The Mirror in the Mountain (The Mirrored Trilogy #2)

41. Eva

Chapter 41

Eva

T he weight of memory was so heavy it felt suffocating. The fire crackled around me, threading up the walls in the corners of the room, the smoke stifling. Yet I couldn’t feel its heat, even as I heard its roaring in my ears.

I stood mere feet from the rose-covered mirror, feeling like I was already falling. Yet my mother wasn’t where she should have been, nor was my brother.

The hooded figure stalked forward, but there wasn’t anyone to stop him this time.

That blinding, stolen light flashed toward me, far too familiar now. My gaze locked with Aviel’s across the haze of the heat, his pale eyes flashing with the light of his stolen magic. My skin prickled, a shiver running down my spine as his lips curved in that terrifying, soulless smile.

“What’s the purpose of this?” I gritted out the question between clenched teeth, willing them not to chatter. “I already know you’re the one responsible for my nightmares.”

I struggled against the cage of his hold on my mind, trying to calm my racing heart. But even if it wasn’t real…it was, at least to some degree. And I was trapped in the illusion as surely as any nightmare.

“Because you could stop this.” Aviel smirked. “Not their deaths, of course.” He waved an irreverent hand at the burning room. “But you could stop the deaths of everyone else you love before you lose them too. So I thought I would give you one last chance to give up. To give in to me at last.”

My mother wasn’t here, but suddenly, I could still hear her screams ringing through the room. The pain he had put her through before he killed her.

“Fuck. You.”

“Soon, darling.”

My darkness shot out like a spear, aiming for his heart—but Aviel blocked it with a blinding shield of light. Before I could stop him, he was in front of me, one hand wrapped around my throat, burning into my skin as bands of light secured my wrists. He yanked me forward, then his lips violently crashed into mine, swallowing my cry of rage and pain.

“EVA!”

Bash. The panic in his voice made me want to scream his name, but I could barely think, barely tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t in this dream that felt far too much like reality.

Something cold pressed into my hand. My dagger. The reassuring weight of it ripped me from the past before it could keep me here, its pommel humming beneath my palm.

With all my remaining strength, I threw myself backwards, breaking out of Aviel’s hold. His eyes were black as they met mine, a cruel smile curling his lips that made something inside me tremble.

The flames twisted around me as I stumbled away from him—just as before—and fell through the mirror.

Bash was repeating my name like a litany. He sucked in a breath as my eyes opened, his own dark with shadow.

“Eva. Eva. Are you okay?”

“I’m…” I trailed off, unable to voice the lie that I was anything close to fine. Fear-laced adrenaline hit me like a shockwave, lighting up every single one of my nerve endings with the need to fight something that was no longer there. My hand clenched around my dagger, its pommel still in my grip, Bash’s large hand covering mine.

He followed the direction of my gaze. “I thought it might ground you.”

“It did,” I managed to say, my breathing still short and shallow. I sucked in a sharp breath, holding it even as I rushed through my four-count, blowing it out too quickly before trying again.

“Are you hurt?” His shadows ran down my arms, flitting down my body as if checking me for injuries.

“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely, my throat dry from the imagined smoke that somehow, wasn’t.

His eyes were blazing. “Nothing about what just happened was okay.”

I saw the moment he took in the handprint blistering the skin of my neck, just as his shadows raised the sleeves of my nightdress, exposing the burns on my wrists. His expression turned murderous.

“I’m okay,” I repeated softly. “Please don’t wake anyone up to heal me. Not when everyone needs their strength today.”

Bash looked ready to argue, then let out a shaky breath, obviously trying to settle the turbulent mix of fear and hate careening down our bond—his rage reflecting in those beautiful shadow-filled eyes. Then I was enveloped by the safety of his arms, his shadows as they wound tenderly around me.

The pressure in my throat tightened unbearably.

“What did he want?” Bash asked, quiet fury lining each word.

“My surrender.” The attempt at nonchalance was lost to the quaver in my voice.

His jaw flexed. “Unconditionally, I’m sure.”

I let out an empty-sounding laugh. “He must know we’re close, somehow. Either through the bloodbond, or…” I didn’t want to even think about the possibility of spies within our ranks, though I knew it was na?ve not to.

“He probably wanted to be sure you hadn’t already beat him there,” Bash said tightly.

I winced, knowing the rancor in his tone wasn’t meant for me but despising it all the same. Silently, I berated myself for letting Aviel get so close, for not having the wherewithal to push him out of my mind sooner. A shudder ran through me at yet another violation. Bash pulled me closer, as if his arms alone could shield me from further threats.

When he spoke again, his voice was a broken whisper. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I hate the thought of you near him without me.”

From the guilt across our bond, I knew he didn’t just mean now.

“You never left me, Bash,” I whispered, burrowing my face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in. Letting his scent wrap around me as surely as his arms—of petrichor and safety. “Not even then.”

“Eva…”

“I know,” I whispered.

And I did. Because everything he felt, I felt too—no more walls left between us now. His fear, not for himself, but for me, born from that unrelenting love that lined the bond between us.

“If he knows where you are, then we need to get moving right away.”

I heard what he had left unsaid. The fear that despite our best efforts, we would be too late.

Bash’s lips pressed into my hair as I listened to his heartbeat beneath my ear, even our breaths synchronized. Holding each other for one more moment before we went to face our fates.