Broken Lords: Book Two of the Broken Mirrors Duology by A. F. Dery

for what he was experiencing. He felt he could barely breathe for the darkness oppressing him now, that there was simply no room left in his body for air when the suffocating clench of despair had him in its ruthless grip. And if he was in hell, he couldn’t imagine where his Maggie was. She lay screaming and writhing on the bed in their room while the High Lord’s personal physician examined her with capable hands and a brisk manner. The Mirror- that damned, worthless Mirror!- lay like a corpse across a couch that was pushed against the wall opposite the bed. She had not stirred, to Malachi’s notice, since one of the guards had carried her in. The journey to the High Lord’s Court had been grueling, but uneventful. The Mirror had looked progressively sicker with each passing day, and there had been no escaping her. She claimed it was too difficult for her to help Margaret from as far away as another carriage, so she had occupied the same one as he and Margaret, affording them no privacy, her increasing sickliness grating on them both. And then, of course, they had been obliged to bring her along even to meet with the High Lord. There had been one private meeting already, and the High Lord’s ire, even veiled as it was with his typical, almost exaggerated sense of courtesy, had been plain. Malachi had not been looking forward in the least to the next such, inevitable meeting, and the subject of Eladria and his earlier, rash letter about the same had not even arisen yet. Now those