A hiss snapped across the floor behind him. Rags jumped like a brandscale snake had ankled him. Forward, straight ahead, his choice made by gut instinct more than skill. The stone beneath his feet dropped and he lunged desperately back, just in time to avoid being plunged into darkness. Off balance, Rags stumbled instead toward the left-most corridor, where a pair of hands caught him before he could hit the wall, gave him a hard shove between the shoulder blades.
Whirling to face the culprit, he locked eyes with the Rags in the mirror.
Mirror-Rags’s jaw dropped and lengthened. Cavernous mouth. Row after row of pointed teeth. His fingers dripped to an obscene length, tipped with wicked claws. He cocked his head, inquisitive, like a sparrow. But then his head continued to tilt, twisting as his neck stretched and spiraled out.
Rags spun on his heel and ran, praying he was speeding toward the path without the trapdoor tiles. He waited for the mirror-thing to lunge, to bite him like the snake it had been transforming into.
Now he understood the corpse he’d seen. His predecessor must’ve been murdered by his own reflection.
Rags tripped on nothing, went down. Skinned his knee, yelped like a kicked dog instead of swearing like the full-grown thief he was. He cringed, waiting for the whoosh-snap of teeth around his neck.
It never came.
Rags’s heart rabbited frantically against the cold ground. Throat dry and tight with fright, Rags felt his breaths skitter warm along the clutch of his fist. He rasped in stale air, then opened his eyes.
Gray stone beneath him. Good news. He wasn’t in the belly of a fae-dreamed horror-beast.
He knew what he’d seen, though. That thing with his face, moving faster than light.
Footsteps sounded behind his prone body. No, not behind. Beside. Was his reflection still in the glass? Or was this merely a trick of echoes, of reflected sound? Rags scrambled to his feet, scurrying forward with his eyes fixed on the stone floor.
He couldn’t look in the glass, see the thing that wore his face and wanted to kill him. But he couldn’t run away properly if he couldn’t look up, see where he was going.
He’d been privy to tricks with mirrors before he saw the sorcerer’s mirrorcraft up close. From street performers to paranoid Ever-Nobles, who had all kinds of safety precautions set up to guard their vaults. Men and women who didn’t trust a simple lock because people like Rags could pop them open.
Was the monster nothing more than a fae illusion?
Worse: a fae illusion that might kill you, despite not, technically, being real?
Rags slammed hard into a glass wall with his shoulder, bounced off, hit the floor. Startled by the pain, he made a mistake. He looked at the mirror he’d run into, and the thing in the mirror met his eyes.
A long-fingered hand reached out of the glass and grabbed his ankle.
Not an illusion.
Rags wrenched free and darted left. This time, when the floor bottomed out, he was almost expecting it. He had enough momentum to pivot and throw himself back the way he’d come.
There was a way through this maze. Had to be.
Other saps had been savaged and left for dead. Didn’t mean Rags had to suffer the same fate.
His reflection monster wasn’t on top of him yet. How had Rags avoided being torn to shreds immediately?
He glanced over his shoulder. Mirror-Rags shimmered free from the glass and sprinted toward him. By instinct, Rags flinched and turned away.
The sound of bootfalls skittered around him, but no hand touched him. Mirror-Rags made no contact.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
Maybe Rags had to be looking at the mirror in order for it to come out and attack him. For the thing inside it to exist outside it.
“Shit.” Rags exhaled, dug for the mirror in his pocket. Didn’t look at it while hissing, “Morien, I need one of your witchy blindfolds. Don’t ask. And if you’re going to do the thing where you poof into existence, uh, be careful.”
Bad news if the sorcerer saw his own reflection and it devoured him. Rags didn’t think Lord Faolan would take too kindly to that, to say nothing of what would happen to the shard in Rags’s heart.
He was covering his eyes with his own sweaty fingers when he heard Morien grunt. A light swatch of fabric fell out of the hand mirror and landed across Rags’s bare wrist. Morien didn’t follow.