Chapter 13 #3
Emotion crashes through me. Love, longing, loss, each one sharp as a dagger to the ribs.
I reach out, my fingers trembling as they press to the mirror’s surface. It is cold and hard, but still, I touch her. I trace the curve of her cheek, caress the lips I have kissed a thousand times.
She closes her eyes.
I freeze, my breath catching.
Can she feel me?
For a moment, a single, aching moment, I allow myself to believe. To hope. To bask in the solace of this stolen closeness.
Then a hand.
Not mine.
It rests gently atop her belly.
My blood turns to ice.
The figure behind her shifts into view.
A shock of pale blond hair. Piercing blue eyes behind a bronze mask.
The Golden Son.
He leans in, his lips hovering near my wife’s ear.
No.
He presses a slow, reverent kiss to her temple.
No.
I roar.
The sound rips from my chest, a violent, shattering thing, shaking the very walls of the chamber. The mirror fractures, the image vanishing in an explosion of light and darkness.
I stagger back, my breath ragged, my fists clenched so tightly my nails cut into my palms.
I do not dare look back.
Even the memory of what I saw is agony, raw and festering, a wound torn open too wide to close. The rage coiling inside me is enough to burn this house to the ground, to reduce every stone and artifact to nothing but cinders if it means destroying that fucking mirror forever.
But I am no better than the male before me. I am not immune.
The pull of the mirror is insidious, a force that sinks its hooks deep. Even as fury surges through me, I feel it dragging at my gaze, whispering, calling.
And before I can stop myself, I am standing before it once more.
My hands brace against its cold, molded edges, my breath uneven, my body taut as if awaiting a blow.
But it does not show me Amara or the Golden Son.
Instead, the mirror delivers me elsewhere.
To the cold, darkened halls of Baev’kalath.
Lightning tears open the blackened sky. Thunder roars, rolling like war drums, a relentless beat that matches the crashing of waves against jagged stone.
It is so real. So vivid, I can almost feel the icy rain pelting my skin, seeping into my bones.
Then I find myself in a room, a pulsing blue circle etched into the stone beneath my feet, glowing with a slow, rhythmic throb, as if the very rock is alive.
Voices chant, low and rasping.
Then a scream.
A sound so raw, so desperate, it carves through the solemn thrum like a blade through flesh.
“Calm yourself, Queen Veloria,” a voice soothes. “Breathe.”
A long, shuddering sob. Another scream, more ragged, more broken.
I lift my gaze, and my breath leaves me in a sharp, brutal exhale.
There she is.
My mother.
Lying upon a stone altar, her body wracked with pain, the same gown I remember from her portrait now soaked in blood.
Cloaked figures surround her. They do not move to help her.
They only watch.
I step forward with urgency, only to slam into an invisible wall. The force of it knocks me back, a blinding snap of magic striking my forehead. I stagger, cursing, my vision swimming. My fingers press against my skin where the unseen barrier struck me.
But the discomfort vanishes when my mother screams again and a blade arcs through the air.
I slam my fists against the barrier as it comes down upon her.
I have seen war. I have seen the ruin left in its wake, human and Fae alike, bleeding out upon the battlefield, their bodies torn, their souls unmade.
But this… this I cannot watch.
I do not want this memory.
I wrench my gaze away, my breath ragged, my throat tight with something dangerously close to a sob. The chanting stops, and so does the screaming. For a long, terrible moment, there is only silence.
Then, a sound cuts through it.
Not my mother’s voice.
Not a cry of pain.
But the sharp, trembling wail of a newborn.
My heart slams against my ribs. My hands tremble as I force myself to look.
My mother’s arms dangle limply over the edge of the altar, fingers pale, lifeless. Her chest does not rise. Does not fall. And in the arms of the cloaked figures, not one child, but two.
I do not have time to comprehend it.
Because above them, a darkness swirls. Slow at first, then faster, hungrier.
The void.
The figures retreat, their reverence turning to fear, and within the churning abyss, a pair of burning white eyes lock onto mine.
It is no longer a vision. It is real. As real as the rain. As real as the pain.
No.
What have I done?
He sees me.
And if he sees me… he can find me.
A whisper slithers through the void, low and ancient, curling through my bones, wrapping tight around my lungs like chains. Daedalus.
My name, spoken from lips that do not exist.
A cold touch skims my cheek.
I shudder, every muscle in my body locking up as if unseen hands are winding around my throat, my wrists, dragging me closer.
I thrash against it, against the pull of the mirror, against the force sinking its claws into my mind, trying to root me in place.
It takes every ounce of my will, every scrap of strength I possess, to wrench myself free.
The world lurches, and suddenly the vision shatters.
I stagger back, gasping, my chest heaving. The weight of the magic clings to me, whispering my name in the hollows of my mind. My vision swims, my knees nearly buckling, but I force myself to focus, on the room, on the mirror, on the crack now spiderwebbing across its surface.
The magic hums, furious at my escape.
I do not wait to see what happens next.
I turn, storming from the parlor before the mirror can show me anything else.