I listen to her. I really do. For all of a few seconds. The farther we stride into this room, however, the more my periphery flashes with gold. Gold and silver and black and—
Midnight blue.
I blink. Once, twice, three times. It isn’t enough to dislodge my morbid curiosity. My attention catches on the dark fabric, and my eyes flick—just for a second—to the mirror on my right. My stomach plummets.
There is a mask.
A white porcelain mask, smooth and ancient andhollow.
The Death Lord is watching me through the mirror. No. He’sreachingfor me.
A gloved hand pushes outward from liquid glass until icy fingers nearly brush my sleeve. I freeze, rooted by the weight of that malicious, hollow gaze. My breath is gone. Mysenseis gone. The Death Lord slips out farther, contorted and strange, and behind him—the rest of Cultus Mortis. They fill every gilded frame, every reflective surface in this corridor. Their ghastly breaths smoke through the room.
I wasn’t prepared for this. Forthem.
Zephyra snarls. “I said,don’t look.” Her hands seize my face and wrench my gaze to hers. Her turquoise eyes are furious, blazing with more of that wild, protective fire. Instantly, it burns through the cold. “For a submissive warlock, you areterriblewith instructions. Focus. On.Me.”
I do. It buys me enough time to regather my senses.
“I only looked for a second,” I growl. “And I am not, in any way, shape, or form, submissive.”
“Sure, warlock—and it was twominutes. Time is different here. You can’t trust it. You can’t trustanything.”
Two minutes. How is that even possible? I would shake my head if Zephyra wasn’t gripping my face so hard. She drags me through the corridor now, her eyes closed as if she’s navigating this place from memory alone.
The thought unsettles me more than anything else.
A thousand times in this hall.
Three thousand days in this castle.
She has survived so much more than anyone in this world will ever comprehend. She has survived so much, just for me and my gods-forsakenbullshitto force her back here. This is my fault. Every second of this journey, from arresting her to saving her to searching for this place, has beenmy fault.
And the darkest thought I’ve ever had shoots across my mind like a dying star: Am I any better than the sorcerer? Am I any better forher?
Suddenly nauseated, I keep my gaze on the floor now, on the dark stone, on the shifting shadows between our feet, but in my periphery, I still see them. The rest of Cultus Mortis. They twitch and shift and slip out of the mirrors after the Death Lord. They clutch their scythes. And they follow us.
Every time I let my thoughts drift back to them, they move faster. A hiss behind us. A frigid whisper. The guttural wet sound of metal slicing through blood and bone. They call out to me. They tell me I belong with them.
What if they’re right?
“It’s okay, Arion,” Zephyra whispers, her eyes still firmly shut. “Whatever it is can’t hurt you unless you notice it. Ignore the mirrors. Focus on me. Only on me.” She exhales softly and repeats, “The hall of mirrors always leads to a stairwell. There will be a door behind me soon. We will go through it, and everything else will vanish.”
She’s comforting me.Me.When we’re standing in her fucking nightmare.
The mirrors shift then, without warning, and all I see is pink and turquoise and pink and pink and—
Zephyra’s back thuds against a door, and she exhales victoriously. “The handle, can you see it? Open it, Arion. Don’t linger here.”
Gritting my teeth, ignoring the hundreds of Zephyras surrounding me—their necks purple and their mouths bloody—I fumble for the cold steel of a slender handle. But something in my gut twists, and I look back.
Zephyra.
She is beautiful, but she is dead. She’s behind me, pale and blue and acorpse.
“Oh, fucking Fathoms.” The real Zephyra opens her eyes, grabs the handle, and rips open the door. She slides around me and shoves me through the threshold with both hands, slamming the door shut behind us. And just like that, the whispers stop. The nausea in my stomach subsides.
“You did that… a thousand times?” I ask, catching my breath as panic ebbs and flows through my chest.
