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

51. Eva

Chapter 51

Eva

I t felt like I was trapped between worlds. Like when I passed through the fake castle wall back in Morehaven; the shifting stones pressing in against me and yet not. The same blue glow from that horrible night flashed all around me in sporadic bursts like the fading brilliance of dying stars, its presence oddly comforting.

My breath crystallized in front of my face, the frozen fractals gleaming strangely in the thick, fractured darkness. It wasn’t air, exactly. It was something untenable, pulsing with power. Something that felt foreign and familiar all at once. It silently burrowed under my skin, sweeping through me like an invisible wave as if it were parsing out all my secrets. A blinding force pushed against my magic, overwhelming me as I prayed to pass through.

It was everywhere, until it wasn’t. And as it retreated, two figures appeared in the endless darkness, softly glowing with a blue aura I barely noticed.

Because the sight of my parents’ faces struck me like a dagger to the heart. Greedily, I took in all the small details I had nearly forgotten. The way my mother’s eyes crinkled before she gave in to a smile, the perennial lavender scent of her wafting toward me as her simple black dress swayed in a non-existent breeze. The devilish glint in my father’s golden-brown gaze, the one-sided dimple forming that matched mine. Or would, if my mouth wasn’t hanging open in unadulterated shock.

They didn’t look like they had the last time I saw them on the day they died. They looked like the painting in Solara—young and almost painfully vibrant.

I couldn’t seem to make a sound. Tears slid down my cheeks as I stared at them, trembling from the violence of a grief that had never fully abated.

“You’ve been so brave, Evangeline ,” my mother whispered, pride filling her tone. Her lips curved in that soft, devastatingly familiar smile. “ But you won’t need to be much longer.”

“So brave, sweetheart,” my father said, and I wiped away more tears at the moniker I hadn’t heard from his lips in far too long. He reached out as if to stroke my face but seemed to think better of it, his hand dropping to his side.

My voice was hoarse as I asked, “ Is this…magic? Or is this real?”

I found myself almost afraid of how badly I wanted it to be the latter.

My father’s eyes crinkled, and I let his laugh wash over me. “ Why would one exclude the other?”

I stared at him, trying to preserve every part of his smile, his laugh, that feeling of him , into my memory.

“Evangeline.”

My head snapped to my mother, my voice breaking as I managed to whisper, “ Hi Mom.”

“It’s time now,” she said, the crowns in her eyes glinting . “To right a century of wrongs. To claim your birthright. And to stop that bastard once and for all.”

I knew I needed to go, but I didn’t want to leave them, not yet. But I nodded, furiously blinking my tears away as I desperately tried to drink them in one last time—unwilling to let their blur impede upon my attempt to commit every last piece of them to memory. Wanting to stay suspended in this wrinkle in time for just one more minute, one last heartbeat before they were gone again forever.

“We’ll be with you,” my father promised, sensing my devastation. “ Even if you can’t see us. We’ll be there, right beside you, until the end.”

“Remember,” my mother said, reaching out as if to brush my tears away. Her hand stopped abruptly, coming to hover a hair’s breadth above my left hand. Her index finger dipped downward to where the shadowy ring that had once been hers shimmered strangely. “ The only way out is through.”

“I love you,” I said, looking into eyes that were the mirror of my own as I said the words that had once been too late.

And it felt real.