#reckless book

Will Reckless had always kept his own counsel.

As a child, when his body had felt like it was growing into the wrong shape, he hadn’t told his brother -his brother was never there- and he hadn’t told his mother -she worried enough already, about the possibility that Jacob would leave one day and never return-, and over time, the secrecy became habit, and fear, and something so difficult to break. 

Maybe he would have told Clara, eventually. He’d introduced himself as Will (never Wilhelmina, always Will, just Will). Maybe she had seen already, the way he tensed when she introduced him as her girlfriend, or the distant way he looked when she ran her hands over his body. 

-

When the jade had spread, there had been no amethyst. Will had not realized the significance, not until it had spread much further, had reshaped far more of him. Jacob had not registered the lack of amethyst, or if he had, he had not understood what it meant. It was written on Jacob’s face and underneath everything he said, “the goyl are stealing my younger sister”.

It was so, so easy to punch him. 

-

Beyond this, were the memories that he was not meant to recall. Jacob and Fox and Clara assumed that the time had been peeled away from his mind just like the stone had been peeled away from his skin. 

But it had been woven too deeply into Will to forget. He had basked in the perception of himself that others held, like stepping into the sun on a cold day. “Ah, there goes the jade goyl” they said at the palace, “He is the strongest of Kamien's men, - fearsome soldier”. The rightness of it all settled into Will’s soul. He was a man, he was one of Kamien’s men. He was strong, he was a fearsome soldier. 

And days later, through the mirror, in New York, in the dark of the night -that he had once been able to see through like it was midday- Will Reckless lay next next to Clara and felt utterly alone. 

-

The Bastard had called Will Jacob’s sister (“He carries a picture of you in his pocket”). Will was alone, with no one he knew, in a world he barely knew. “His brother, actually”. The look of relief on Nerron’s face was almost funny. 

-

“Do they not have witches, on the other side of the mirror?” Nerron asked, guestering vaguely at Will, from head to toe. “What mirror” Will replied, both of them perfectly aware that he was lying through his teeth. Nerron didn’t bring it up again, but Will filed away the comment as a point of consideration. Something to think about.

-

Damn it felt good to wear the jade again. 

-

Will looked away from where the fairy had died, busying himself with 16’s injuries to ignore the part of his heart that wailed “I am lost, I am lost, I have lost my truest self”. He may be lost, but 16 wasn’t just yet, despite the wood that kept their form static, that couldn’t flow between faces and shapes like the rest of them could. The trunk of the tree that had once been 17 was gnarled and bent, and still seemed to snarl their anger to the world. Nerron had the crossbow. Will didn’t care. It had served its purpose. 

It was almost a relief when Nerron threatened him, and the familiar anger swept through Will, followed by the familiar stone. The same relief was reflected in the twitches of Nerron’s face. The expressions were small enough that a human likely wouldn’t have noticed. 

The mirrorworld was vast, and there was magic everywhere. Magic enough to restore 16’s form, and to change Will’s. Perhaps a witch, or a tree, or a curse, or even returning to New York and the cold, quiet magic of medical science.