Harry didn't even know how many humans died during his first night with the Circus of Riddles.
Over the course of the year he heard lots of different versions - so many, that we used their blood to paint the tents that lovely red colour you see; only the grown ups because adults do not make good fey; only the little children because their hearts taste the sweetest.
Each fey had their own preferences. All brought tribute and sacrifice to their King.
When he first arrived, Harry thought he might be able to save them. The victims whose laughter sped faster and faster until the mirth in their eyes turned to terror as they couldn't breathe and clutched their throats desperately. The young fey, like Ginny, who'd yet to turn their hearts to glass and were as horrified as he was. He'd thought he'd be able to save himself, because wasn't that what happened in a fairytale?
"Not in the old ones," Tom had told him, with a beautiful smile.
Tom told him a lot of things that first year, but it took Harry a while still to see the truth. Fey couldn't lie, but Tom had a silver tongue that flashed so bright it could be blinding. Still, through that first awful year, Harry listened. He listened to Tom's victory, his bragging, his flattery, and he learned.
Look in the mirror, Harry. See how they used to leave offerings so we wouldn't come in and out uninvited? Milk and honey and bits of bread. I never much cared for milk and honey myself, I like apples. The forbidden fruit tastes all the sweeter,no?
It was Harry's first night.
The nausea rolled in his throat, his lips sticky-sweet from caramel apples and toffees and candy floss. He had never been allowed sweets with the Dursleys, though Dudley ate chocolates by the handful. The few he'd managed to have over the years - quickly at school on the last day, or when someone else was around and the Dursleys couldn't say no - had tasted nothing like these.
They melted on the tongue, rich and perfect. The candyfloss was the pinkest, fluffiest candyfloss in existence. The chocolates were beautiful, each one individually and intricately designed and frosted with no two the same.
Tom's shades clamped a hand over his mouth so he couldn't spit the confectionaries out, cut off his breathing so he had to swallow or suffocate. Fingers stroked his hair, crooned praises and encouragement.
Harry twisted and bucked all the same, and the fingers wound tight. Tugged at his scalp, holding him steady and immobile.
The same pattern, again and again and again - Harry heard the clock strike midnight. It took until six in the morning for him to swallow without being forced.
His knees ached from the cold floor, he felt sick, and he never wanted to touch a toffee apple again.
Tom let him stop then.
Look in the mirror, Harry. See your friend? See how he withers and starves like a rose in winter? It would be such a pity if that happened to you. Remember, I cannot tell lies. The Fey do everything better, and once you come here, you should be grateful for the hospitality. No one leaves the circle without a price.
That was the first time he tried to escape.
Tom kept him in a jewelry box of stolen trophies. It had taken Harry weeks to convince Tom's mirror cleaner - a timid, bashful boy called Neville - to secret him the key. He'd crept out through the night, thinking that maybe under the cover of shadows Tom wouldn't be able to see him.
He'd reached the edge of the clearing and been able to go no further. Hands slamming, fists beating, against an invisible wall only a metre away from the final tent.
Tom came to find him, laughing. Wrapped a consoling arm around his shoulders and reminded him that once a human ate fairy food they could never really leave. They sat in front of Tom's mirror, as Tom plied him with nectar and honeyed mead and sweet wines until Harry's head spun and then Tom laughed again. He wasn't allowed to look away.
In the reflection, Neville starved. Tried desperately to eat human food, to satisfy the hunger, to ease the burn in his throat, only to vomit blood.
Tom loved hope, when he could take it away.
Look in the mirror, Harry. See how we make changelings? I've always rather admired cuckoos, you know. Maybe you've seen them before. Little seeds that bloom into rotten fruit, and bring a massacre home for Christmas.
That was the first time he snapped.
He punched Tom across the face after a particularly cruel comment, to see if fairies bled like humans did. Watched Tom's head crack back, the top hat falling to the floor. Watched him trace a finger through the cut in his lip, crusted black with a blood no human could ever have. Watched as his finger came away specked with blood.
"Maybe you're a changeling too," Tom crooned. "Vicious, pretty little thing that you are. You would make an excellent fairy, so why keep fighting me?"
Harry watched the blood vanish by the time Tom had crossed the three steps of distance between them, watched as Tom's skin became as flawless as it always had been, as if Harry had never hit him at all. The blood on his finger was the only sign that he'd ever been wounded at all.
"I bet you're as bloodthirsty as I am," Tom said, pressing the blood into Harry's mouth with a cruel twist of a smile. It tasted as poison-sweet as everything in Tom's realm, too sugary when blood should taste like metal and salt. "I bet you'd love to rip my heart out with your teeth. I can see the hate in those defiant eyes whenever you look at me."
Harry turned his head away, jaw clenched as he itched to swing again.
Tom's lips caressed his ear as he leaned in to laugh, voice dropping to a whisper. "Pity for you, the only substance that hurts a fairy is iron."
Harry flinched away.
Tom laughed harder and pulled back. "Humans," the Fey King mocked. "Such a fragile species, maybe that's why your frantic little hearts make such exquisite delicacies."
Harry remembered reading that human blood had four grams of iron in it and smiled.
Look in the mirror, Harry. See how humans make deals and think they can get away with not paying the price. You wanted to escape for a night, I gave you eternity. You should be grateful.
That was the first time Tom kissed him.
It was the second month, a gleam of wicked and frustrated hunger in the ringmaster's eyes, and then lips crushed against his own like Tom could just eat him up like he always threatened. Fingers curled tight into his hair, another pressed into his hip as if Tom thought he could claim him fully by the force of touch alone. Imprint himself on every inch of Harry's skin. Like holding him tight enough could finally make him understand and surrender.
A startled sound stole out of Harry's throat, more at the timing than anything else.
It was his first kiss and nothing like the clumsy and fluttering thing he'd imagined.
Tom backed him up with slow, stalking movements - palms sliding chilly down to Harry's shoulders, smoothing over his bare chest before pressing him against the closest of the six mirrors.
Harry's knees jellied than he cared to admit. He wanted, in a way he would never admit. An intoxicated, giddy sort of want for magic and extraordinary things and puddled dangerous pleasure. He clutched hold of the Fey King's shoulders with his mind racing.
Now, more than when he'd tried to escape or attack, Tom seemed angry. Burning with a quiet and possessive fury as Harry panted for breath when they parted. Their faces stayed inches apart.
No one had ever looked at him with the intentness Tom did. Seen him, where the Dursleys went to great lengths to pretend he'd never existed at all.
Maybe that was what made the heat pool in the pit of his belly.
"You are mine," the Fey King spoke the words with the same slow, predatory pace. Like he knew he had Harry trapped in a corner, nowhere to go, and everything was simply the inevitable conclusion that he was too stupid to have reached yet. Yet, strangely and inexplicably fond for so obvious a rage.
Tom's hand trailed up again, closing around his throat, baring it back as he tipped Harry's head against the shining glass behind him. It wasn't a painful grip, holding more than constricting. Considering him. His movements stayed slow, his eyes drank up Harry's reactions and every flicker of emotion.
Harry swallowed and refused to look away. Heart pounding, Tom's breath puffing against his lips. His every nerve ending felt set alight.
"You entered my ring of your own volition," Tom continued, pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth as he stood almost entranced. "You ate my food-"
"-Not by my own choice," Harry interrupted then. "You forced that apple down my throat. That makes a difference, doesn't it? Even to fey? I didn't willingly eat a thing until the day after."
Tom's eyes darkened again and Harry knew it was true. Finally, properly, knew it was true though he'd had suspicions for a while now.
Harry felt a dizzying, addictive rush of power unlike anything he'd ever felt before.
Tom pressed hard against his thigh.
Harry brushed a mockingly chaste kiss to Tom's lips - sweet as the Witch's Gingerbread House. "God, you must have been desperate to have me to try that trick," he said.
He couldn't leave, that was true, but that was about the extent of it wasn't it? He wasn't turning into a fey like Ginny, his heart wasn't an apple ripe for Tom's plucking and appetite.
Tom could bully and intimidate and seduce, but he didn't own.
"I'm not yours," Harry breathed, lightheaded with the realization, dotting kisses to Tom's creamy throat next, hearing his breath stutter. "And it drives...you...crazy."
Tom practically quivered beneath him, lips parting as Harry brushed his finger over it, somewhere between even more livid and hopelessly aroused.
A victorious smirk tugged at Harry's lips.
That seemed to decide it - Tom shoved him hard against the mirror again and crushed their lips together. Slammed Harry's wrists above his head, pinning them in place and stretching him out against the glass.
Harry would have laughed if he could.
"You will be," Tom said - and his true nature had never been so obvious, the dark cracks behind the facade of beauty and charm and all the wonders of the circus. Snow White's apple, lovely and rotten at the core. "You can't fight me for an eternity, and you have nowhere else to go either way." Tom's nails dug into his chest. "Humans never last long in a fairy ring, you'll be mine by the end of the year, I promise you that."
His teeth grazed along Harry's throat, sending a shiver down his spine all over again. A small moan escaped his throat and Tom devoured that greedily instead.
He learned that night that Tom would do anything to possess his heart.
A fey should have known better than to offer 'anything'.
Look in the mirror, Harry. I have seen your heart and it is mine. I can give you anything, everything. Are you happy here, now?
He traded his heart six months in for knowledge, when he was reasonably certain Tom wouldn't devour it at first opportunity. Tom wanted to relish his long-awaited and craved ownership first and oh he did. Harry learned about perfection, his world narrowed down to glass.
Harry no longer quite felt like laughing after that, but for the first time a way he could win seemed to be in sight.
Because he learnt about the mirrors that Tom spent his life peering in. He learnt about the six mirrors and the six shades that protected them from damage. Tom's key to everything. Tom's power.
Tom loved telling him about the mirrors, once he had Harry's heart and thought he'd won everything. He stopped viewing him as a threat to be conquered or a prize to be won, and Harry became something quaint and amusing instead. Jester, lover, servant, pet.
He was the novelty of a living, breathing human in a fairy ring where over time all Fey things turned as cold and hard as glass and reflected nothing but themselves. Harry wasn't cold. He made surprising Tom into a form of art, he kept impressing, and so he kept living.
And if he could destroy the mirrors...
Well, that would be the most interesting thing of all, wouldn't it?
Look in the mirror, Tom. This is how you lose him.
It was the most amazing place Harry had ever seen.
Tents bathed in moonlight, fairy lights twining between paths and arcing overhead, lit signs guiding visitors along in a blazing array of colour. Beautiful music followed along on his heels.
It was the most terrible place Harry had ever been.
The musicians played without pause until their fingers bled. Behind the graceful movements of the acrobats and the dancers lay exhaustion, bone deep, cracking the soles of their feet and aching in the marrow of their bones like the fiercest hunger. The contortionists felt their bodies snap like dry kindling as they twisted into impossible shapes. The lion tamers and the magical creature lovers doomed never to hold each other or speak the same tongue again.
Every person entering the ring was different, finding what they most desperately wanted to see and most desired. Finding the tents that were meant for them, the acts that most called to their souls, the paths that they would never be able to return from.
He hadn't left the hall of mirrors in a year.
Humans laughed and smiled, pointing at exhibits with the same wide-eyed wonder that Harry had once felt. Harry watched the guests, the sound of their merriness a more fantastic tune than any by the Fey performers, their movements more entrancing.
Everything about them drew him in, where once it had been the perfect mirage of The Circus of Riddles that did that.
He was never going to let the Fey King have anyone else, no matter what it took. He had to do this. If he didn't, he was damned. He'd lost too much already, bargained too much. He'd only get once chance.
Harry kept his face as composed as he could, ribbons still streaming bloody from his wrists and from around his throat in a tight loop. He squared his shoulders and kept his breathing even.
Now that he knew to look for it, he could see Tom's dark eyes tracking his movements in every reflective surface. Eager, delighting in this new game as if they hadn't played enough games already.
Harry's heart pounded harder in his chest every time their gazes met.
It felt like the first night all over again, through a mirror darkly.
Maybe this was an old fairy-tale, with no happy endings or hope of saving himself when he gave his heart to a Fey prince, but even the old tales had a victor.
And this time, Harry would win.
A/N: Last chapter will be the last. I'm finding writing shorter stories (AKA under 10,000 words) to be an interesting challenge, I've always been rather more novel ridiculous length based than a writer of short stories. I always thought of myself as notoriously terrible at short stories - so, again, any feedback would be greatly appreciated :) I'll try and have this finished within the next couple of weeks. Either way, I'm having fun messing around with the premise and I hope you're having fun reading it.
