The Shattered Mirror (The Mirrored Trilogy #3)

Tobias

The sky feels far too large when you’ve spent so long in a cage.

My breath snagged, my feet skidding to a stop as if there were an invisible barrier across the stone archway that led from the Solearan castle I had grown up in.

The courtyard before me was too open, the pale, blue sky seeming to expand exponentially as I struggled to draw in a breath.

My heart pounded in my ears as I tried and failed to force one foot forward.

The sky felt endless, even as something small and trapped inside me berated me that it meant freedom.

Big breath in. Count each second. Breath out and count the same.

I sucked in a quick, boxed breath, my father’s voice saying that familiar four count in my head just as his voice had done so many times in that dank dungeon cell.

But I was free—free of that awful place, free of that godsforsaken mask whose weight I could still feel on my temples, even months after it last held me hostage.

Safe. Free…

Why did it feel like I never truly would be?

Four years in that dank dungeon. Four years that I had been buried beneath the white stone of Morehaven, trapped and unable to find a way out. No sun, no fresh air, no light.

I dreamt of that cell every night. The slow drip of the dank walls, the endless darkness. Hopelessness tinged with utter despair.

The torture of Aviel draining me of my power, over and over, and over again. The cold stone beneath me as I lay there, too weak to move.

The taste of iron. The blood dribbling from my mouth when he was finally finished with me.

Screaming myself hoarse and yet not being able to speak a single word. The mask that still weighed against my face in every nightmare.

It had become routine to wake up shaking and terrified each night, unsure if my escape was some sort of cruel fallacy that my mind created in a last-ditch effort to stay sane.

I startled as a crisp breeze caressed my cheeks, then closed my eyes with a shudder.

Months had passed since I had been freed by my sister, Eva Maris, also known as the High Queen of Soleara.

It had been months since she had led an army to the mountain prison of Adronix to end Aviel for good.

Months since we had returned to Soleara—the northern kingdom of Agadot—and my mother’s crown had been passed down to me.

I had been a child when I left this kingdom along with my family to flee to the human realm.

And I had been a child when I returned on my Seventeenth—the birthday when a fae’s magic manifested—and was pushed through a mirror by my mother seconds before she was murdered.

I had spent more time in Aviel’s dungeons than within these walls as an adult.

It was almost ironic that now, I could barely stand to leave them.

My heart pounded in my ears as I managed a cautious step forward. The world tilted strangely. With a sharp gasp, I retreated back inside the doorway. My vision narrowed to the stone around me and my shaking hands.

Thankfully, I didn’t have any observers at this early hour.

I pressed my forehead against the side of the archway, my hands grasping at the unforgiving stone, feeling its grounding presence beneath my fingertips.

Cold, harsh stone had been the only thing I had felt for so long.

I had hated the way it leeched what little warmth I had in those dank dungeons.

Here I was reaching for it instead of embracing the crisp air that whipped around my face as if in reprimand.

Wincing, I made myself let go. I had to get a hold of myself already and control this awful, irrational fear, this pathetic, gnawing weakness. I had to if I was going to function as the King of Soleara…or just function, in general.

They deserved better than what I could give them—deserved better than me pretending I was anything other than broken.

They deserved someone better than me, period.

While I had spent days on horseback to reach Adronix during those final days of battle, those nights on the road had been spent shaking in my solitary tent, trying to calm my racing heart before the next day began.

The open-air ride to Adronix had been torturous after being stuck inside those dark stone walls for so long.

It was all I could do to stay in my saddle as the sky expanded around me, my vision blurring as my gelding galloped after the mare in front of him.

I spent my time concentrating on the surrounding trees to ground my spiraling thoughts, sucking in each breath in a careful four count to keep myself from panicking.

Forcing myself to focus on my purpose, on my duty, and on my revenge as my horse carried us forward—hiding the fact that I sat frozen and silently hyperventilating beneath my hood.

Quinn always seemed to find me whenever my fear became too much. She would chatter about nothing in particular in a way I suspected was designed to distract me. I wondered if she knew how many times her presence alone had stopped me from unraveling.

That relentless urge to keep moving had been the only thing stopping me from falling apart.

Without that momentum propelling me forward, I had hidden myself away as I tried and failed to piece myself back together.

My solitude did nothing to keep my terror at bay as my dark thoughts tried to drown me.

Did my people think I was a recluse or simply inattentive?

Granted, I was little more than a figurehead with Soleara’s new system of governance, but I was an especially useless one.

A royal hermit holed up in my family home high on the mountain peak.

Akeno and Thorin had long since stopped extending offers of companionship, knowing it would only earn them another polite refusal.

I had, however, repeatedly rebuffed Pari’s efforts to rekindle our friendship upon my return to Soleara. She had nearly been as persistent as Quinn in checking up on me.

Pari knew me better than I wanted to admit.

After all, she had been the first Solearan I met in this realm—my first real friend here.

I had been freshly seventeen and scared out of my wits after my parents were killed in front of me and I had fallen away from the flames through the mirror in our living room.

I thought I had lost my mind when I ended up in a forest without any real understanding of how I had gotten there.

If it hadn’t been for Pari, Akeno, and Thorin’s search party finding me before Aviel’s supporters did first, I would likely be dead right now, or worse. Probably eaten by something somewhere in the Faewilds or brought to Aviel before I knew what he was and turned into his puppet.

The trio had taught me who I was, and what I had to fight for. They had trained me in my magic and armed me with my history. And I had rewarded that debt by getting captured by the very evil they had tried to save me from, then returned more broken than any leader had a right to be.

It didn’t help that they could barely look me in the eye after my return. I knew they tried to save me from Aviel—and had put Soleara’s secrecy at risk to do so. One Solearan soldier ended up in a cell next to mine after one such attempt had gone awry. I hadn’t been able to stop what happened next.

The moment he realized he could be used against me, he had slit his own throat. I hadn’t even been able to beg him not to do what was already too late to stop, not with the mask that stole my voice. I could barely even scream as his body hit the floor.

Aviel had left him there for days. His sightless eyes watched me in silent condemnation as his blood seeped into the stone. They only dragged his corpse away after the guards couldn’t stand the stench any longer.

There were no more rescue attempts after that. At least none that made it that far.

Every day, I prayed the next face I saw in those cells wouldn’t be one I knew—and every time it wasn’t, the relief I felt at seeing strangers was quickly followed by the familiar sting of self-loathing. Aviel never allowed his prisoners to live for long.

But the three Solearans who originally saved me from the forest had survived without me—thrived even, as had Soleara. Then they had saved Eva from Aviel and helped save us all during the battle of Adronix.

They deserved far better than my shortcomings.

And Quinn? She was better off without me too.

The sky seemed to bear down on me, brightening in intensity as I forced myself to look up. Sweat dripped down my back as I made my legs walk back into the courtyard. All my focus fixed on one step, then the next, despite the growing buzzing in my ears.

I had to get over this. I should’ve already.

I closed my eyes as soon as I reached the practice yard, the darkness behind my eyelids like a cool balm to my racing thoughts.

Trembling, I fell into the familiar motions of a form my body knew by heart, trusting that balance and breath and movement would chase my demons away.

Yet I could feel the taunting caress of the morning sun on my cheeks, reminding me of the endless openness surrounding me.

Clenching my jaw, I tried to focus only on the light itself.

There was something about the sun’s light, something that had always helped me recharge and find some semblance of fortitude even before I knew the connection to my magic.

I had always felt my best as the sun rose, usually baiting my grumpy night owl twin as she woke up bleary-eyed and grumbling.

After my capture and imprisonment, in that dark, dank cell with that damn mask blocking even the hint of light available from reaching my face, its warmth was now a foreign, painful reminder of the comfort it had once held.

The warmth of my magic rose within me as if aching to reach out the world I refused to reenter. I shoved it back down.

My light still felt wrong. Tainted. It felt forever stained by the ways it had been stolen and used against so many innocents—and against those I loved.