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“There’s no time to argue,” Kelaros snaps. “Only you can find Prince Elionn.”

The mention of Elionn’s name sends another pulse of heat through the stone. The stone tugs hard toward the fissure, as if agreeing with Kelaros’s plan.

“Fine,” I relent, backing toward the crack. “But follow as soon as you can.”

As I slide into the narrow opening, the rough crystal edges catch the wound at my side. The pain nearly blinds me, but I push through, driven by the insistent pull of my bond to Elionn.

Kelaros shouts a challenge, and the stag answers with a bell-like cry that reverberates off the crystal walls.

The fissure widens as I push deeper, opening into a new corridor that angles downward. I pause at the threshold, turning back to see Kelaros dodging between the stag’s legs, knife bouncing off crystalline flesh.

He meets my eyes across the distance. “Go!”

I plunge into the new passage, the sound of battle fading behind me. The corridor descends in a tight spiral, walls close enough to touch on both sides.

The sithean stone burns cold, pulling me onward with increasing urgency. Elionn is close. The stone’s pulse and the tingle of my blood tattoo beneath my palm leave no doubt.

I just hope Kelaros’s sacrifice bought me enough time to reach my prince.

The spiral passage spits me out into a chamber where hundreds of fractured mirrors line the walls, ceiling, and parts of the floor. My reflection shatters and multiplies across every surface, a thousand versions of me staring back, panic etched into every blood-stained reflection.

I brace against the glassy floor, chest heaving, waiting for the sound of hooves behind me. None come. The silence is worse.

Did Kelaros fall?

I stagger forward, searching for another way through. If Kelaros didn’t kill the stag, then it will be here soon enough.

A crash splinters the air, followed by a scrambling sound from the passage I just came through.

I steady my knife, taking on a fighter’s stance. Then, Kelaros stumbles through the opening, his chest heaving with exertion. A shallow cut above his eye leaks blood down his face, turning half of it into a crimson mask.

I back away from the entrance, knife still at the ready. “How did you escape?”

“I didn’t.” He wipes blood from his eye. “It let me go.”

A chill runs down my spine. “Why would it do that?”

Kelaros scans the mirrored chamber, which offers no visible exit except the spiral passageway. “Because it has us trapped.”

The surrounding walls reflect our battered forms from every angle, some mirrors warped to stretch our bodies into impossible shapes, others fracturing our images into jagged pieces. The floor slopes toward the center, where a circular depression fills with liquid crystal that ripples with our movement.

A bell-like tone rings out, and we both spin toward the entrance. The hollow stag steps through, its massive frame somehow fitting where moments before the passage seemed barely wide enough for us. Its crystal heart pulses faster now, casting prismatic light across every reflective surface.

“We can’t outrun it,” I mutter, watching the stag’s light patterns dance over the crystal walls. “And we can’t hurt it.”

Kelaros moves to my side, knife raised, useless as it will be. “Any ideas?”

I could kill it, and all it would cost me is one of my knives. But doing so would expose me to Kelaros, and Theron’s words ring through my mind about not trusting the Dark fae.

No, I won’t risk it. Not unless I have no other option.

The stag advances a step, and its heart-light refracts through the fractured mirrors, scattering disoriented patterns in every direction. One beam strikes me full on, blinding me.

I blink away spots in my vision, an idea forming. The stag pauses, head turning from one fractured beam to another in confusion.

“The mirrors,” I whisper. “It’s sensitive to its own light.”

“What?”