Chapter Thirty-eight #2
‘I’m going!’ Anya hissed.
Thea watched her sister go, watched as she skirted Audra’s hawk eyes and ducked past Farissa, who was distracted with one of the infants.
It was only when Thea heard the screams from above that she realised what she’d done.
Thea staggered back from the mirror with a gasp. ‘It’s not true,’ she wheezed, pressing her hand to her chest, where the weight was nearly unbearable. ‘I didn’t… I couldn’t have…’
Illusion or reality? That was the game at play here. Illusion, illusion , Thea told herself.
But her reflection answered her horror with a cruel twist of her lips.
With a cry, Thea staggered down another winding path of mirrors, boneless beneath the weight of the events she’d set in motion for her older sister. The scars she bore, the eye she’d lost, the shadows that had nearly devoured her. It was all Thea’s fault.
The Daughter of Darkness had been her creation after all.
Letting out a scream of anguish, Thea lurched into a sprint, ignoring the movement of her mirror selves, slamming mental walls down around her against the shouts of her own voice echoing through the maze.
It was Anya’s words from the Singing Hare that she clung to, words she knew without a shadow of a doubt her sister had truly spoken.
‘The tides of fate are as they always intended…’
Anya had been at her side, with Dratos, Marise and Everard… and Wilder.
Wilder… His name crashed through her like a wave over fire, and in the distance, she heard glass shattering.
‘We don’t say those words again until we’re on the other side. Until we can say them Warsword to Warsword.’
She realised that amid everything they’d been through together, and of all the times before where they had uttered those unutterable words to one another, she had never been the one to say it first. It had always been him.
He had always taken the leap for them. He had always risked his heart first. For her.
If I ever get out of here, I’ll say it first, she vowed . I’ll be the one to take the leap for him.
More glass shattered, sounding closer this time.
Not knowing why, she ran towards it, only to find that the mirrors behind her had started to crack as frost crept across their faces.
Suddenly there was a surge, and the ear-piercing sound of a thousand mirrors shattering into a million pieces.
It grew louder and louder, closer and closer.
All the while, Thea raced through the maze, twisting and turning at every bend, her reflections either chasing her or fleeing the flood of glass.
She didn’t know which, nor did she care; she just had to get to the centre, had to —
Her heart seized and she skidded to a stop, her boots sliding across the damp ground, her arms flailing to keep her balance.
The space opened up.
Before her stood a colossal mirror. The largest she had ever seen.
She was shown a hundred different versions of herself, distorted and ugly, broken and hollow, raging and vengeful. Thea drew a ragged breath as she saw each angle of herself with clarity, saw the kernel of truth in each of them, along with the falsehoods.
At long last, she locked eyes with herself.
There, she saw every horrible thing she’d ever suspected about herself. Saw the darkest, most rotten parts of the girl she’d been, and the woman she’d become.
Althea Zoltaire faced her shadow side.
‘I…’ she croaked. ‘A Warsword must accept themselves… especially the darkest parts…’ She gulped for air. ‘I accept me. All of me.’
Thea met her own gaze, recognising that every broken part could be reforged into something stronger, something that did not yield in the face of adversity.
Beyond the flawless shine of the glass, beneath the layers of poison she’d been doused in, Thea watched as her reflection at long last cast something back towards her that she understood.
It was her determination.
She watched in awe as it crumbled like ash around her, only to be reborn in the crucible of the maze of mirrors.
As it did, the final expanse of glass cracked in two.
The sheets of mirror fell, crashing to the ground and splintering into millions of tiny pieces of silver.
Only to reveal two elaborately carved doors.
Still trying to catch her breath, Thea wiped the sweat from her brow and pushed the loose strands of hair from her eyes, steeling herself once more.
Both doors swung inward.
A strangled noise escaped her as she realised what they revealed.
Two futures.
One choice.
‘You cannot be both a storm wielder and a Warsword.’ Audra’s words echoed through the cavernous chamber. ‘You have to choose, Thea…’
Thea’s stomach lurched and a bitter taste spread across her tongue. She hadn’t believed Audra. She had thought… What had she thought? That she was above the laws of the midrealms? That the Furies would make an exception just for her?
Her throat went dry as she surveyed the futures before her.
The first showed her in a field of heather, her very presence singing with storm magic, the magic she’d come to love.
Lightning crackled at her fingertips and thunder rolled through the sky.
Her power was more than she had ever imagined.
From the mirror doorway, she could feel it vibrating through the world – it was hers for the taking, a force so strong she would never again question her place in the midrealms, her worthiness.
The second showed her amid the ashes of an achingly familiar place, wielding a blade of Naarvian steel.
Not Malik’s dagger, nor Wilder’s swords…
But a blade of her own. A Warsword blade.
She was fighting shadow wraiths, cleaving through darkness in a blur of silver.
A Warsword totem displayed proudly on her right arm over her armour.
But there was no magic. No storm within her.
‘You have to choose, Thea…’ Those words echoed once more.
As if in answer, her magic surged. Its current coursed through her, from her chest to her fingertips and toes, demanding to be felt, acknowledged.
She had come to love that part of herself, had accepted it wholeheartedly into her life, into her identity.
And now?
Thea kept the panic at bay. She cast aside the versions of herself that she’d been shown – those that terrified her, those that made her heart ache.
She wanted so much more than she’d ever realised. But if there was a price to be paid, she would pay it.
Shaking, she crossed the threshold, towards her Warsword self.
A scream tore from her throat.
Eyes streaming, she could only watch as her lightning ruptured all around her, as it was violently severed from the very fabric of her existence.
In an unimaginable blaze of pain, her power was ripped from her.
It left her body in forceful waves, as though someone were physically wrenching it out of her blood, her bones, her soul.
The agony went beyond the pain itself.
As the final forks of lightning left her skin, Thea watched a piece of herself go with them.
And when at last the torture was done, she was hollow, on her hands and knees, panting in the dirt. Trembling and exhausted, she wiped a trickle of blood from her nose and hauled herself to her feet.
A portal materialised before her and she staggered towards it.
How many hours had she endured so far? How long had she battled with herself amid the maze of mirrors? Thea squared her shoulders. It was far from over.
Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart , she chanted to herself again, as she stepped from one ring of fire into the next – into the second trial of the Great Rite, without her storm magic.