CH. 32 The Trial of Spirit, Part II
The heat thickens.
The ground trembles.
And then, the laughter stops.
I don’t notice it at first — that the Warden’s voice has gone silent, that even the flames seem to hold their breath.
Because something worse is happening.
Behind the princes — behind the shadows that mirror them — the sidekicks’ reflections begin to take shape.
They don’t rise like the others. They crawl.
Out of the cracks, out of the molten stone — twisted, wet, wrong.
Their limbs drag across the ground, joints bending backward, their movements jerky and insect-like.
One by one, they pull themselves free.
Arec. Lady Alenia. And… me.
“Oh, that’s new,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
Gavin glances at me briefly before cutting down another reflection. “What is it now?”
I point weakly. “Us.”
Farro turns — and actually blanches. “By the Moon…”
Because our mirrors aren’t fighting.
They’re crawling toward us.
Their faces twitch, their mouths open and close like they’re trying to form words. A sound escapes — a thin, wet, distorted version of our own voices.
Then the crawling turns into scuttling.
Faster. Louder. Wrong.
My legs lock in place. I can’t move.
No one can.
It’s as if the heat itself has turned solid around us.
The mirrors advance, dragging their claws against the stone.
Arec’s reflection reaches him first. Its mouth splits wider, unhinging like a snake’s. Arec screams.
Lady Alenia’s mirror climbs onto her back like a spider. She thrashes, shrieking, as it presses its face into hers — and for a heartbeat, they become one.
I can’t breathe.
My heart beats so violently I think it might tear out of my chest.
Sorien shouts something — maybe my name — but the air swallows his voice.
Because my mirror has reached me.
It stops inches away.
And it smiles.
It’s wrong — too many teeth, too much joy.
But I know that smile.
I’ve practiced it for years in every mirror that ever hated me.
My body won’t move.
My throat won’t scream.
It tilts its head.
Then its mouth opens — wider, wider — until the entire face is a gaping black maw.
I manage a strangled whisper.
“Oh, come on—”
It lunges.
---
The world implodes.
For a moment there’s nothing but red. Then black. Then memory.
I’m small again — small, weak, human.
The air smells of wet dirt and copper. Children laugh.
Not kindly.
They throw stones.
“Witch!”
“Monster!”
“Hideous!”
I curl into a ball as one hits my temple. Warm blood trickles down my cheek.
The laughter is everywhere — high, cruel, echoing.
I want to scream. I want to hex them all into frogs.
But I’m too young. Too powerless.
And then a voice — calm, sharp, familiar — cuts through the noise.
“Enough.”
Aunt Agitha.
She steps between me and the mob, her cloak snapping in the wind like a spell made of fury.
The children scatter. They always do.
Agitha kneels, brushing the dirt from my cheek. Her eyes, pale and steady, meet mine.
“Let them laugh, my little crow,” she says softly. “They fear what they don’t understand. Fear is just a kind of worship — a stupid one, but still.”
My lip trembles. “They say I’m cursed.”
She smiles, and it’s both terrible and kind. “Then curse them back.”
That’s the first time she teaches me how to stir a cauldron.
How to bottle moonlight.
How to lace honey with poison.
How to survive a world that already decided I wasn’t beautiful enough to deserve kindness.
---
The dream shifts.
I’m older now. Standing in the doorway of our old cottage — but the roof is gone. The cauldrons overturned. The air reeks of smoke.
A figure stands at the far end of the room, back turned to me.
Silver hair.
A gentle hum.
A lullaby I’ve never heard — but somehow know.
“...Ma?”
She turns.
The woman’s face is soft, familiar in a way that aches. She smiles, though her eyes are sad.
“My little one,” she says. Her voice is like rain on ash. “You carry more than a curse. You carry me.”
I try to reach for her, but the world begins to fracture — light splitting into shards, each piece pulling me apart.
“Don’t go!” I scream.
She only shakes her head. “When the time comes, the flame will answer your blood.”
“What does that even mean—?”
But the words dissolve.
The world collapses into fire.
---
I gasp.
The air floods my lungs like knives.
I’m back in the labyrinth — on my knees, choking, sweat pouring down my back.
The princes are still fighting, their movements desperate and wild.
Lord Arec and Lady Alenia are gone.
Something’s changed.
The heat doesn’t burn me anymore.
It listens.
I look down.
Thin lines of red glow faintly along my palms — my veins alight, sizzling.
And then I remember what Grandmama said in that dream:
When the time comes, the flame will answer your blood.
The fire bends toward me — small at first, then stronger, swirling around my fingers like it’s alive.
My breath catches.
“Well,” I whisper, a grin twitching through my fear. “Guess I finally learned water magic. Just… in reverse.”
“Drew!” Sorien shouts.
He’s still evenly matched with his mirror, but the sweat on his face tells a different story — one of exhaustion and fury barely held in check.
I glance around, watching the fight — watching the patterns.
And then it hits me.
“Switch opponents!” I yell.
Farro stumbles, nearly tripping over molten rock. “That’s idiotic!”
“Wait,” Gavin cuts in, eyes narrowing. “That might actually work.”
He wipes blood from his jaw and barks orders like a general finding his rhythm again.
“Farro — you weak, preening idiot — take Sorien’s mirror. Sorien, take mine. I’ll deal with yours.”
“Brilliant,” I mutter, “the one time the royal brat listens to me and it involves more chaos.”
But they move.
And it works.
The moment their mirrors lose the perfect reflection — the exact symmetry of movement — they falter.
They hesitate.
They break.
Gavin drives his blade through Farro’s mirror cleanly, almost too easily.
Farro struggles with Sorien’s double, but Gavin steps in beside him, blades flashing in unison, finishing it together.
That leaves Sorien and Gavin’s mirror.
At first, they’re evenly matched — perfect echoes of each other, every parry met, every strike countered.
But then something shifts.
A glint in Sorien’s eyes.
Something buried.
Something earned.
He moves faster, sharper, like muscle memory awakened — like he’s been training his whole life to face this very ghost.
Steel meets steel.
Then a blinding arc of light.
Sorien drives his sword through the reflection’s chest. The mirror cracks — from the point of the blade outward — until it bursts apart into shards of molten glass.
Silence follows.
The heat calms. The flames ease.
I stand there, trembling, the red glow in my veins fading to a quiet pulse.
Farro is panting, Gavin looks both irritated and impressed, and Sorien… Sorien’s breathing hard, his blade still raised — eyes unfocused, haunted.
“Is it… over?” Farro asks.
“For now,” I say, flexing my fingers as the last of the fire dies around me. “But I think the Warden’s got more surprise up his molten sleeve.”