out kill him. She'll strike me with the strongest killing curse she has, a curse so vile that even if only a tenth of it gets through, I'll still fall sick. I can't fight the assassin sick. I'll get slaughtered.

While I think of this, Jaden beckons me from the shadows, looking like a fairy-blooded seer. The edge of the light lies slanted across his face, revealing one moonlit eye.

"Come with me," he says in a voice of otherworldly excitement. "I know the cracks beneath the city, and it is true what they say: there are silent streets and jungles beneath our feet, and they outnumber those we know. Let us creep down, down, down through the thousand strata of darkness and history, layer after layer—down through the ancient mines, through the Forgotten Cities, the secret prisons, the Lairs Beneath, the Hidden Stair, and the tunnels where the worldblood still shines hot, then down through the uncharted labyrinths of granite, and then of crystal, then of cold iron, all the way down, down, down to the smell of salt. Can you imagine? We may even get to feel the turret-tops of the Eyeless Monarchs, rolling beneath our feet. What could mirrors do in a place like that, so many leagues from light?"

"That's quite a rescue plan," I snarl. Then I bite down on my anger, shut my eyes and breathe. I should have known Jaden would want to flee somewhere skulky. I'm asking him to stand his ground—a species of courage utterly against his nature.

If you want to persuade a frog to cross a desert, you'd better get your arguments straight.

"I'm staying here," I say. "I have excellent reasons."

"Then you're the mirrormage's captive already," he says."This castle is just the first of your cells."

"Yes, if you say so. And when she makes a pack of mirrorlings from me, they will hunt you down in a heartbeat, knowing you as I do."

Jaden makes a choking sound. "It... you... your will is strong, so I'm sure you'll resist being used to make mirrorlings."

"But how can I resist? I'll be too depressed because my comrade Jaden abandoned me like a rat coward." I pass my hand across my forehead, a theatrical gesture of feebleness.

"You wouldn't give in just to spite me. Would you?"

I think about that.

He's right, I wouldn't. However, I don't have to tell him so.

"Listen, Jaden. Even if we fled, do you really think we could hide for long? When the mirrormage takes this castle, she'll grow stronger, and I'll grow weak."

"You will?"

The best way to tempt Jaden is with secrets, so I draw close and whisper even more quietly, speaking in a riddle, and turning so that the assassin cannot see my lips. "If the branch withers, can the leaf survive?"

He looks at me sharply, his eyes agleam with interest.

I press my advantage, "I am stronger here than anywhere else in the world. This whole castle is thunderous with the lightsmith's light. It's like blood in me. If I drew my saber, you would know; I feel it sizzling with power now."

Jaden's seems to waver, but then he shakes his head, his moonlit eye swinging in and out of the light. "Look around you. Can't you see? The power of the lightsmith is all but dead."

I open my mouth to argue, but something in my throat stops me. Where is the lightsmith's power? The waterfall surging through me is weaker than I thought. I can feel it falter.

I look again at the ruined courtyard. Under the dead butterflies, the water is still as black and reflective as a mirror in the dark.

I see nothing living, except a kitten creeping through the wetness far away. It's one of the ones I adopted from the streets. She's immortal, thanks to the lightsmith. Or, she was. From the way she's walking, I guess that's over. Her movements seem old and sick, like those of an animal close to death.

And it isn't just the roses and the cats that have been withering. It's also me. Over the last few days, my magic, my quickness, and my strength have begun to fade. The lightsmith was—is!—my strongest connection to this world. I'm an outworlder, so I'm handicapped by having no inherent magical energy. I can coast without El for a time, but not forever. I'm beginning to suffocate.

A minute ago, I told Jaden that if I drew my saber, he would know why he's better off staying here with me. Is that still true? Will it shine hard enough to shock and overwhelm him?

The waterfall does not feel weak. The power that sustained the ice sculptures isn't gone, it's simply being used for something else.

I think that's true. I hope. It's possible. In theory, the lightsmith should be capable of casting magic in this place from anywhere in the world.

I hold my sheathed blade over the black water, point down. No matter what else may be true, I have confidence in this sword. I can feel it thrumming in its sheath like a hawk in a gale.

It is no ordinary blade. It was conceived in the Grand Crusade. Demonkind had overrun one of the islands in the sky, and I was among those who fought to take it back. In that frost-crowned paradise above the world, I gathered a shard of paradisaical ice, the crest-feather of a young snow phoenix, the song of an angel, and the last breath of a demon king, who was too slow to guard his throat.

Because of love for me, the lightsmith forged these into a streamlined sliver of a sword, a sleek superweapon as fluid as a muscle and as unbreakable as tempered starlight. Sixteen centuries from now, I may grow strong enough to wield its full mystery.

Its only drawback is that all demonic creatures who see it attack me, mistaking me for some kind of celestial fay. But that's fine, because my saber melts demons like magma melts snow.

I hold my thumb, poised, over the release catch of the sheath. "Don't be frightened," I tell Jaden, "The blindness isn't permanent."

It's unfortunate that the assassin is watching this, but with Jaden on the edge of fleeing, I have higher priorities than keeping my weapon secret.

I glance over my shoulder at the gateway, and find it still aglow with wards in the dark. The assassin speaks to me in a voice as quiet as the edge of a knife. "Come out, my lightning. I will be kinder than she."

Lightning. That's flattering.

Well, if I am lightning, then it would be disappointing if I didn't flash. Far be it from me to disappoint my dancing partner.

I click the release catch, and the sheath slides off.

Instantly I know: it is bright enough.

My blade comes out of its sheath like dawn. The black water turns white—sparkling, shocking white. Every single centimeter of the courtyard explodes into radiance like white-hot steel. We seem to be standing ankle deep in a supernova.

Jaden's eyes snap shut—but eyelids are nothing next to this. His arms come up to cover his face.

I shout to the assassin, "Want to come in? I'll let you through the wards, ahaha!" I brace my palm against the spine of my saber and twirl it into a high manticore guard. The light is so absolute that it turns my hand translucent—even the muscle, even the bone. It makes my flesh seem like a sculpture of red glass. My fingers, palm, and wrist are all shot through with burning trees—my blood vessels.

"I'm staying" Jaden comments.

"Don't just say, 'I'm staying,'" I chide him. "Isn't it thrilling?" I spin my saber fast enough to set the air booming, making a figure-eight out of my saberlight.

"It's too bright to see anything," Jaden grumbles.

"I forgot, you're a denizen of darkness. I'm surprised you haven't turned to ash."

"I haven't? I wouldn't know. Can't see the tip of my nose."

I kick my sheath up into my hand and sheathe my blade with a clean sharp snap. Then, trying to suppress a grin, I look over my shoulder toward the gate, with one eyebrow up.

I see only two sparks of red, two eyes glittering with reflected wardlight. They look like the eyes of a tiger prowling just beyond the glow of a fire.

"I see..." comes the assassin's voice. "Then I must leave you to her."

Beneath the shimmering red sparks, there's a glint like a curve of teeth, or perhaps a blade.

Then the eyes slide away and disappear, as if summoned by an unheard call, and the voice fades.

Its final words are, "A blessing on you. Rest in peace."