Hemlock & Silver

In the mirror-gardens, Anja and Javier find drifts of dead, gray insects and birds where reflected grounds meet silver boundaries. Near where Snow found the hidden fruit, they find concealed mirrored tiles behind a statue. Continuing to walk outside the villa, they come across a vast, unnatural pit ringed with tunnels that has no counterpart in the real world. Anja acknowledges that she feels overwhelmed: “[H]ere is this astounding new world, and instead of being able to take the time to study it and figure out the rules, we’re fighting against someone who’s poisoning a child to get what they want” (217).

Back in her room, Anja tries to bring a mirrored hummingbird into the real world. The attempt fails, draining her strength and turning her skin gray until Javier pulls her away from the glass. She falls asleep, waking to find that Javier has stayed with her. He suggests that she confront Snow about what she knows; he also braids her hair as they share pieces of their pasts.

At dawn, Grayling returns. Anja asks why she can remove some living things—i.e., plants—from the mirror-world but not animals, but Grayling’s response is cryptic: “Potatoes […] do not make gods” (226). Anja then confronts Snow, who erupts in frustration, explaining that she doesn’t like eating the mirror-food but must to save her sister. She insists that she will stop eating the apples only if Anja learns where Rose is being held captive. When Anja reminds her that Rose died, Snow walks away.

As Anja considers Snow’s reaction, a maid happens to pass. Anja finds herself suspicious of the maid’s intentions and ponders how to protect herself; it occurs to her that if she carries a hand mirror with her, she can use it to check that no one is near her in the mirror-world at any given time. Anja borrows a small mirror and places it on her nightstand. When a maid (later introduced as Eloise) enters her room, Anja hides inside her standing mirror. From there, she watches Eloise unknowingly angle the small mirror toward the larger one. The intersecting reflections stretch and distort Eloise’s mirror-self, which ultimately splinters, the pieces reassembling themselves into a crawling creature: “Two hands met in the center of the floor. They circled each other, then hooked their thumbs together and stood up on their fingers, swaying against each other like drunken spiders. […] Half a mouth, attached to a cheekbone and a single eye, bit on to one’s fingertip” (234). A fragment brushes Anja’s foot, and she bolts back into the real room, shaken.

Grayling explains that the creature Anja encountered is a “mirror-geld” and that such fragments eventually fuse into larger ones.

In the garden, Anja finds Javier with Aaron; to secure privacy, she scares off the latter by talking about venomous creatures. To Anja’s embarrassment, Javier then awkwardly reveals that Aaron was teasing him about a possible romance with Anja. Switching topics, he asks about Anja’s conversation with Snow and confirms that he marched in Rose’s funeral procession, invalidating Snow’s belief that her sister is alive. Anja in turn tells Javier about the mirror-geld, and he proposes searching the mirror-room for it. When they do, they find the mirror-geld gone.

The next day, Lady Sorrel shows Anja her rooms, and Anja realizes there are no mirrors in them. Asked about this, Lady Sorrel remarks that she keeps all her mirrors covered, a habit she adopted because her former lover, Bastian, feared being watched through them. Anja now suspects Lady Sorrel is the poisoner and tells Javier. They agree to search her rooms via the mirror-world, although what to do afterward is less clear: Javier worries that if they tell King Randolph about the mirrors’ properties, it will instigate an arms race as different countries collect and weaponize mirrors. As they talk, Anja realizes that she’s attracted to Javier but tries to suppress her feelings.

Anja and Javier enter the reflected house and are immediately chased by two armed, awake reflections. They escape by diving through a mirror into a real corridor and are still tangled together when Eloise walks in; despite their protestations, it’s clear that she believes she found them in the middle of a romantic assignation.

Javier and Anja return to the latter’s room and discuss the implications of what they just saw. Javier wonders where the guards came from, as they don’t resemble anyone in Witherleaf, and Anja attempts to explain what she knows about “awakened” reflections. This entails revealing that Grayling can talk; Javier accepts Anja’s word on this point, though he feels that Grayling must not be an ordinary cat. When he asks what would happen to an awakened reflection if the “original” walks by a mirror, Anja realizes that this could explain why Lady Sorrel is keeping her mirrors covered: to prevent her reflection from being whisked away from what it’s doing every time she herself encounters a mirror.

Shortly after Javier leaves, a summons arrives: Snow is violently ill. Anja sends the staff away and questions Snow alone. After experiencing a convulsion, the girl reveals that she ate two mirror-apples and says that she did it for the queen, whom she insists still reigns.

After stabilizing Snow, Anja returns to her room. Recognizing the extreme danger of another dose, she summons Javier. They decide that they cannot reveal the mirror-world to the king without causing a greater disaster, but they cannot come up with a plan that protects Snow while maintaining secrecy. They decide to reconvene the next day.

In the morning, however, Anja is lured into a hallway, where someone drops a heavy frame over her, trapping her and tipping her into the mirror-world. An armored reflection immediately attacks. Anja, who had been holding her rooster when she entered the mirror-world, throws it at him to create a diversion and runs for her room, only to find her mirror smashed. Other reflections seize her. The armored man pins her, announcing that the queen demands her presence.

Guards march Anja to a silver throne room where the “Mirror Queen”—the awakened reflection of the late queen—waits. Snow kneels at her feet. The Queen explains her plan to feed Snow enough mirror-food to grow her power, which will allow her to pull human reflections into the real world. She recounts her origin: The real queen was lonely and spent a lot of time talking to her own image in the mirror, strengthening it until, one day, she accidentally spilled blood on her reflection and woke it. The Mirror Queen then lured the queen into the mirror and confronted her, demanding to take her place. The Mirror Queen refuses to stop poisoning Snow and orders the guards to lock Anja away.

Guards lock Anja in a cold room, stomping on a mirror-geld centipede to frighten her. Later, they throw a bloodied Javier in with her. Anja cleans his wounds, and they resolve the misunderstanding about his reaction to her grabbing his hand as it reached from the mirror; he explains that the physical sensation was uncomfortable because of the mirror’s influence—like her fingers were passing through his skin—but that he is not disgusted by her. As they sit in the dark, scratching sounds start at the door. The bolt slides free, and Grayling mutters through the crack about the nuisance of locks.