Epilogue #2
She drew a few steps closer, unable to resist, desperate to see if the glass would show the same image it had shown her yesterday.
But the mirror merely showed the night and the lanterns and LaLa’s Hollowfest dress, with its bodice of golden feathers that turned into layers of shimmering champagne tulle.
“You’re back.” The young man swaggered out from behind one of the mirrors—because of course he would be a swaggerer.
“Oh, I was just admiring myself.” LaLa waved a casual hand toward her image in the mirror, trying to hide her disappointment.
She told herself to leave. She had wanted to take one more peek, and that was done. She didn’t need to see more. LaLa knew enough about magic to have a healthy mistrust of others’ enchantments. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I think your mirror is broken.”
“Why would you say that?” The young man leaned his shoulder against it.
“It’s just showing me.”
His mouth formed a mocking smile. “That is what mirrors generally do.”
“Yes, but yesterday it showed a different me,” LaLa said tartly. And all of a sudden, the mirror began to shift. Instead of wearing the dress made of gold and tulle, LaLa was wearing a green velvet cloak.
She recognized it immediately as her favorite cloak from when she was still a human girl. She watched herself lift the white fur-lined hood and then sneak out a window.
Like yesterday, this mirror showed something that had never happened, but it wasn’t the same something. She watched herself, waiting and hoping for it to turn back to what she’d seen before. But the only change that occurred was the words that moved across the glass.
Congratulations! You have found the mythic Mirror of Infinite Endings.
One at a time, the lines of silver script appeared on the mirror.
Have you ever wondered what else could have been?
Have you ever asked yourself if there are other paths your life could have taken? Other ways your story might end?
Frustrated, LaLa turned back to the young man as more words appeared on the glass. “This is still wrong—this isn’t what I saw yesterday.”
“It’s not wrong. This is the Mirror of Infinite Endings, which means that every time you look in it, it will show you a slightly different version of your life, where a different ending is possible.”
LaLa looked back through the mirror, where the other version of herself was sitting on a roof beneath a blanket of stars. Alone.
Yesterday, the mirror had shown her with her brother, Lyric, laughing on a rooftop in the Hollow. She hadn’t understood it then, so she hadn’t wanted to step inside the glass; she hadn’t wanted to risk getting stuck, but now she wished that she had.
She wasn’t willing to take the risk for a night on a roof with some stars. But she would have done it to see her brother once more.
“If you’re not interested in alternate realities, you could also look into this mirror.
” The young man shoved off the Mirror of Infinite Endings and strode toward the mirror on the left, which was covered in a garden of blooming flowers—pink foxglove, blue hydrangeas, white lilies, great yellow sunflowers, sweet little buttercups.
They lined the entire frame and draped over the mercury glass, a riot of color and life.
And in the center of it, LaLa saw herself as she was.
Hand on her hip, head cocked to the side, waiting … waiting …
Petals started to fall from the flowers, and the image in the center shifted.
First it changed from night to day, and then it showed a different image of her younger, human self.
Her hand was still on her hip, but instead of glaring at a mirror she was glaring at a young man.
Chaos. Only he wasn’t Chaos yet. In the mirror he was still Castor Valor, young and princely and staggeringly human.
Everyone always talked about how extraordinarily beautiful vampires were.
But LaLa preferred the imperfect humanness of Castor Valor.
Her heart actually pitter-pattered as she looked at him.
It was a very old memory, fuzzier than most of her human memories, and from the way they were both glowering at each other, it seemed that she was looking at the first time they had met.
Except no, this was wrong. This should have been the first time she’d met Dane. Not Castor.
“What is this mirror?” she breathed.
“The Mirror of Second Chances.”
Unlike in the Mirror of Infinite Endings, LaLa’s reflection here was static, unmoving.
The only things that shifted were the flowers around the frame.
Moments ago they had been in full bloom, but now they appeared to be dying.
Leaves were wilting; petals were browning.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “How is this different from the other mirror?”
“This mirror gives you a second chance at the life that you have already lived,” the young man explained. “It places you back in time in an earlier moment of your life, exactly as it was, and then you get the chance to do things differently.”
LaLa was about to argue that he was wrong.
This image in the mirror wasn’t what she remembered.
But the longer she looked at it, the more the memory started coming back to her.
It was Castor she had met that day, not Dane.
She remembered him now—all self-righteous and self-absorbed—and she remembered her human self as well.
Even though she was scowling in the mirror, she had been so full of hope and life and love.
And then her world had shattered into fire and death and Fates and vampires.
How many times had LaLa thought about everything she would have done differently? Or even just one or two things that could have changed the course of not just her life, but everyone’s?
“What’s the cost?”
He answered with a bewitching grin that she knew better than to trust. “Can you really put a price on a second chance?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Of course it is. I’m telling you that you won’t like the cost, but it’s absolutely worth it.”
LaLa was nearly fed up with him. “How about you just tell me, and I can decide for myself?”
A wind swept by and blew one of the torches out, casting half the young man’s handsome face in shadow. “It’s everything.”
“What do you mean by everything?” she demanded.
“Your life as you know it, your memories of the past, everything disappears when you step into the mirror. If you go in, you get a second chance, but the cost is that you can never come back to this life.”
The second torch blew out, leaving both of them in shadow. The only thing that glowed was the Mirror of Second Chances.
It was so tempting. But … if she couldn’t bring her memories with her, how would she know to do things differently?
It might end up all the same, and she would just have to relive all that pain—her parents dying, her brother dying, all the Merrywood on fire.
Everyone and everything that had been wonderful turning to dust and ash and death. “Thank you. I think I’m good.”
She turned to walk away. But out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed lines of writing appear.
Congratulations! You have found the mythic Mirror of Second Chances.
Just as with the Mirror of Infinite Endings, silver script appeared across the mercury glass.
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you had made different choices?
Have you ever wanted to go back and try to do things better? Or differently?
Well then, my new friend, this mirror is for you …
Simply touch the tips of your fingers to the glass, say, “I’d like to try again,” and you will get the rare opportunity to start your life over.
As the last line of script appeared, the last of the decaying flowers fell from the frame of the mirror and new buds began to take their place.
Don’t be tempted.
Don’t be tempted.
Don’t be tempted.
But LaLa was not very good at resisting temptation. She tended to accept everything she wanted, from marriage proposals that she knew would end in tears to slices of cake when she was already full.
But this wasn’t a slice of cake or a marriage proposal.
This was everything. She knew the cost was everything as well, but what if it was worth it?
A chance to do it all over again, to start afresh like the eager buds growing along the frame of the mirror.
What if she could save her parents and her brother and the Merrywood, and maybe even Castor Valor?
LaLa touched her fingers to the glass and …