Reckless (Mirrorworld #1)

Reckless (Mirrorworld #1) Page 25

"Three brothers."

Fox rubbed her head against Jacob's lifeless hand. A last moth rose from his chest. Suddenly she flinched. His body shuddered — his lips gasped for air, and his hands clawed into the grass.

Jacob!

Fox impulsively jumped on his chest, causing him to groan with pain.

No grave. No damp soil on his face! She bit his chin and his cheeks. Oh, she just wanted to eat him up with love.

"Fox. What are you doing?" He grabbed her and sat up.

Clara backed away from him as if from a ghost. The Dwarf dropped his shovel.

But Jacob sat there and looked at his bloody shirt.

"Whose blood is this?"

"Yours!" Fox nestled against his chest to feel his heartbeat. "The Goyl shot you."

Jacob looked at her incredulously. Then he unbuttoned his blood-soaked shirt. But instead of a wound, there was only the pale red imprint of a moth on the skin above his heart.

"You were dead, Jacob." Clara struggled with the words, as if her tongue had to search for every syllable. "Dead."

Jacob touched the mark on his chest. He wasn't all there yet; Fox could see it in his eyes. But finally he looked around.

"Where's Will?"

Jacob struggled to his feet as he noticed the Dwarf standing behind him.

Valiant gave him his broadest smile. "That Fairy must have really taken quite a fancy to you! I heard they sometimes bring their lovers back from the dead, but that they also do that for the ones who ran out on them..." He shook his head and picked up the warped rifle.

"Where's my brother?" Jacob took a step toward the Dwarf, but Valiant managed to evade him with a quick leap across the empty grave.

"Easy, now!" he called, waving the rifle at Jacob. "How am I supposed to tell you if you wring my neck?"

Clara pushed the handkerchief and the gold sovereigns back into Jacob's pocket. "I'm sorry. I didn't know how to find Will without you." She pressed her face against his shoulder. "I thought I'd lost you both!"

"Don't worry." Jacob stroked her hair soothingly, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on Valiant. "We'll find Will. I promise. We don't need the Dwarf for that."

"Really?" Valiant snapped the bent barrel off the rifle as if it were a brittle twig. "They're taking your brother to the royal fortress. The last human who tried to sneak in there was an imperial spy. They cast him in amber and put him on display right next to the main gate. Terrible sight."

Jacob picked up his pistol and pushed it back into his belt. "But of course you know a way to get in."

Valiant's mouth stretched into such a smug grin that Fox bared her teeth. "Of course."

Jacob eyed the Dwarf as if her were a poisonous snake.

"How much?"

Valiant bent the broken rifle into shape.

"That gold tree you sold to the Empress last year. Word is you kept a cutting."

Fortunately, Valiant missed the look Fox shot at Jacob. There was indeed a cutting. It grew behind the ruin, by the scorched stables, but the only gold it had yielded so far was its foul-smelling pollen. Still, Jacob managed to produce an expression of honest indignation.

"That's an outrageous price!"

"Appropriate is more the word." Valiant's eyes were glinting as if he could already feel the gold raining down on his shoulders. "And the vixen has to take me to it even if you don't make it out of the fortress alive. I want your word of honor on it."

"Honor?" Fox growled. "I'm surprised that word doesn’t make your lips blister."

The Dwarf leered at her. Jacob, however, held out his hand to him.

"Give him your word, Fox," he said. "No matter what happens, he'll have earned himself that tree."

31

Dark Glass

Without the horses, it took them hours to reach a road that led from the valley up into the mountains, and Jacob had to carry Valiant on his back so the Dwarf wouldn't slow them down even more. Finally a farmer gave them a lift on his cart to the next village, where Jacob bought two new horses, and a donkey for the Dwarf. The horses weren't fast, but at least they were used to the steep mountain paths, and Jacob only stopped when the darkness made them lost their way.

He found a spot beneath a rocky outcrop that gave some protection from the cold wind. Soon Valiant was snoring as loudly as if her were in one of the soft beds for which Dwarf inns were famous. Fox scampered off to hunt, and Jacob advised Clara to bed down next to the horses so that they would keep her warm. Then he lit a fire with some dry wood he'd found among the rocks, and tried to regain some of the calm he had felt on the island. Again and again, he caught himself touching the dried blood on his shirt, but all he remembered was Will's accusing stare after he'd been pricked by the rose, and then a relieved Fox nudging his face with her muzzle. In between there was nothing, just an echo of pain and darkness.

And his brother was gone.

"When you wake up, all this will be over. I promise."

How, Jacob? Even if the Dwarf didn't double-cross him again. Even if he managed to find the Dark Fairy in the fortress. How was he going to get close enough to touch her, let alone utter what he'd learned from her sister, before she could kill him? Don't think, Jacob. Just go.

He felt a searing impatience, as if death had only increased his old restlessness.

Ride, Jacob. Onward, just as you've done for years. The wind drove into the flames, and he buttoned his coat over his bloody shirt.

"Jacob?"

Clara was standing behind him. She had wrapped a horse blanket around her shoulders, and he noticed that her hair had grown longer.

"How are you feeling?" In her voice Jacob still heard the disbelief that he was actually alive.

"Fine," he answered. "Would you like to check my pulse? Just to make sure?"

She had to smile, but the concern in her eyes remained.

An owl was screaming above them. In this world, owls were regarded as the souls of dead Witches. Clara knelt next to him on the cold earth and held her hands above the warming flames.

"Do you still think we can help Will?"

She looked terribly tired.

"Yes," he said. "And trust me, you don't want to know more than that. It would just scare you."

When she looked at him, her eyes were as blue as Will's. Before they had been drowned in gold.

"Is that the reason you didn't tell Will why he had to pick that rose?" The wind blew sparks into her hair. "I think your brother knows more about fear than you do."

Words. Nothing more. But they turned the night into dark glass in which Jacob saw himself.

"I know why you're here." Clara's voice sounded distant, as though she were speaking not about him but about herself. "This world doesn't frighten you half as much as the other one. You have nothing and nobody to lose here. Except Fox, and she clearly worries more about you than you do about her. You've left all that could frighten you in the other world. But then Will came here and brought it all with him."

She got up again and wiped the earth off her knees.

"Whatever you're planning, please be careful. Getting yourself killed for Will won't make up for anything. But if there is a way, any way, to turn him back into who he was, then let me help! Even if you think it'll frighten me. You're not the only one who doesn't want to lose him. Why else would I still be here?"