The other side was the same room, but different.
No—the other side was the same room, in a different time.
Sunlight slipped through the many cracks on the domed ceiling here, and the stone blocks didn’t look half as lifeless as they hadback there. The darkness had a different quality here—lighter. Alive still.
And the three archways were indeed mirrors.
A cry escaped me and I didn’t know why my body was shaking as badly as it was. I finally had hope that Iwasn’tgoing to die here, yet it felt like my skin was being peeled off my flesh slowly, and the pain wasn’t even mine or of today. It was older but still as intense.
I fell on my knees in front of the mirrors, the one on my right broken, the other two intact, showing me my reflection in strange ways. The left was of me, moving the way I did now, but each movement reflected a second later, and my limbs, my body turned to a blur as it did.
The one in the middle showed me a faded version of myself, the colors on me dark, muted, like I was only half there.
At the top of the stone arches, three words were engraved:Break - And - Forsake.
I knew those words. I’d read them before—I was eleven-hours certain that I’d read them before. Like that, too, engraved on the smooth surface of gray stone. I’d read those words and now they were here again, but they weren’t the only ones.
While I sat there on my legs in front of the mirrors, the reflections on the first two changed.
They still showedme, but each a different version. The first Ora was standing with her feet apart and her fists against her hips, her chin raised, her eyes fierce. She wasstrong,and I knew this just by reading the lines of her expression. She was powerful, unafraid. She had courage.
The second one didn’t.
The mirror in the middle had changed, too, while I was busy trying to stay conscious. Only this Ora had her arms around herself, and she wasn’t looking at me at all. She was looking around, as if she was in a different place altogether, and she was waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to attack.
She was afraid. She was terrified.
“Don’t forsake me,” I thought she whispered, and those words I’d heard before, too. They were locked somewhere in my mind and I couldn’t access them, but they were there.
Then the pieces of the third mirror glistened, taking my attention. I waited with my breath held to see what they would show me, but there were too many broken pieces, scattered on this side of the floor and the other.
Was that the challenge here, I wondered? Had I broken this mirror to get through in the forward trials? Would I need to build it up again, mend it, before the trial was through?
I dragged myself closer, hope blooming in my chest, but just as I was about to grab the first piece of glass, my eyes caught something else glistening on the frame of the mirror, on both sides.
Words handwritten in silver ink.
If you can name what you gave away,said the left—and the right,your debt might be paid in full today.
I read the words again and again, and somehow, I understood them. Somehow, when I stood up, Isawso much more than what was around me—I saw myself, dressed in the same uniform, standing the same way I was standing now, breaking the glass, walking through to the other side.
As I did, even if it was just a memory, Ifeltsomething ripping out of me, cut out of me as if by an invisible sword,and there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could do to make myself less empty.
Master Talik’s face was at the center of my mind next—incomplete,he’d said. I was incomplete. The trial took from me, from all of us. Whatever we were forced to give away to complete this trial, the trial took it.
But what in the Holy Hour hadIgiven away?
The face of the Red Queen came back to me all of a sudden, and a scream escaped my lips. The pain hovered just there, over me, and I knew it was coming. It always did when I dreamed about her.
What did you do-what did you do-what did you do,I chanted, but there was no answer, no way to know. She’d done something, yes, but I’d done something, too.
I’d given something away to win this trial. I was indeed incomplete, just like Master Talik said. And finally, I knew why.
Tears streamed down from my eyes, even though I didn’t feel like crying. It was just my body operating on old habits, I figured, because I’d need tocareto cry, and I didn’t.
I didn’t care when Reggie died.
I didn’t care about anyone crying, and I’d seen plenty of tears other than my own.
