The Mirror of Blood and Madness (Dark Ever After Fairytales #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Alice

I knew I was dreaming. I knew, and it didn’t matter.

The forest wanted me anyway.

Mist coiled up from the black earth, cold and alive against my skin, slipping beneath my T-shirt and jeans like searching hands.

Trees I’d never seen clawed toward a sky with no stars, their bark weeping something dark and wet.

Flowers glowed along the path—pale, pulsing, beautiful the way a predator is beautiful—and their scent hit me like a drug. Sweet. Ancient. Wrong.

Footsteps.

Not mine.

I ran. Barefoot, bleeding, branches tearing at me like they wanted to keep me there. My breath came ragged and raw, but I couldn’t stop. Something waited in the mist ahead—something that had been waiting for me my whole life, something that made my blood sing and my bones ache with recognition.

I had to reach it first.

Before they did.

Before whatever hunted me.

The fog thickened around my ankles like cold hands. I stumbled and the mist surged higher, wrapping my calves, my thighs, pressing against me with a weight that had no right to exist. Not air. Not water. Something other.

I tried to scream, but the darkness swallowed sound the way it swallowed light.

Fingers—or claws, or something worse—closed around my ankle and pulled.

The forest floor vanished beneath me. I clawed at earth and roots and anything solid, but the fog filled my mouth, my lungs, and the last thing I saw before the dark took me was the shape in the mist finally turning to look at me with eyes I’d seen in every nightmare I’d ever had.

Come, it seemed to whisper. Rest. Stop running. Let go.

I wrenched my leg free and something in the fog hissed—an almost-sound, more vibration than voice. It didn’t want me to reach whatever called to me ahead. It wanted to pull me down, swallow me whole, bury me in its white nothing until I forgot I’d ever had a name.

The voice came then, curling through the mist like smoke, like sin. Male. Velvet and ruin. It wrapped around my chest and squeezed.

“Find me.”

I woke with his voice still inside me.

Sunlight threatened on the horizon. I hadn’t slept more than a few hours, but there was no point trying again. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that forest. Back in the mist. Back running toward something I couldn’t name.

I pulled my knees to my chest and stared at the lightening sky.

Tinker Bell thought I was letting my imagination run wild—just like my magic. She’d said as much last time I’d tried to explain the dreams. The look on her face, patient and pitying, like I was a child telling her about monsters under the bed.

Easy for her to dismiss. She wasn’t the one who’d set Margot’s dress on fire last week. Margot had wanted red—fiery red, she’d said—and I’d given her fire, all right. The whole coven had seen it. The whispers afterward. The way Tinker Bell’s eyes had lingered on me, weighing, calculating.

She was running out of patience. I could feel it.

My stomach twisted.

I’d be alone. No coven. No protection. No family.

The only thing I had from my real family was the single strand bracelet around my wrist—it had never come off, and it had never done anything magical.

Tinker Bell was the only mother I’d ever known. The coven was the only home I had. Without them, I’d be a witch with no anchor, no allies—just unstable magic that painted a target on my back.

Angelo Santi didn’t tolerate loose cannons. None of the mafia families did. A witch who couldn’t control her power wasn’t just an embarrassment.

She was a liability.

And liabilities disappeared.

The voice had felt real. More real than this bed, this room, this life I was barely holding together.

Find me.

Whoever he was, whatever he was, I was running out of time to figure it out.

No use going back to sleep.

I crawled out of bed and padded to the kitchen, the floorboards cold beneath my bare feet. The house was quiet. Tinker Bell wasn’t up yet, or she was ignoring me. Hard to tell which lately.

I poured water into the coffee pot with clumsy hands, spilling half of it on the counter. My eyes burned. My head ached.

Find me.

The voice clung to me like perfume I couldn’t wash off.

Soft footsteps came down the hallway, and Tinker Bell came into the kitchen. Her blonde hair was sleep-mussed, her feet bare beneath a faded nightshirt. She smiled. “Coffee. Good.” She studied me with those blue eyes. “You had that dream again, didn’t you?”

I took cream out of the refrigerator as the coffee brewed. “How did you know?”

She shrugged as she sat at the counter. “Your room is next to mine. I hear you call out.”

A pit formed in my gut. I grabbed two cups from the cupboard. “What do I say?”

“Find me. Same as always.”

I poured the coffee, not trusting myself to speak. The dream. Margot’s dress. The way my magic kept slipping out of my hands like water. It was all connected—I felt it. I just didn’t know how.

“Am I losing my mind?”

Tinker Bell took a sip, watching me over the rim. “No,” she said slowly. “I’ve been thinking about it. Your birthday is coming up. You’ll be twenty-one soon.”

I froze, cup halfway to my mouth. “You think that has something to do with it?”

“Possibly. Sometimes a witch’s powers come into fruition at certain milestones, and twenty-one is definitely a milestone.”

“You mean I could go nuclear?” My heart sank down to my toes. Go nuclear. Lose control completely. Hurt someone—or everyone. I’d never make it to twenty-two. Please say no, please say no. Angelo didn’t give second chances to dangerous witches. “But my birthday is in a couple of days.”

“You could. I’ve been thinking—” She paused, and there it was. That careful softness in her expression, the one people got right before they told you something you didn’t want to hear. Her fingers traced the rim of her coffee cup like she was searching for the right words.

Or the courage.

My shoulders sagged, and I fought back tears. “You’re going to kick me out of the coven.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did I say that? You’re like a sister to me, Alice, especially after I lost Marigold.” Tears glistened in her eyes.

My heart clenched. Marigold. Even now the name was a bruise neither of us could stop pressing. I reached over and clasped her shaking hand. “I miss her too.”

“I’m not kicking you out,” Tinker Bell said quietly. “I’ve been thinking about something else entirely.”

I stilled, afraid of what she was going to say. Lock me away somewhere? The supernatural community had to have ways of dealing with people who knew too much. Warded rooms. Spelled closets. Places you walked into and never walked out of.

No one had been thrown into the coven’s storm-safe room in years, but the whispers said I should be.

I’d seen that steel box—no windows, just cold metal etched with wards strong enough to smother every spark I had left.

My unstable magic would ricochet off the walls, building and building until it wrapped around my throat.

I wouldn’t break the room. The room would break me.

Tinker Bell poured more cream into her coffee. “I’m not going to lose you like I did Marigold.”

I exhaled and tried to still my quickening heart.

“But I can’t have your magic running amuck in the coven or outside these walls. We can’t afford attention from the families. Vampires, wolves, Dark Fae—they don’t tolerate witches who can’t control their power.”

I shuddered. Witches like me didn’t get help. We got contained… or erased.

“So, then what do we do?”

“You’re a Ravencrest, but I think there’s Nightshade blood in you. Or maybe something else entirely.”

My stomach clenched. Nightshade. The name carried weight—power, danger, enemies. Just what I needed. Another target painted on my back.

I’d never fit into the Moon Coven. I wasn’t just a Ravencrest with broken magic. I was something else. Something more.

Something dangerous.

She took my wrist, turning it over. Her thumb traced the tattoo—a raven holding a rose. I’d had it as long as I could remember. No memory of getting it. No explanation.

Beneath it, faint as a ghost of ink, something else lingered: lines that never quite formed, like a design waiting for permission.

“I think the answer is in the Nightshade crypt,” she said.

“But I’m not a Nightshade. I’m a Ravencrest.”

Tinker Bell placed my hand in hers and squeezed lightly. “Alice, you need to believe in the impossible. That’s where the magic lives.”

“You always see the possibilities.”

“That’s what you need to do. Think of it as believing in six impossible things before breakfast,” she said softly.

“See the thread before it breaks. That’s the key to your magic.

The Nightshades were meticulous historians.

Their tomes go back centuries. If anyone recorded what’s happening to you, it would be them. ”

“You think they’ll let us into the crypt?” I was a walking risk. Why would they trust me anywhere near their sacred vault?

“I have already texted Rose Dragan. She’s going to meet us over there at ten this morning.”

My cheeks burned. Rose had witnessed the worst of it.

How my magic flared on its own and caught Margot’s dress on fire at Bourbon Street Burgers.

I hadn’t even meant to cast. It just… lashed out.

Tinker Bell had smothered the flames before the vampires noticed, but a few seconds more and the whole place could’ve gone up. Including Margot.

As if reading my thoughts, Tinker Bell said, “Are you still thinking about what happened with Margot?”

“Yes. It’s just one more thing going wrong with my magic. If Angelo Santi were to find out, we’d have been in real trouble.”

“Well, he won’t. What the vampire king doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” She took another sip of coffee. “And don’t worry; Rose won’t tell him. Even though her brother-in-law works for Santi.”

I hoped she was right, but Angelo Santi wasn’t easily fooled.

When Tinker Bell and I met Rose at the Nightshade Crypt, sunlight softened the cemetery, making it almost beautiful—weathered angels, ivy creeping over old stone.

But St. Christopher Church loomed at the edge of it all, and no amount of sunshine could make that place feel safe.

Shattered windows. Claw marks gouged deep into the walls.

Scorch marks where magic had hit stone and won.

The supernatural wars ended months ago. The church still remembered.

“Hi,” I whispered, the word barely making it past my lips. I kept my gaze locked on my tennis shoes, blinking hard so I wouldn’t have to look at Rose. If I met her eyes—if I saw even a flicker of the resentment I’d endured from the Moon Coven—I wasn’t sure I could hold myself together.

Rose clasped my arm. “Don’t worry about your magic. It took me years to get mine under control. I didn’t even know I was a witch until I went to Red Rose Academy.” She winked. “Born vampire, surprise witch. Trust me, you’re not alone.”

I flashed her a grateful smile. At least someone didn’t look at me like a disaster waiting to happen.

But Rose had finally been accepted. She’d found her place.

I wasn’t sure the same fate was in the cards for me. Not in New Orleans. Maybe not anywhere.

But where else would I go? This was the only home I’d ever known.

And now I was about to step inside a crypt that could either prove I wasn’t a danger… or expose exactly how broken my magic really was. My stomach twisted. What if I made everything worse? What if the crypt reacted to me the way everyone feared I would react to it—unpredictably, disastrously?

Rose pressed her hand to the stone wall of the crypt. For a moment, nothing. Then strange sigils flared to life beneath her palm, glowing faint and golden. Stone ground against stone as a door formed where there hadn’t been one.

It clicked. Swung open.

No bodies.

No bones.

Instead, the crypt opened into a chamber filled with books, ancient cauldrons, bottles of potions glimmering in the low light, and artifacts I couldn’t begin to name.

I exhaled. The answers were in there. They had to be.

I wandered deeper into the chamber, trailing my fingers over cracked spines and dusty artifacts—glass jars filled with dried roots, bundles of herbs tied with twine, potions that shimmered faintly in their bottles.

I’d never been inside the crypt before, and the air hummed with old magic, the kind that felt like it was watching me back.

For the first time in days, something inside me flickered—hope, small but real.

Maybe Tinker Bell was right. Maybe the answer I needed was sitting on one of these shelves… if I could figure out which one.

“What are we looking for?” Rose looked around the crypt.

“I don’t know,” Tinker Bell said quietly. “But I believe the answer is inside here.”

A pulse of energy swept through the chamber, brushing over my skin like a cold breath.

When I looked up, a mirror towered against the far wall—huge, dark, carved with strange runes.

It definitely hadn’t been there before. The glass quivered, catching motion where none existed.

For a split second, I swore I saw Rose and Tinker Bell move inside the reflection…

even though they were standing perfectly still beside me.

A chill crawled up my spine. The mirror wanted attention. My attention.

“Find me.”

The voice. His voice.

I looked back at Tinker Bell and Rose. Tinker Bell had pulled out a book; Rose was reading over her shoulder. Neither of them had heard it.

My pulse stumbled. So it really had been just me. The mirror wasn’t calling us. It was calling me. And that terrified me more than the voice itself.

I stepped closer. My fingers stretched toward the glass without my permission, trembling, aching to touch.

“Alice, don’t—”

My fingertips brushed the surface.

I plunged into darkness—cold, endless, screaming wind tearing at my hair, my clothes, my skin. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop falling.

And somewhere far below, his voice rose up to meet me.

“Found you.”