The Crumpled Mirror by Elizabeth Loea (free novel reading sites TXT) 📕

fifty-six!” He shouted through the portal when we saw him coming. Portals warp words a little, but not enough for us to feign not healing him.

“Better than nine fifty-seven,” I shot back. Adrian grimaced, which I attributed more to the fact that both Lilac and Ginger were incredibly asleep on the other side of the clearing than to Mint’s lateness. “Where’s Mint?”

“He said ten,” Indigo reminded me. “He’ll be here at ten.”

It felt like a century, not four minutes, before Mint surfaced from the soil. He brushed off his shirt and glowered at the dirt.

“You really don’t have a more convenient way to do that?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself. “It seems a little pointless to literally claw your way out of the dirt every night. Ever tried a coffin or something?”

“I would kill for a coffin,” Mint told me, somewhat more companionable than the night before. “It’s not in the budget, though. Not until after the first test at earliest.”

“How’d you die?” I asked him, on impulse.

He tried to suppress a shudder, but failed. I didn’t want to look away from him, but I did; those eyes were just too piercing.

“Ten years ago, I didn’t make it through the final test alive,” he said at last, his voice almost a whisper. “I went through the tests, like you. There were five of us. It went wrong. I won’t be able to rest until I help someone else get it right.”

There was nothing I could say to that except, “Let’s get it over with, then.”

Mint shook off his chill and stretched his hands up to the sky. The night met his fingers with a friendly brush of wind that gusted across all of us. At this point, stars adorned the treetops, far too clear for us to be in Half Moon Bay. Lilac and Ginger shook sleep from their shoulders and stood, lining up at my side. Adrian fell in next to Indigo, and we stood all facing Mint, as though we were a properly united force.

My gut began to sink, but I couldn’t help the curiosity that had started to inch up my throat. I was about to ask a silly question, so I gulped my voice back and tried to look compliant.

I’ve never been good at that.

“What?” Mint asked me, already fed up with my personality.

“Why give us dangerous tests just to teach us magic?” I asked. “It seems to me that you’d want people who were the least imposing to learn magic, so that they wouldn’t feel tempted to overthrow you.”

He shrugged. “To be trusted with anything beyond paltry magic, you’ve got to be completely committed. Dangerous tests make sure the most motivated are the only ones who pass. You can only learn so much from runes and spoken spells—this is for people who want to go beyond. Now, Indigo and Ginger, Adrian and Clementine.”

Lilac raised her hand to interrupt.

“You’ll go up against one of the winners of these matches,” he told her. “And no, it’s not unfair, because I’ll heal whoever works with you so you’ll be tested at full strength.”

She frowned, indignant, but stepped away from Ginger with a hug and retreated to Mint’s side.

I glanced at Adrian, who was popping his knuckles—the universally acknowledged best way to piss someone off.

“I told you this was going to pit us against each other,” he said, his breath fog in the air. I didn’t dignify that with a response, mostly because I couldn’t think of one clever enough. Nobody ever knows how to respond to “I told you so.”

“Okay,” Mint said. “You’re going to take a sip—only a sip, not a gulp—of what I hand you. Don’t go trying to cheat me, because more will just send you into a very, very deep sleep you might not wake up from.”

“What?”

“After that, I’ll call the beginning of the match.”

“We’re supposed to fight each other?” I interjected.

Mint raised an eyebrow. “Did you think you were going to be having a chat to get to know each other? We do this like magicians, not like your high school debate team.”

“Ouch,” Adrian said, feigning offense. “I was on my high school debate team.”

“That makes so much sense,” I told him.

“Hey.”

Mint rolled his eyes, held his palm up, and twisted his fingers in a clockwise motion. With a noise like the wheels of a desk chair over a tile floor, a glass materialized in his hand. I couldn’t help but feel a bright flash of astonishment and joy at seeing Mint work his magic. It was about the size of a shot glass, but the glass itself was pale blue. Within it, the liquid looked purple, but it was just the blue glass warping the deep red color of the liquid.

He handed it to Indigo, who glanced warily at it before taking the tiniest sip. In my giddy excitement, I expected something huge to happen—perhaps the earth would shake or Indigo’s eyes would glow, but he just winced and shrugged.

Ginger took it next, then Lilac, then Adrian, then me. By the time it was my turn, I had made up my mind not to react, but the elixir tasted too odd not to react—not bad, exactly, but like a mixture of anise and mint and cream soda. There was something old about it that was distinctly non-ancient, like I’d been to my grandmother’s that weekend and she’d sent me home with this weird soda.

“Okay,” Mint said. “Be careful.”

“‘Be careful,’” Adrian repeated. “What does that—oh, no. Ow. Fuck you, Mint.” He clutched at his temples.

Mint shrugged and backed off, Lilac at his side.

I stared at Adrian as he fell to his knees, my heart dropping to my stomach.

“What did you do?” I called to Mint.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Everyone reacts to this differently. It seems Adrian’s reaction is particularly negative.”

I offered Adrian a hand, but he batted it aside and hauled himself to his feet through sheer force of will. I prayed to all of the gods whose names I