Page 13 of The Other Side of the Mirror

Bash nodded, his eyes narrowing.

“Quinn has a matching necklace,” I whispered, touching my chest where my amulet usually hung. “And if her family also had a mirror, a…” I stumbled on the terminology, “…agate…”

“Many fae fled to your realm during the war,” Yael murmured. “It would stand to reason that your parents didn’t make the journey alone.”

And Quinn’s parents had trained her as rigorously as ours had trained Tobias and me. A similarity I thought was due to our fathers’ military service together…though that also had to be a lie. Or at least the location of it had been.

Did Quinn know? If she was responsible for those wards…then she, too, had lied to me.

“My twin brother…he died that night too.”

Tobias had screamed at her to come with us, not to leave us. He had been right behind me…

Could he have made it through too?

My breath hitched as I shut down that torturous wisp of hope. “But he would’ve found me if he’d made it through the mirror.”

I blinked, and the tear that had been waiting there rolled down my cheek, then another. But I made no attempt to brush them away. I could barely remember a time I had cried since the aftermath of the horrors on my seventeenth birthday, as if the weeks following had drained that well dry. Yet everything I had pushed down and tried to forget now surged to the surface, a tidal wave that might drown me.

Bash stepped in front of me, but I didn’t move away as he reached up to touch my cheeks. His eyes swirled like a stormy sea. Carefully, his thumbs brushed my tears away.

The tenderness of the act left me winded. I was ambushed by the sensation that, though IknewI shouldn’t feel safe with him, I felt surprisingly sure that I was.

A shuddering breath left me at the overwhelming sense that everything I knew was a lie—including my dead family. Then his arms were around me, crushing me to his chest, my fists curled between us. My heart clenched in the strangest way as his scent enveloped me. After a moment of hesitation, I relaxed into his hold, too lost to deny myself the comfort of his embrace.

Before I could fall apart completely, I focused on a breathing regulation trick my dad taught me long ago.

“Big breath in,” he would say in his deep accent. “Count each second. Breath out. And count the same.”

Taking an unsteady breath in for a long four-count, I held it before exhaling to the same slow beat. One of Bash’s hands rubbed comforting circles on my back. The grief I was drowning in seemed to slip away as I repeated the cycle until I found a semblance of calm.

I blinked slowly, then again, cutting the string tethering me to the past. Bash was watching me closely, our faces only inches apart.

“We’ll find you the answers you seek,” Bash vowed as he reached up, brushing the last of my tears away. “I promise.”

Rivan coughed, and I took a hasty step back. Bash’s hand hovered in the air for a moment before he dropped it to his side.

Yael was frowning as she looked between us, her voice pointed as she added, “But first we need to take her to her betrothed.”

Bash didn’t meet my eyes. “Right…that.” That lazy smile was back as I took one last shuddering breath, embarrassed to have lost control in the first place. “No reason we can’t do a bit of both.”

“About that,” I said, eyes narrowing. “I realize you seem to think I have a faerie soulmate…” I let all the derision I felt about those two words slide into my voice. “But if my parents ran away from this realm, wouldn’t that suggest something isn’t right about that?”

Yael shook her head. “From what we understand, they took you to hide you from the False King. A hundred and one years ago, Prince Aviel’s father, the False King, started a war that endangered the entirety of our realm. He wanted to conquer all and very nearly succeeded. And when he tried to take control by force, the war that followed nearly tore our world apart. There were many that supported him in his might, and war broke out from the Faewilds to the northern mountains, the eastern desert kingdom of Esterra, the western water kingdom of Mayim, to our southern kingdom of Imyr. And in Agadot’s capitol city, Morehaven—which the False King claimed for himself.” She looked down, her mouth twisting. “He killed the former High Queen of the fae in order to seize her crown. And in doing so, he denied the Choosing—our method of selecting the next ruler of our realm. The High King or Queen rules over all the other kingdoms in Agadot, though each has their own royal families…” Her eyes darted to Bash, but his gaze was fixed on my face.

Our eyes met, silently clashing before Yael continued.

“Many were forced to bow to his rule, fled to the mortal realm, or were killed during the war as one by one, the kingdoms fell to him. But when all seemed lost after the Imyrian Keep was breached seven years ago, the False King fled back to Morehaven where he was defeated by his son. Prince Aviel had been imprisoned most of his life until his magic blossomed on his Seventeenth. And with it, he overthrew his father.”

“All fae have a penchant for one element or another,” Rivan said, seeing the confusion on my face. “Usually Elemental magic—fire, water, earth, or air—with further focuses, such as healing, within those groups. Fae children usually get glimpses of their powers, but they don’t truly manifest until their Seventeenth, when their magic chooses them.”

“When the crown prince went through his Seventeenth, in the darkness of his father’s deepest dungeon where no one knew he even existed, he was chosen by the power of pure light. More powerful than even his father’s,” Yael said in a hushed, reverent tone. “No one knows how the prince was able to defeat him, but the False King has been imprisoned ever since in the farthest north, frozen beneath Adronix, our highest peak.”

Bash’s countenance grew grave. “But, as I told you, our prince’sanimawas still missing, and our realm under siege from the curse the False King placed upon the land in his rage when he couldn’t find you himself. The very magic of the land was sucked away, the plight even reaching the human realm. And it’s only getting worse…”

My breath caught as Bash gestured to an ashen piece of land behind the tree line, as though something had leached all color from it. There was nothing left except a desiccated tree stump, covered in a foamy white substance that oozed from what remained.

“So you’re saying that if you take me to my faerie soulmate…that will break the curse?”

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