That defiance—that feral rage—ripped into her chest again, and Lessia found her own eyes on the water, watching the golden glow brighter than she’d ever seen it.
She was brimming with energy. She was alive.
She was… fuck, she was just so fucking angry.
Why did they have to die? Why was she still alive? Why did she still feel that fucking pull—the one that told her she was missing something?
“What is it?” she screamed at the souls around her. “What do you want from me?”
Merrick’s parents stood next to Raine now, and Lessia screamed at them next. “Why does he get to decide? Why can’t he live and I die?”
They just shook their heads.
“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Lessia’s voice was rough, broken like the heart within her as she faced Thissian.“Why?”
His eyes looked the same as they had when Rioner had held the group hostage on that ship. Even though his lips didn’t move, the memory of what he’d said whenshe’d refused to believe her father was dead bounced within her mind.
Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me!
It’s not a vision, Elessia.
It’s not a vision, Elessia.
It’s not a vision.
She blinked slowly as her eyes drew back to her own reflection.
It wasn’t a vision. This… this was real. But she knew that already. Didn’t she?
She stared at herself—really took in the image in the mirror of water—and what looked back sent a current over her skin.
Atop Ydren, Lessia glowed. Not just her arm from the soul stone, but her entire being, her skin seemingly laced with gold, by its brightness.
There was no wind in here, yet her hair still whipped around her face, forming what looked almost like a gilded crown. Not like the one her uncle had died in, which they’d let sink to the bottom of the sea, but darker, more resembling the one made out of flowers that Merrick had gifted her, but with thorns and branches that would prick anyone daring to come too close.
And around her? An army of wyverns and souls, ready should she wish to command them. The urge to look away nearly consumed her, but Thissian’s voice drowned all other sounds.Look. At. Me. Look. At. Me. Look. At. Me.
So, she did. For the first time in her life, Lessia looked—truly absorbed who stared back—allowed every senseand emotion and feeling to wrap around her, forcing her to face the things she’d avoided for so many years.
Before her eyes, the image reflecting in the water warped, memories she’d never known she’d stored flashing so quickly she almost didn’t catch them.
Lessia staring at herself, hating her glowing eyes, in the packed tavern on that night Merrick had come to tell her the king was calling in his debt.
Her bruised face in the mirror in her house after Merrick had hurt her on Rioner’s orders, her mind refusing to believe he’d actually spared her that day by ensuring the first strike knocked her out.
The mirror in Raine’s house, with Merrick behind her, helping with her dress, her skin pebbling under his cool fingers—a night when she’d already known that something within her yearned for him, but she hadn’t had the courage to look too deeply at it.
Lessia in Merrick’s tunic, staring at herself in Loche’s mirror, for the first time in her life knowing where—and with whom—home was, but barely able to admit it to herself.
She didn’t dare blink as the Lakes of Mirrors came next.
All the warped faces around her, above and below her—they had been hers all along, if she so chose. Lessia focused on the defiant one—the one she’d seen today—and another voice reverberated in her thoughts.
We needed someone who wouldn’t seek power—who wouldn’t want to be queen—ruling the shadows.
