Chapter Thirty-Five Arion #2
Rage boils through my veins, magic rolling in my gut from her words. Her panic. Her pain. “He’s not here,” I say, leading her out of the alcove. “He’s not here, and you’re okay. We’re close, Zephyra. I can feel it. Just keep breathing, and hold on to me—”
Before we can exit—before I can move into the endless hall—the magic in my chest seizes. One agonizing pulse that roots my feet to the floor. In that moment, the walls in front of us slam together.
The hall implodes out of existence.
I spin us toward the alcove to protect Zephyra, and her gaze snags on the room. Because now, it’s empty.
The heart is gone.
“Something is wrong.” She breathes hard and fast. “The corridors should be shifting every fifteen minutes, not every fifteen seconds—”
As if in response, the floor beneath us gives way, and the alcove plunges downward.
Zephyra screams, clutching me, clawing at me, trying to climb me as my wings spread to ease our fall.
We land gently after several minutes, whole minutes of plummeting into blackness, and a new corridor awaits us when the walls finally settle.
My heart races, but magic pulses steady in response.
Something in my bones screams that this is the right way.
We step out, tentatively, into a corridor of mirrors.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask Zephyra. Her head is buried in my arm. She hasn’t looked up since she noticed the heart was gone. “Do you want us to try to find the others?”
Her legs wrap tighter around my hips. “N-no. We won’t be able to. They’re probably lost too.”
“We aren’t lost.”
“We almost just fell to our death—”
“But we didn’t die, did we? We’re still here.” I inhale deeply, peeling her limbs from mine to set her softly on the floor. “Tell me what you need. If continuing is going to make you feel worse—”
“Don’t be fucking stupid.” She looks up sharply, glaring at me now, and I almost collapse upon seeing that fire in her eyes, upon hearing it in her voice too. She sounds more alive than she has in hours. “We continue.”
“But—”
“We. Continue.” She brushes a fallen tendril of hair from her face and drags her braid over her shoulder. “I refuse to die here, warlock. And the only way out is through.”
I smile at that, despite this situation and despite the pain I know she still feels. At least she’s fighting again. “Okay, mermaid.”
The tension in her body eases until she moves out from under my arm and glances at the newest corridor.
Her gaze darts quickly toward the ceiling, and she sighs.
“Of course.” Planting a hand on her hip, she pivots on her heel, stepping backward over a black lacquer floor.
Behind her, rows and rows and rows of lavish, gilded mirrors sparkle with crystalline glass.
So smooth, they could each be made of water.
Zephyra snags my chin with her finger, pulling my gaze toward hers.
“First of all, I was right. The sorcerer is fucking with us. Whether he’s here or not, he’s making us wish we were dead.
” She brings me one step deeper into the corridor, not bothering to turn around and face the mirrors herself.
“Second of all, no matter what you do, do not look at the mirrors. They’re here to entrap us, and they won’t be kind about it. ”
“You’ve been here before?” I ask quietly, following her, forcing my gaze to remain on her face.
“About a thousand times. The hall of mirrors always leads to a stairwell, and since I was so kindly gifted the highest tower in the castle, I had to access a stairwell to go just about anywhere. When he allowed me to leave my room, that is. Which wasn’t often.”
More anger. More rage. They beat in my chest until I am sick with them.
She settles her finger on my lips now. “Relax, warlock. Keep moving. Don’t look back.”
I listen to her. I really do. For all of a few seconds. The farther we stride into this room, however, the more my periphery flashes with gold. Gold and silver and black and—
Midnight blue.
I blink. Once, twice, three times. It isn’t enough to dislodge my morbid curiosity. My attention catches on the dark fabric, and my eyes flick—just for a second—to the mirror on my right. My stomach plummets.
There is a mask.
A white porcelain mask, smooth and ancient and hollow.
The Death Lord is watching me through the mirror. No. He’s reaching for me.
A gloved hand pushes outward from liquid glass until icy fingers nearly brush my sleeve.
I freeze, rooted by the weight of that malicious, hollow gaze.
My breath is gone. My sense is gone. The Death Lord slips out farther, contorted and strange, and behind him—the rest of Cultus Mortis.
They fill every gilded frame, every reflective surface in this corridor.
Their ghastly breaths smoke through the room.
I wasn’t prepared for this. For them.
Zephyra snarls. “I said, don’t look.” Her hands seize my face and wrench my gaze to hers. Her turquoise eyes are furious, blazing with more of that wild, protective fire. Instantly, it burns through the cold. “For a submissive warlock, you are terrible with instructions. Focus. On. Me.”
I do. It buys me enough time to regather my senses.
“I only looked for a second,” I growl. “And I am not, in any way, shape, or form, submissive.”
“Sure, warlock—and it was two minutes. Time is different here. You can’t trust it. You can’t trust anything.”
Two minutes. How is that even possible? I would shake my head if Zephyra wasn’t gripping my face so hard. She drags me through the corridor now, her eyes closed as if she’s navigating this place from memory alone.
The thought unsettles me more than anything else.
A thousand times in this hall.
Three thousand days in this castle.
She has survived so much more than anyone in this world will ever comprehend. She has survived so much, just for me and my gods-forsaken bullshit to force her back here. This is my fault. Every second of this journey, from arresting her to saving her to searching for this place, has been my fault.
And the darkest thought I’ve ever had shoots across my mind like a dying star: Am I any better than the sorcerer? Am I any better for her?
Suddenly nauseated, I keep my gaze on the floor now, on the dark stone, on the shifting shadows between our feet, but in my periphery, I still see them. The rest of Cultus Mortis. They twitch and shift and slip out of the mirrors after the Death Lord. They clutch their scythes. And they follow us.
Every time I let my thoughts drift back to them, they move faster. A hiss behind us. A frigid whisper. The guttural wet sound of metal slicing through blood and bone. They call out to me. They tell me I belong with them.
What if they’re right?
“It’s okay, Arion,” Zephyra whispers, her eyes still firmly shut.
“Whatever it is can’t hurt you unless you notice it.
Ignore the mirrors. Focus on me. Only on me.
” She exhales softly and repeats, “The hall of mirrors always leads to a stairwell. There will be a door behind me soon. We will go through it, and everything else will vanish.”
She’s comforting me. Me. When we’re standing in her fucking nightmare.
The mirrors shift then, without warning, and all I see is pink and turquoise and pink and pink and—
Zephyra’s back thuds against a door, and she exhales victoriously. “The handle, can you see it? Open it, Arion. Don’t linger here.”
Gritting my teeth, ignoring the hundreds of Zephyras surrounding me—their necks purple and their mouths bloody—I fumble for the cold steel of a slender handle. But something in my gut twists, and I look back.
Zephyra.
She is beautiful, but she is dead. She’s behind me, pale and blue and a corpse.
“Oh, fucking Fathoms.” The real Zephyra opens her eyes, grabs the handle, and rips open the door. She slides around me and shoves me through the threshold with both hands, slamming the door shut behind us. And just like that, the whispers stop. The nausea in my stomach subsides.
“You did that… a thousand times?” I ask, catching my breath as panic ebbs and flows through my chest.
“Give or take,” she says, stepping lightly onto a circular staircase. “We’re going down, aren’t we? Below?”
Yes. Yes, we are. Yes, we need to. But—“Can I have a second?” I peel the armor from my breast and throw it to the floor. I can’t breathe.
“What did you see?” she asks, her gaze narrowed. “What was it?”
“The cult,” I say, collecting myself for another moment before joining her. Though I try not to stare at her beside me—terrified yet alive—I fail miserably. My eyes search hers with a hunger bordering desperation. As if they’ll never drink their fill. “Just the cult.”
“Right.” She glances down the stairs. There are no railings on the sides. We could easily fall off. “Let me know when you’re ready, warlock.”
I glare at her, though I know beneath the surface, she’s trying her best. She’s just trying to be strong. I need to do the same. I would have succumbed to a fucking music box and a mirror if it weren’t for her. This entire castle would have devoured me in minutes.
“Come on,” I snap, though I take her hand gently and begin our hike down, down, down the stairs. Before we can make it far enough, the castle groans. Rumbles. And the corridors begin to rotate.
“Shit,” she hisses.
And then the staircase moves too—upward. Smooth and liquid, like a snake.
“Down, stairwell.” Her hand lurches to my elbow at the sudden, jarring movement, and her fingertips bite into my skin as her eyes clench shut. As her expression crumples. “Down.”
The staircase doesn’t listen to her, and her voice breaks again.
This time on a soft plea. “I don’t know how much more I can fucking take, so please don’t send us back up there.
Please take us downstairs.” Her voice comes out frail, like a child’s, and I can imagine her here—right here—as a young woman of seventeen or eighteen, pleading with the cursed walls to take it easy on her. And I know they never did.