Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
DAIR
A t first, I was aware of darkness.
Only darkness.
And then a lance of fire streaked across my vision, and I found myself staring at…me. My reflection.
What. The. Fuck?
I clumsily spun my chair in a circle, only to see mirrors in every direction, surrounding me. Nerves pinballed around in my stomach, and my hands turned clammy.
Was this the trial?
Where was Z?
Panic for my mate set in, overriding every other emotion, and I searched for a pathway amongst the mirrors. It needed to be large enough for my damn chair to fit through.
“Z! Where are you?” My heart threw itself against my rib cage like a battering ram.
I couldn’t believe what I had said to her. That wasn’t me—at least, I didn’t think it was. But maybe a part of me had been holding on to all of these emotions for much longer than I thought. Maybe a part of me always believed that I was “less of a man” because of my physical disability.
“Z!”
Nothing shattered the veil of silence.
Not Z’s voice. Not the chirping of a cricket. Not the song of a bird. Nothing.
Where the fuck was I?
I tilted my head back to get a better understanding of my surroundings, but all I could see above was inky darkness. There was no end that I could see, only a fathomless void that stretched on and on and on.
Ignoring the queasy pull of fear, I turned my attention to the mirrors.
Each one stood about six feet tall with elaborate filigree edges. They formed a tight circle around me, making movement impossible.
Wait… What the…?
I squinted at the mirror directly in front of me, noticing something I hadn’t seen earlier.
The reflection—my reflection—was standing.
“How does it feel to be useless?” my reflection taunted. “You’ll never be able to stand at Z’s side. Not the way you are now.” His upper lip curled as he sneered down at me. “You’re nothing.”
“Shut up.” Tension knotted the muscles of my shoulders.
“You’re useless to the team even with two working legs,” my reflection continued, a smirk on his lips. “Everybody else offers something to the group, except for you. Do you really want to be known as the ‘nice one’?”
“Shut up.” Anger vibrated inside of me, blanketed by decades of self-control.
I’d dealt with my sadistic father and brothers for years. I could deal with this—with him.
“She’s going to leave you one day,” he continued. “She doesn’t want half a man. Don’t you want to be like me? What if there was a way to get your legs back? What if all you had to do was sacrifice the legs of someone else? It’s only fair, right? Maybe you could make Devlin sit in the chair for a few months?—”
“SHUT UP!” Heat rocketed through my body, scalding razor blades slicing at my skin.
My self-control went up in flames as anger took its place.
With a roar, I threw my fist at the mirror. Glass rained down around me, and pain erupted in my knuckles where numerous shards embedded.
But the mocking reflection was gone.
Where it once was now stretched a smooth pathway, large enough for my chair to roll through.
I wheeled myself forward, keeping my eyes straight ahead, ignoring the plethora of reflections on all sides of me.
“Ah! My son!”
I pulled to a stop when the pathway ended.
This time, the face reflected back at me in the mirror wasn’t my own…but my father’s.
A tide of helplessness threatened to decimate my composure before I remembered that he wasn’t truly here. He was locked away in the dungeons. He wouldn’t be able to hurt me again.
“You aren’t going to greet your father?” The mermaid king cocked his head to the side mockingly.
“You are no father of mine.” I was grateful when my voice didn’t shake, didn’t belie the fear I felt inside.
The last thing I wanted to do was show my father he still terrified me—even if he was nothing but a figment of my imagination.
My father’s eyes narrowed, and I could practically feel his anger growing. “I am your family. Your only family. You will show me respect.”
“I have a family.”
Father scoffed. “Those idiotic princes and that stupid girl? Do you really think that they love you? That they care about you?” He extended a hand, and I swore the limb seemed to protrude from the mirror, hovering in front of me. “Come with me. We can rule our kingdom the way it was always meant to be ruled. You’re better than the others. We both know it.”
Even before he had finished speaking, I was shaking my head. “No.”
“No?” He arched an arrogant eyebrow. “Do you think it’s fair that we’re cursed to be half fish twelve hours every day? Mages get magic. Incubi get sex. And what do we get? Scales.” He huffed out a bitter laugh. “Maybe it’s time we took what we deserve.”
“And what do we deserve, Father?” I demanded. “Because the way I see it, we deserve nothing. You deserve nothing. You’re a spineless coward who sought to make yourself feel strong by torturing those weaker than you. And guess what? At the end of the day, it was all for nothing. You lost. I won. You don’t have an heir, a title, or a throne. I took it all from you.” A cold smile pulled up my lips. “You’re nothing.”
An almost incandescent anger emanated from his eyes. “You listen here, you little shit?—”
But I was done listening. I’d been done listening. My father wasn’t a threat to me or the ones I loved anymore. No one in my family was. My father was imprisoned, and Tavvy was dead. My two younger brothers had taken off as soon as shit hit the fan, but I knew they wouldn’t return. They were lackeys who followed my father’s and older brother’s orders, not masterminds.
It was over.
After years and years of abuse and torture, it was finally over.
I felt free in a way I never had before. The iron shackles around my wrists had been removed. I could finally breathe.
With a scream, I threw my fist at the mirror, but this time, I barely felt the pain as glass nicked my skin.
Another pathway opened to me, and I wasted no time pushing myself through it. I followed the twists and turns of the mirrors until I came to the largest one at the very end.
Seven faces stared back at me.
Ryland sneered. “We are always forced to pick up your slack.”
“We can’t trust you to protect our mate,” Devlin added, his tone dripping in condescension.
“How can you be a king and protect an entire kingdom when you can’t even protect yourself?” Z asked.
“Stop.” I threw my hand up in the air, interrupting whatever they were going to say next. My heart pounded so quickly, it wouldn’t surprise me if it shook every mirror in the vicinity. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me I’m weak and useless and less of a man because I’m in a wheelchair.”
I swallowed. “But you’re wrong. My father wanted me to believe I was nothing, that I could never be happy the way I was. He even made me believe it for some time too. I don’t need to walk in order to be strong. I can protect my mate and family some other way. I may not know exactly how to yet, but I won’t give up. I’m better than that.” I sucked in another breath, the cold air like needles in my lungs. “I’m not nothing. I’m everything.”
I threw my fist at the mirror with a scream that went on and on and on, wrenched from my chest. It seemed as if the glass wasn’t the only thing that shattered, but the floor too, disappearing out from underneath me and drawing me into its glacial depths. Familiar claws of panic raked up and down my spine as I fell, fell, fell, fell.
And landed in my chair, directly in front of a wide-eyed Z.