Chapter 27 THE MIRROR
THE MIRROR
You’re not getting out anytime soon, brother.
The darkness pressed in, thick enough to breathe.
The room was silent except for the drag of chains against concrete, the low scrape of Callan shifting against the shackles binding him.
His arms and legs were fettered with heavy iron cuffs, a mockery, a reminder that Zaghan wanted him helpless but wide awake, that the tables had turned and now Callan was the prisoner in his own body.
Breath trembling, Callan rasped, desperate, “You have done enough. Let me out.”
A soft, dangerous laugh drifted from the corner as Zaghan stepped into the thin spill of moonlight from the window, his face shadowed, unreadable. But Callan knew what expression laid behind that stillness.
He had tasted her.
He liked it.
Now he wanted more. Because he was greedy like that.
Zaghan tilted his head, wickedly amused. “Scared, brother?” he murmured, words cold as steel. “Good. You should be. I have taken another precious thing that once belonged to you.”
Fury burned at Callan’s chest as he yanked at the chains, violently, yet they wouldn’t budge. “She’s mine. How could you touch–”
“Was,” Zaghan cut him off, jaw slightly tapered. “She was yours. But you clearly didn’t know what to do with her. I did. I gave her what she wanted. And she liked it.”
Callan froze, his heart clenching as shame and rage collided behind his ribs. “You had no right, Zaghan.”
Zaghan’s smile bloomed slowly, feral and claiming. “I had every right the moment she walked right into my orbit.”
“Liar,” Callan spat, voice cracking. “You manipulated her. You pushed–you forced her!”
“I didn’t force anything.” Zaghan crouched in front of his seething brother, golden eyes burning like twin suns. “She wanted it. Craved it. Enjoyed it.”
Callan shook his head violently, breath stuttering. “No. She’s, she’s not–”
“The plan was to wring her neck, carve out that little heart of hers, you know.” A devilish grin cut a deep shadow on Zaghan’s face.
“I shouldn’t have tasted her.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head, his grin only sharpening.
“Fucking addictive, that girl. Now I’m thinking of keeping her a little longer.
Bleed her dry…slowly. Peel off that innocence layer by layer.
Leave her bare and empty. And then.” He paused, snapping his finger.
“Drive a dagger through her delicate neck, watch her eyes turn white and lifeless.”
Callan choked on air.
This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t supposed to happen.
He had always known Zaghan was cruel. He grew up with him, after all.
Zaghan was something old and wrong. A ghost who should have long gone and left no mark.
But he stayed, and chose to wear his brother’s shadow instead.
But even so, this crossed the line Callan couldn’t believe Zaghan was capable of crossing.
Zaghan knew how he must have felt about Elizabeth. How she had lodged herself beneath his ribs, making him want her in a way nothing else ever had. Wasn’t that enough? Shouldn’t that be enough reason for Zaghan to step back?
Callan believed he had paid for his sins. Had swallowed loss after loss, paid in silence, in obedience, in pieces of himself he would never be able to recover.
So why Elizabeth?
Why this?
Why couldn’t Zaghan, just this once, let something remain untouched?
Zaghan suddenly rose slowly, the shadow of him stretching across the floor like a beast uncoiling.
“By the way, she didn’t want your trembling hands and pretty words,” he said, his voice laced with mockery.
“She didn’t want your caution and your fear.
” He stepped closer, the air tightening.
“No,” he whispered, his grin malicious. “She wanted danger, desired to be unravelled by callous, sinful hands. And I was able to graciously give her that. I am the one she wants now. Too bad, she is only meant to die by my hands.”
Callan’s nails dug into his palms until they drew blood. “Please.” The word tore out of him as humiliation burned behind his bones. “Give me back control. Let me out. I need to see her. I can’t allow you to take her. I need to–”
“No, Callan!” Zaghan’s voice deepened into a velvet growl. “You see that thing you so desperately crave, I won’t be giving it to you. You know why? Because I’m not done. Not yet.”
Callan’s body went still. His worst fear was coming to pass. He had dreamt about this. Had nightmares about a moment when his brother would slip into his body and refuse to let go.
Zaghan stepped beside him, leaning in, his lips brushing against Callan’s ear as he whispered, voice like a noose tightening. “You lost your seat at the wheel, brother. I’m the one driving now.”
“Zaghan–”
“I’m not done with her, Callan.” A slow smirk touched his lips as he shook his head. “Not even close.”
The chains rattled violently as Callan’s panic bled into pure rage. “I’ll–”
“-You’ll do nothing.” Zaghan cut him off, stepping back until he was right in front of his brother, eyes holding serene cruelty. “You’ll sit in the dark and watch. Just like I used to; desperate, alone, cold, waiting…just waiting.”
Callan’s breath fractured. He had truly become a prisoner in his own body, an extra in a story that was meant to be about him, and he could do nothing but only watch from afar.
“And when I’m done with her eventually,” Zaghan’s voice crept around Callan, eyes glowing in the dark. “She won’t remember what it felt like to want you. She wouldn’t even be alive to want you.”
Callan let out a hoarse cry, metal clanging against the floor. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, like the rug was yanked from under his feet, and he was left falling without a safety net.
He felt like dying. He couldn’t bear the mere thought of losing Elizabeth, the one thing that made his heart stir, the one girl that made him remember what living felt like.
He didn’t want to lose to his brother. But it seemed he already lost.
Zaghan turned away, fading into the shadow. “Better get comfortable with the chains,” he said. “And while you’re at it, think about what you could have possibly done, had considered doing, to make me want to destroy you like this.”
Then his cackle rang in the darkness, an echo that seemed to travel for miles.
“You’re not getting out anytime soon, brother.”