Page 96 of Mama Si's Paradise

But everything else became irrelevant the moment I could see into the mirrors.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, bringing my hand to my chest, completely in awe.

They werewindows,these mirrors. They were windows that overlooked entire places. Entiretowns.

“That’s Witches’ Wing,” said Valentine, pointing at the first mirror to my right, cracked a bit at the left corner, but what was showing in its reflection was incredible. It was a town with small wooden houses, narrow pathways that snaked their way around them, and bright green grass. A large black structure started somewhere to the right, but I couldn’t see the whole thing, just the colorful wildflowers that grew around it. I knew what it was, though. I’d seen it atop the Isle when I was still on Mama Si’s boat. It was a witch’s hat, but from afar it had looked so sinister. So dark. From here, with all those wildflowers surrounding it, it had a completely different vibe, and I could see it as if a 4K camera was showing it to me from a drone or something.

“That over there is Dragons’ Den,” said Valentine, a big smile on his face at the shocked look on mine, pointing at the next mirror—this one very different, with bare trees, yellowish rocks covering the ground, and the people that came and went all wore scales in different colors. When I realized they were dragon scales, I almost gasped. They were redheads, all of them, some lighter and some darker than me, with a kind of pinkish skin as they went about the stands made of wood and fabric. It must have been some sort of a market and there were a lot of them selling what looked like fish at the edge of the mountain. In my mind, I could see the tip of that mountain clearly, the dragons flying around it, spitting fire every minute.

As if one of them had read my damn mind from miles and miles away, the next moment fire fell over the people, over those stands, and it brightened up the entire room we were in. A miracle I didn’t have a heart attack, and I was too stunned to scream. The people in the mirror raised their fists at the sky, pissed off,shouting something I couldn’t understand because the audio on these mirrors must have been set on low.

Even so, I could see the fire as it spread, nearly touching the ground, catching at least three people in the process, and before I knew it, I was grabbing Valentine by the arm.

Burned.

Those people were completely burned to a crisp!

Except…the fire disappeared into tendrils of smoke seconds later, and the people were not burned. They were just shouting at the skies with their fists raised like everybody else, only now they were half naked. Their pants were burned but the scales and leathers they wore as coats over their shoulders were perfectly intact.

Perfectly intact. Alive.

“How?” I whispered because it made no sense. I’d seen the fire—these people had gone right through it, and now they were still screaming angrily at the skies as they continued to wherever they were going.

“Fire elementals,” Valentine said. “They don’t have much magic and they can’t wield fire properly anymore, but they’re still perfectly immune to it. To dragonfire, too.”

There was no way I could come up with a decent reply to that, so I just focused on letting go of his arm, and I stepped to the side again.

“You can stay right there,” Valentine said with a wicked grin.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, keeping my eyes ahead.

“Suit yourself. That’s Skinwalker Soil,” he continued to the third mirror, showing me a much darker and gloomier place.

“The sun is shining,” I said when I realized that it was daylight in all the mirrors. A blue sky in Witches’ Wing and Dragons’ Den, and a blue sky in Skinwalker Soil as well, though it looked like it was about to rain there any second.

“Yes, it’s about two p.m. right now,” Valentine explained.

He actually looked good in sunlight, now that I noticed. In fact, his cheeks weren’t as pale as I thought, and his eyes were almostbrown. Almostnotan all-absorbing black.

“I can sit very still if you’d like to keep watching,” he said, and I rolled my eyes, hoping I didn’t blush. He’d caught me red-handed and I couldn’t even deny it.

“I’d rather look at the real world,” I said and turned to Skinwalker Soil again. A lot of people were gathered around what could have been a bar outside in a wide, half-dry field. It was open on all sides, and everyone was getting trays of food from it, then going to sit on the benches spread all over the field.

“Are they eating?”

“Yes—they eat at the same time, all at once. Wolves are pack creatures. They do everythingtogether,” Valentine explained.

“What do you mean, wolves? Where are the wolves?” I wondered because I couldn’t see any animal among these people.

“You’re looking at them. Skinwalkers are shapeshifters. The only kind that survived the Fall of Ennaris were werewolves.”

Chills down my back at the mentioning of that phrase.Fall of Ennaris…I shook my head to clear it, analyzing the people in the mirror once more. “But they look so ordinary.” No fur and no claws and no teeth.

“They are people, just like all other species. Most can no longer shift anymore, and those who can are disfigured versions of what a werewolf used to be,” Valentine said, and if I’d known him longer than a day, I’d have guessed he sounded sad.

“That’s…that’s amazing.” And absurd. And fantastical—werewolves?

“It is. The Seven Isles are all incredible. If only they had the magic that rightfully belongs to them,” he said, moving to the next mirror. “And here is Faeries’ Aerie, built upon the highest cliff in all of Ennaris. Their system is incredible—they have an entire city up here and anotherinsidethis rock.”

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