Page 79 of The Evernight Court

Suddenly excited, I held the necklace in both hands in front of my face and gave it magic. I gave it as much as I had, the same way I’d given it to that pen, except here I didn’t imagine it changing the way the book said I should. I only gave it magic and willed it to show me what I wanted most.

It didn’t work.

I looked at the crystal, but it didn’t change a bit. The clean-cut surface of it was half the size of my palm, and it didn’t move, it didn’t reflect any kind of light. It didn’t show me what I wanted at all.

Maybe it was broken. Or maybe Reeva had just fucked around with me.

And here I’d hoped it would finally reveal to me a way out of this place once and for all…

Fuck it,I thought, closing my eyes for a moment to gather myself because I really needed to go find food in the kitchenbefore I collapsed.

That’s when it hit me.

A vision,for lack of a better term. It was right there behind my closed lids, and it hit me like a fucking fist to the face as soon as I closed my eyes.

So, I opened them instinctively, gasping for air, feeling like I’d been picked up and thrown somewhere far, far away.

“Oh, my God…” I whispered when I realized what had happened.

The necklace. It was the magic I gave to the necklace.

It didn’t show me what I wanted on the surface of that clear crystal. It showed it to me in my mind when I closed my eyes instead.

A smile was on my face when I held it tightly between my hands in front of my chest again. Freedom. Safety—that’swhat it was going to show me. How to get out of this place and be safe from the brothers forever.

That’swhat I wanted most, wasn’t it?

Holding my breath, I closed my eyes without an ounce of hesitation, and again, I felt like I’d been picked up and was no longer touching solid ground. I was suspended on air and there was only darkness around me. Deep, raw darkness that made me think I was stuck in some timeless space. I could hardly breathe, and my anxiety was getting the best of me faster than ever before, but…

Then I saw color. Just a tiny bit of color somewhere to my right, and I turned toward it, gave it all of my focus. The harder I tried to make it out, the bigger it became, the brighter it burned against the darkness, and the more colors I could count.

My heart hammered in my chest. I wasfloatingtoward those colors and the shapes that were revealing themselves to me faster by the second.

A minute or a day could have passed, but the vision wascomplete, and I finally was able to understand what I was looking at.

It wasn’tsafety.It wasn’tfreedom.

It was a place—a place I knew. A place I’d been to before, many times.

The necklace was showing me the mirror room.

Eighteen

My eyes opened wide,and I drew in a deep breath, feeling like I was drowning. I moved until I was on my feet, touching the walls and the frame of Grey’s portrait, and I still couldn’t convince myself that I was alive and breathing and all alone in the closet for a good minute.

Fuck, I never wanted to do that again. I never wanted to be picked up and thrown in another place where my feet didn’t touch the ground and there was no air to breathe.

And I was so afraid to close my eyes again, so I didn’t until they burned badly enough to close on their own.

But nothing else showed behind my lids. The mirror room wasn’t there anymore, just darkness, because the necklace had fallen off my hands when I’d stood up. The crystal winked at me now from the floor, catching the overhead light beautifully. I stepped away from it as I breathed deeply, still getting used to the air going down my throat like I really hadn’t breathed in hours.

“The mirror room,” I said to myself, then looked at Grey’s portrait as if waiting for a comment. There would be none, I knew that, but… “Could it be?”

I hadn’t been to that room since Grey was banished, but I’d always wondered,what if I could get through the glass the way I had that night with Valentine? What if Grey and Romin and all the others were wrong, and us brides could really walk through those mirrors and get to anywhere we wanted?

After all, I’d already done it once, hadn’t I? I’d walked right into the mirror, and it had taken me to Faeries’ Aerie within the second. I’d been there, despite what they thought.

And according to this necklace, I needed to go there again to search for what I wanted most.

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