The Mermaids Madness

couldn’t have pierced the heart, or Beatrice would already be dead. Snow grabbed the large mirror at the front of her choker and pulled. The wires untwisted, releasing the mirror into her palm.
    She placed the mirror on the back of her other hand, directly over the wound. “Mirror, mirror—” Her mind went blank. The rhymes weren’t necessary, but they helped focus her spells. She needed that focus right now. “Dammit, what rhymes with blood? Wait, I’ve got it.”
    Snow concentrated on the mirror. “Mirror, mirror, hear my need. Show me whence the queen does bleed.”
    The mirror’s surface frosted, then cleared again. Blood filled the glass, but Snow peered deeper.
    There. One of the smaller arteries leading from the heart had been cut, but not completely severed. She could see blood pumping from the cut with each beat of the queen’s heart.
    There was no way for needle and thread to reach such a wound. Snow touched her choker again. A length of gold wire unbraided itself, coiling around the index finger of her left hand. “Hurry, curse you.”
    She snapped the wire free, then pressed her finger against the wound. The wire grew hot, remembering the heat of the forge until it was soft and pliable as silk. The tip of the wire snaked into the wound, growing longer and thinner as it sought out the cut.
    Six times the wire pierced the artery. More finely than any human hand could sew, it stitched the edges together, gradually slowing the flow of blood. A thought severed the wire, melting the ends together so that no sharp points remained. Snow continued to watch through her mirror until she was certain the bleeding had stopped. Only then did she reach up to touch Beatrice’s face.
    What she sensed was like a physical blow, knocking her back. “She’s gone.”
    “Nobody’s dying if I have anything to say about it.” Gentle hands slowly pulled her away. The ship’s surgeon, an older man named Hoffman, sat down beside her. “She’s still breathing. I’ll take over from here.”
    Snow started to argue, but the words wouldn’t come. She squeezed her eyes shut, then nodded.
    Someone else helped her to her feet. Her mirror slipped from her hand and broke on the deck.
    “Sorry about that,” said the crewman.
    Snow barely heard. Beatrice’s face was pale and still. Her blood covered the forecastle. It had gotten onto Snow’s hands, soaked into her sleeves and trousers. She could smell it in the air, the sharp tang overpowering even the salt of the sea air.
    “Will she live?” asked someone. The prince? Snow wasn’t sure.
    She pulled away, trying to get to Danielle and Talia. “The surgeon . . . will do what he can.” With those whispered words, Snow fled.

    Danielle had seen death before. Her stepsister Stacia had died in front of her only last year. Her father died when she was ten, her mother even earlier.
    She had wept for them all, in very different ways. Her mother’s death was less a memory than a collection of impressions. Broken glass . . . her father had dropped the bottle he was working on when he heard her mother fall. The bottle had been such a vivid shade of blue. Still warm from the fire, the softened glass had absorbed some of the impact before shattering, spreading shards of oddly warped glass across the floor.
    Her father’s death had been a slow thing. Danielle had known what was to come, even if her stepmother refused to acknowledge it. Danielle had stolen every moment with him that she could. When death finally came, it was almost a relief, releasing him from his pain.
    For her stepsister Stacia, Danielle had wept at the pointlessness of it all.
    Sitting on the edge of the cot in the cabin she shared with Armand, she refused to cry now. Snow would save Beatrice. She had to.
    “Beatrice found me.” Talia’s accent was thicker than usual, elongating the vowels and slurring the harder consonants. The finely woven carpet muffled the sound of her footfalls as she paced. She still carried the broken spear she had taken from Lirea. “Four years ago, when I first fled to Lorindar. I was so frightened I nearly killed her.”
    “This isn’t your fault.” Worrying about Talia’s fear helped Danielle to ignore her own. “You can’t blame yourself.”
    Talia stabbed the tip of the spear into the wall. She twisted, prying up a long splinter. “Lirea didn’t intend to kill Beatrice. She wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t—”
    “Beatrice isn’t dead.”
    Talia’s jaw quivered.