When had anything in his life gone the way he’d wanted it to?
His reflection wavered, blurring slightly around the edges. It moved, and he moved with it, until it wasn’t just the reflection changing but his surroundings themselves.
Andrian was now in the corner of an unfamiliar room. A fireplace roared in a great stone hearth before a billowing canopied bed. His mirror-self stood in the room, too, beside the bed.
His stomach lurched, his heart giving a painful, hammered thump in his chest. He and his mirror were not alone.
Long, dark hair woven through with bits of gold. Sweeping expanses of tanned, glowing skin. Shimmering forest-green eyes, playful light dancing in the irises.
Mariah. Here. She wore only scraps of black lace, the sight of her enough to choke the air from his lungs, threatening to push him to his knees. He tried desperately to lunge to her. To see if she was real, to bury his hands in the thickness of her tresses, to press his nose against the hollow of her throat, inhaling lungfuls of her cloying cedarwood and jasmine scent.
But he was rooted to the floor. Unable to move, unable to cry out, no matter how much he thrashed about and roared in agonized despair.
His mirror self, though, was not bound. He moved toward her, the figure that was him-but-not-him, recognizable smirk dancing across his lips.
Andrian’s heart skipped another beat when Mariah smiled back, giving the other him that playful grin he loved so much.
A memory, he thought. That’s what this was: a memory. Something that could be endured because he’d lived it, and it was his.
As he watched the scene and took in more of the room, though, he knew he was lying to himself.
This was no memory; or, at least, not one of his own. But it was undeniable that the girl was Mariah, and the other him washim.
So even though he knew he shouldn’t, Andrian couldn’t help but watch.
His mirror-self slid a hand possessively around Mariah’s neck. She went soft and pliant in his grip, long lashes fluttering closed with a whispered sigh. The other him swept his nose up her neck—just like the real him wanteddesperatelyto do—and murmured something in her ear.
Something that made her smile widen and turn hungry.
“Whatever you want. Take it from me.”
Even from his corner, Andrian heard her throaty words. The way she rasped them against his mirror-self’s temple, her handsliding over his shoulder, nails tightening into his skin. His real body shivered, remembering how it felt to be touched by her like that. Like madness and lust and love and all the good he never deserved.
His mirror-self’s grip tightened, body tensing, as if he were a predator ready to pounce. He dragged her off the edge of the bed in a blur of movement, spinning her around until she was wedged between him and the canopy banister. Mariah’s eyes were still open, half-lidded and heavy, and even though she now faced the real Andrian in his corner, it was like she stared right through him.
As if the mirror-him behind her was the only reality, and he was subjected to being a bystander in his own life and happiness. Forced to watch but never experience.
His mirror-self brushed his mouth along the curve of her ear, down the column of her neck, across the sweep of her shoulder. His hand slid down her body, across the glorious plane of her stomach. Her weight had returned, the evidence of her time in Khento’s dungeons washed away. No more hard edges and lines; only soft curves and smooth skin.
Mariah’s eyes finally fluttered closed when Andrian’s mirror-self slipped his hand beneath the black lace. Her body shuddered against his, a low groan slipping past her lips, her fingers tightening around the wood of the banister.
There was no teasing, no playing. His mirror-self worked her hard and fast. Each dip of his fingers sent a knife deeper into his real heart, stabbing it and ripping it with stinging, loathsome want.
This was his life now. His future. To constantly crave something he would never have again—to wish vehemently for a destiny he knew he would never deserve.
And because Andrian craved his own torment more than anything, he did not look away as the love of his life came undone around his mirror-self’s fingers.
Her soft gasps and moans filled the room, as much a torture to him as any physical prison. Her cheeks flushed that perfect shade of pink, lips tilted up in a wicked, wild smile. Just as Andrian was about to hang his head in defeat, his mirror lifted his.
When Andrian saw the mirror’s eyes, his universe froze.
Gone were the purple-blue eyes of his mother’s people. The tanzanite was swallowed up by a ring of flame. Red-gold burned back at him from within his own face, the once-familiar smirk pulling darker and more sinister.
Kol—the demon-god who’d spawned him—released a wicked laugh as he pulled his fingers from Mariah and licked them clean.
The world went black, tunneling him through a vortex of malice and loathing and darkness. Andrian slammed back into his body, wrenched from the nightmare.
His chest heaved as he blinked away the dark daze of his torment. He was seated in a chair in the middle of Khento’s great hall, with that same dark god seated on the dais above him, that same malevolent smile still spread across his dangerously familiar face.
