12. Verena #2
"No, it doesn't mean—you know what? Forget I said anything. The important thing is, we have a deal. You'll teach me to read, and I'll help you figure out a way to leave the mirror for good. I'd shake your hand to seal the deal, but…"
Instead, I place my hand on the glass.
Again, Eris mirrors me with his bigger one so our fingers somewhat align.
He's staring hard at our hands, but that's when I spot a wooden chest in the corner of the lair near the door. It's somewhat ajar, overflowing with red-stained dresses much like the one I'm wearing right now.
I groan. "Gross. What the fuck is that about? Laundry?"
"Hmm?" After a second, Eris follows where I'm looking. "Oh. No, Reinhilde never bothered with laundry. But she was quite messy while feeding on the Favored, so she had simple, cheap dresses delivered weekly and either burned her used dresses or kept them here to use in spells."
That explains a lot about the queen's shitty wardrobe.
Removing my hand from the mirror, I take in the full scope of the lair once more before a thought strikes me.
"What's in the last room? Through the green door?"
"I have no idea," he shrugs one shoulder. "If there is any reflective surface I could occupy in there, it is not lit by magic sconces, like these other rooms. I'm not sure Reinhilde ever went in there."
I know curiosity kills cats and all, but I feel a lot less anxious about this creepy passage now, knowing what's in these two rooms. I don't want my brain to populate the third one with all my worst nightmares at night.
So I grab the handheld mirror and one of the candles, take a deep breath of crisp goodness, and leave Rhinestone's lair, turning left.
I have to tuck the mirror holding Eris under my elbow to twist the handle of the third door. It's dusty to the touch and creaks softly as I push it open.
My heart pounds as I peer into the utter darkness. Holding out the mirror like I can somehow use Eris as a shield if some monster jumps out at me, I venture inside.
It's smaller than the last two secret rooms. There's nothing in here except for row after row of shelves holding thick leather tomes.
There's also something hanging on the wall opposite all the shelves, draped in a thick dark velvet. Knowing the queen's vanity, I assume it's another mirror and turn back to the books.
Setting the candle on a shelf, I pick up one heavy-ass book. I blow dust off the cover and squint at the four squiggles on the front.
When I hold Eris up for a better view, he reads it.
"Telling Eighty-Four."
I brush thick dust off the next book for him to see.
"Diary Forty-Seven."
Diary?
I groan as I look over all the other dusty, thick, ancient-looking books.
"Fuck. These must be all the queen's diaries, and they're not even organized chronologically. How long is it going to take me to learn to read and scour all of these for possible answers?"
Eris waves off my concern. "There's nothing to scour. Some look decades old, so I doubt there's any ink remaining in them."
I crack open the one in my hands. Seeing that it's full of scrawling text I can't read, I hold it up to him, arching a brow.
"I get that they're kind of old-looking, but ink doesn't fade that fast."
He looks shocked. "Open another."
I do, blowing off this one too. Then the next, and the next.
By the time I feel like I'm covered in dust, Eris is floored. He looks at the other shelves like they hold bars of pure gold.
"This…this should not be possible. Either Reinhilde enchanted this room with spells that defy the very fabric of this world, or something else is afoot."
"What do you mean?" I ask. "Aren't there a bunch of old, dusty books sitting around in old libraries and stuff?"
He shakes his head. "Eidengrau is a land without written memory.
Everyone knows this. Even the most heavily enchanted catacombs of Turnstadt's oldest libraries are filled with nothing but blank, old tomes.
Whether ink or carving, writing can only last a decade or two at most before it vanishes away. "
Huh. This fairytale world gets weirder by the day.
Eris scowls at the rows of books. "In all the years I've been forced to stay at Reinhilde's side, I never saw her write in a diary. How can she possibly have this many?"
Maybe the queen was a vampire after all—one who's been around way longer than Eris knows. She could have recorded all of these journals long before trapping him.
Deciding Eris will have a better view of the work we have cut out for us if he can see it from a bigger mirror, I turn back to the draped thing on the wall and pull off the velvet.
Except when the flickering candlelight spills onto this large mirror, I go still.
It's old and so terribly broken that only one big, glistening shard hangs near the top, giving me a glimpse of half of my face and the spot above my lip. Where there is no mirror, there's nothing but blackness—almost like shadows themselves hang on the wall.
It sits in a simple, rustic wooden frame carved with more mysterious squiggles.
For some reason, I can't take my eyes off the one shard in the mirror.
Until Eris's voice pulls me out of it. "Fascinating. I can't go into that mirror. I don't see it at all in the mirror realm. Mind holding me up to better read the inscription?"
I do. Instead of reading aloud, my Adonis is silent for a long moment, absorbed.
"Ground Control to Major Eris. What does it say?" I ask, still not looking away from the single fragment of glass.
I can't put my finger on why it's pulling me in, but from the very slight tingle rinsing through my veins, I'm going to take a wild guess and say this mirror is magical.
"It's a rather long poem claiming that this is one of Eldrunia's mirrors," he murmurs.
"In short, it says there are three, each formed from the Matron goddess's tears that fell to the earth as she bore each of the three triplet Crones.
One mirror grants wishes, one shows memories, and one—this one—reveals the soul of whoever looks into it. "
I raise my brows at the single shard remaining. "Damn. Rhinestone's soul was a hot mess."
Eris's voice is quiet, like he doesn't want to say this out loud, but it needs to be said. "She's not the soul looking into it. You are, Verena. And your soul appears…"
Shattered. Incomplete. Tarnished.
Apprehension settles inside me the longer I stare at it. Even though I want to deny that my soul could possibly be this broken, I can feel the magic compelling me to face the truth.
Does my soul look like this because of the hell I went through years ago? The slow-burn terror and cloying panic that made me fall apart at the seams, that awful moment when I realized I wasn't imagining anything—those nights praying for someone, anyone, to save me…
Did my soul shatter when I finally saved myself by killing that monster, or has it looked like this for a lot longer?
I don't realize moisture has started to drip off my cheeks until Eris whispers.
"Verena. Tell me what happened to you."
Sniffing quickly, I grab the velvet from the ground and throw it back over the broken mirror. Then I retrieve the candle from the shelf and practically flee the room.
Once I'm back in Rhinestone's lair, I set down the hand mirror and take a shuddering breath.
"It must look like that because I'm in the wrong world," I decide out loud. "I don't know how my soul got here, but it makes sense that winding up in the wrong dimension would fuck someone up."
Eris studies me, the linger of his prismatic gaze telling me he's not convinced.
"If that's the case, trying to return to your world might do more damage. Perhaps you should just stay here instead."
Remembering how the evil queen dies in Snow White's fairy tale makes me grimace.
"I'm pretty damn sure I'll stand a better chance of surviving if I go home. But since that might take a while and I need people in my corner ASAP…"
Ignoring the apprehension left behind from looking into that mirror, I smile at Eris and pick up the plain shoemaker vial again. The red liquid inside gleams in the pale light of the lair.
"I think I should go find Merrick right away. And with this, maybe I don't need to wait on Wulf's return to do it safely."