Page 35
“Lass,” Revelin says. He’s caught in front of his own reflection, his jaw tight with emotion. “They’re not just visions; they’re interactive.”
What the fuck does that mean?
I test his theory by raising my left hand, and the other-me does as well. When I reach up to touch the glass, she grins—a flash of canines, predatory and all wrong. I recoil, remembering an evil Alice in a mirror from a TV show I used to watch. Is this like… mirror-evil-me? She looked so tired and worried a moment ago, but now she’s ready to tear someone’s face off.
Mine, to be exact, and I like my face.
Dezi watches with his arms folded because he doesn’t have to worry about this shit; his damn mirror is fucking blank. “If you engage with them, they grow stronger,” he says, not bothering to conceal his amusement. “It’s a trap of the ego, I believe. The stronger they get, the more likely they will escape their prisons.”
Khol’s having a different experience, and I wonder how much he mugged at his before I looked at the guys. His reflection is stepping out from the glass, its claws lengthening until it’s a nightmare hybrid of man and serpent. He bares his teeth, and the thing does the same, only worse. The face splits at the jaw, unhinging in a snake’s threat display.
Damn, damn, damn, fuck it all… what did he do?
“Don’t look at it directly,” Khol snarls. “It’s trying to—”
But I can’t stop looking at the weirdly transformed snake-thing, and it hisses as its eyes glow. My skin tightens and I gasp as I realize that unlike my mate, this thing might turn me to stone with its gaze.
Khol slams a fist into the glass, and the mirror cracks, but instead of shattering, the fracture travels outward. The basilisk stumbles back as if he’s been shocked, and everyone stares as my feet turn to dark, shiny obsidian.
“We have to do something!” I yell at Dezi, but he shakes his head at me as if I’m missing something important.
Tiernan grabs my non-stony shoulder, getting me to look at his reflection instead. It’s just him, standing there in bodyguard-black with a faint smile and his hands in his pockets. However, his soulful blue eyes are gone—they’re nothing but flat, empty voids.
“The trial wants to wear us down,” Dezi finally says. “Its goal is to split us up at every turn so it can conquer us. To do that, it has to make us want that.”
Revelin figures it out, his eyes bright as he claps for everyone’s attention. “They’re not showing us as we are,” he says, waving a hand at the glass. “They’re showing what we’d be if we let go. If we stopped fighting the darkness that lives inside everyone, even good people. The reflections are truly a mirror-image.”
So it is like that damn show! Okay, okay, I can do this.
His reflection is crowned and resplendent on a stage lit by a thousand golden spotlights with the adoration of the crowd crashing over him like surf. But the face is drained, lines of exhaustion spidering from the eyes, and when the vision’s mouth moves, no sound comes out. He can’t sing and it’s crushing his soul. When the crowd boos, magic lashes out, striking them down one by one as his maniacal grin blooms and the Daybreak crown leaks blood down his face.
“That’s what they want from us,” he says quietly. “For us to pick the path of least resistance, and be whatever the maze says we’re meant to be.”
“That’s not who we are,” I snap, but I’m sweating now.
My crescent moon mark at the center of my palm is burning, the faint blue glow seeping through my skin as if my veins are made of moonlight. I look at my smirking mirror girl with pointed fangs and nails that look ready to take someone’s eyes out in a blink. She might be the fury that lives inside me for so many wrongs, but she isn’t who I am at my core. I am more than the anger about my past—both what I’ve always known and what I know now.
She will not win.
A small pulse from a corner brushes over my skin, and I frown as I look away from PsychoFi. There’s a less flashy mirror there. It’s dark and cloudy unlike the others. When I lean in, the glass ripples like liquid. My heart stutters as in the reflection, I see myself on a throne of bone-white marble, hands bloodless and fingers splayed wide. Behind me, the court is empty like a cathedral of shadows and stars. My companions are gone, and only the moonlight remains, painting me in solitude.
Does this mean I’ll lose them? I’ll lose everyone? Can I accept that?
I reach for the glass, but Tiernan grabs my wrist hard enough to bruise. “Don’t,” he says, not a plea but an order.
He’s scared. I almost taste the cold, animalistic fear that has nothing to do with physical threat. But my hand burns with the compulsion, and the next thing I know, my palm is flush against the glass. There’s a shuddering pop of magic as the mirror shatters into a thousand shards, but instead of falling, the pieces rearrange into a new door—a secret, hidden seam in the wall.
I gasp, staggering back as my vision whites out, and for a moment I can’t hear anything but the electric ringing in my skull. When I blink it away, everyone is staring at me.
“Sassy, are you alright?” Revelin asks as he finally looks away from his shitty mirror prince.
“I—” I can’t finish. I feel like I just bled a pint of energy into that thing, but my feet are no longer stone. My knees buckle, and Tiernan catches me before I face-plant from sudden freedom.
Dezi smiles faintly and gives me a small, proud nod. “A mirror trap takes a toll, especially when it is imbued with blood magic, but the door is open.”
The mark on my palm is now a waning crescent moon, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Did it change before and I didn’t notice? Faerie is making me lose my fucking mind.
