…no one.
Her grim thoughts were going to burn her from the inside out. Lux hid her head in the pillows. She’d never felt so broken in all her life.
Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.
The nauseous despair retracted, rootless, as her anger grew in strength. It licked at every part of her until her skin grew damp with it. And when she could take it no more, she bit into her knuckles until they cut—and screamed.
Only when it was done did she cradle her head in her hands. Her breaths were labored and loud in her ears.
“It isn’t fair,” she murmured, hoarse and aching. “None of it is fair.”
How she wished she could have screamed for real rather than the voiceless imitation she’d allowed. But she didn’t want to bring anyone running. Not when there wasn’t a single one of them who could offer her comfort now.
Riselda had broken their rules and taken what they coveted. Why? Was it the madness that drove her to it?
You stole from them. And you were only a child. What did you see that I haven’t? What did you know that I don’t? Why did you run?
To Ghadra, of all places.
“My mind can’t take anymore.” But she knew it wasn’t her mind at all, but her heart this time, causing her pains.
Before, those vulnerable words would never have left her mouth; they would have been swallowed by now. She’d become uncomfortably skilled at wallowing silently before burying her hurts deep. Except she’d lost that skill some time ago—purged it, rather—and then willingly left behind the person who had been there for her to practice speaking her feelings aloud.
Lux shoved to her feet.
She walked to the mirror, her steps heavy and slow, and when she neared it, close enough that she could read the words etched into the dark wood, a deep rage began to wrap around her anger, causing it to flicker and rise.
She couldn’t reach the words; her nails scraped along the glass instead. Her teeth bared. She audibly seethed. The sound was the only one she heard.
“Brilliance is meant to be agift!” Her fingers enclosed the body of a decorative gargoyle. She lifted it with both hands from its shelved perch. “And a gift should—not—lead—to—madness!”
She sneered at the statue—and swung it front-first against the wall.
Thecrackreverberated throughout the room.
Lux sucked a breath.
She picked through the pieces of the fractured figurine. She pulled at what gleamed. A silver ribbon, at the end of which hung a silver key. She frowned down at it before turning it over in her palm. Then she lifted the remains of the gargoyle once more. A bent hinge lay exposed on its severed neck. Now headless, she could see inside. It’d been hollowed out. She dropped it back onto its ruin.
“What do you unlock?” she asked the key and glanced afterward at herself in the mirror.
Something shifted in its reflection.
She stepped closer.
She raised her hand.
“It can’t be.”
But the lock reflected to her seemed as real as the key she held.
Lux raised it until it almost touched the glass. In the reflection, the lock remained instead. It didn’t make sense that it should work, but she pushed the key forward and watched with widening eyes as it slipped through. She turned it, heard it click. And the mirror swung in.
She stared into a pitch-black abyss.
A hidden corridor.
“Saints above, devil below.”
