Page 84 of The Evernight Court

And when they walked out the door and closed it, my body moved on its own. My mind was overcrowded with questions, but my blood was rushing, and I was walking, going to the mirrors again, to the one that was broken. To the one that never showed anything, wondering…

“What the hell is the Eighth Isle?”

I’d never heard of it before. Nobody had mentioned it, nobody had ever evenhintedthat such a thing existed—another Isle?

Impossible. It was impossible.

Yet Romin and Emil had both said the name, and they’d both looked at this very mirror that was in front of me now, dark and…dead. Exactly like it had been since Valentine first brought me here.

With a shaking hand, I touched the surface with my fingertips, not really sure what to expect. Nothing—just cold, smooth glass. Exactly like the other mirrors.

Exceptthisone couldn’t even be considered a mirror, could it?

Letting go of a long breath, I sat at the edge of the couch and I let my eyes adjust to the sunlight in the other mirrors. Seven because there were Seven Isles, what remained of Ennaris.

But there were eight mirrors.

Emil’s words filled my mind, and I still hadn’t even begun to calm down enough to think straight. It was all just instinctiveat that point, and my instincts said that they hadn’t been fucking with me. They hadn’t known I was there in the first place, and they hadn’t just come into the mirror room to fuck with my head.

No, they’d actuallymeanteverything they said.

“What are you hiding from me?” I asked the darkness of the eighth mirror like I expected a goddamn answer.

My mind raced with possibilities—I could go talk to Genevieve, maybe offer her more blood for information. I could talk to the brides, if they didn’t start shouting at me to go kill myself the moment they laid eyes on me. I could go talk to Romin and demand he tell me what the hell he and Emil had really been talking about here today.

Except I knew that none of those options would work.

I also knew that it was only a matter of time before Emil convinced Romin to let them force themselves on me.Body,they called me. Called all of us, all the brides.Bodies.

And what about the brides theykicked outfive years ago? What didkicked outmean—were they even alive at this point? How come nobody had talked more about this, not even Valentine?

It made me so damn uncomfortable just to wonder about it.

But I stayed there like that, perfectly motionless and staring at the floor for a long time, trying to make sense ofanythingat all. Trying to see the bigger picture here—when something moved.

A flash of white light.

I saw it through the corner of my eye, and it startled me, so I jumped and turned to it to see it better.

I turned to the eighth mirror.

My heart was already galloping in my chest, my mind perfectly blank, all those chaotic thoughts chased away within the second. Did something really move on the surfaceof the eighth mirror, or did I really, finally lose my mind for real?

I stood up and went to it again, hardly feeling my numb legs, my unblinking eyes on it. Something had moved there—a light had flashed from it. Small and weak, but it had been there. I’d seen it through the corner of my eye.

And I waited for what felt like a long time to see it again, my eyes burning because I was barely blinking. But just as I was about to give up and go back to my tower, it happened again.

“What the…”

White light blinked three times right in the middle of the mirror as I was looking at it. It blinked behind something, and it showed me the silhouette in detail.

I fell to my knees as a scream caught in my throat.

I fell to my knees in front of the mirror that had shown me the silhouette of a man standing on what could have been a rock—or the top of a goddamn mountain.

A man with wings on his back spread to the sides, their shape so familiar that I knew every curve and every claw as if I’d just seen them this morning.

Both my hands were in front of my mouth as I rocked back and forth, tears streaming from my eyes.

---