Page 28 of The Other Side of the Mirror

But she didn’t hear my silent plea. And why was I panicking at the loss of her attention when that was exactly what I had asked of her? What I knew would be best for both of us, in the end.

I hated that I had pushed her away, hated that I had needed to because it went against everything I wanted. And now, she had rightfully dismissed me entirely.

It made me want to spin her around, take her face in my hands, and tell her all the things I was desperately trying not to feel. But if she was pretending the lake hadn’t happened, then I could too. I could be her friend, and hand her off to her prince, and watch from afar as that love saved us all.

And besides, I thought bitterly, as I tore fresh basil into strips as though the herb had personally aggrieved me, she deserved that golden prince, the one who saved the realm from the False King. Not me, who hadn’t even been able to save my own father from him. She would be safer with him. Because if something happened to her…my heart nearly stopped beating at the mere thought of a world without her.

As we sat down to eat, I didn’t try to block out that voice that whispered over and over again that I didn’t deserve her.

Chapter13

Eva

That night, the moon was so bright I knew it would be almost impossible to fall asleep.

Avoiding the weight of Bash’s ever-present gaze, I lifted my eyes to the night sky as my companions continued to prepare our camp for the night. Dark gray clouds were moving in, and I let out a small sigh of relief as I saw that they were already covering the horizon. I took a deep breath of the cool night air as the wind shifted—an intrepid cloud shadowing the crest of the waning moon.

Yael and Rivan had apparently figured out that if they wanted to sleep without our whispers, they were better off setting up their sleep mats on the opposite side of the fire. I turned my back to Bash; not trusting myself to even look at him without saying something foolish. He muttered something under his breath, and when he stepped closer, I took a matching step back, swiftly moving out of his reach.

I hid my surprise as he quietly laid his sleep mat by mine, facing in the opposite direction just as we had done the night before. He gave me a wry smile as he noticed my eyes on him, and I looked away.

Surreptitiously, I made sure our shoulders didn’t accidentally come into contact as we readied for bed in an uncomfortable silence—not wanting to feel that jolt of awareness that happened every time we came into contact. In the wake of what happened this afternoon, I was all too conscious of the places our bodies almost touched as we settled in.

With a grateful breath, I pulled the barrier of my sleeping bag over me. I still hadn’t said a word as I snuggled in between the warm layers, glad they hid the slight trembling of my body. While I could still feel Bash’s eyes on me, I focused resolutely on the stars that shone through the dusky clouds.

“Are you going to say something or just stare at me all evening?” I blurted out, unable to stand it anymore. Even as I mentally kicked myself for being the one to say something first.

“I was going to if I could figure out what to say.”

There was a rawness to his voice, a slight shock on his face, like he hadn’t meant to say that either. I stared at him for a long second before going back to my silent perusal of the star-scattered sky.

Bash cleared his throat, breaking the suspended silence. “I…Did I ever tell you how I found my dog? Or rather, how she found me?”

He said it with the casual tone of our usual banter, but I heard the unspoken plea underlying his words. The one begging for a ceasefire.

My eyes met his. “Not yet.”

Despite everything, he soon had me laughing—clasping a hand over my mouth to avoid waking our companions. Resisting Bash was too difficult, even as slipping back into our nightly rhythm raised feelings that I knew I should suppress. No, not just difficult. It was nearly impossible not to be drawn to him, especially as he opened up further with every murmured tale. There was no more awkwardness left between us as we shared story after story, nothing except the time ticking away.

Bash and I talked until it was so late it was almost early, those elusive, temporal hours when the world quieted; a fragile sanctuary in which it seemed safe to share secrets. Neither of us mentioned our moment of weakness by the lake as the night grew long though my stomach tightened anxiously at any reminder. We both lay on our backs, staring up at the sky as if in agreement not to look at each other.

My reticence to delve into it had nothing to do with some faceless prince, and everything to do with the heart I had tried so hard to guard against feeling anything at all for seven long years. Because it had cracked wide open at that kiss. At the need on his face, in his touch, and at the yearning in those stormy eyes.

Though my unwillingness to talk about it could have a little to do with how he was the one to literally push me away after I had practically begged him with my body to keep going, consequences be damned.

Even with that hanging between us, our conversation was as easy as always. Bash told me more about growing up in the faerie realm, about his little sister Marin, about life before losing his parents in the war against the False King, and the pressures of ruling. He obliged me with stories of running around Imyr with Yael and Rivan in their youth, and I had to muffle my laughter in my pillow at the trouble they had gotten into even as they trained for war.

He steered clear of discussing his parents. Though I was eager to know more about them, something gave me pause. There was something so vulnerable about the obvious omission, something flinchingly exposed, like he could see my unasked questions and was already cringing away from them. But I knew the exact way that ache never entirely went away. Just as I knew better than to pry when he obviously didn’t want to talk about them.

In trade, I told him of my childhood in the mortal realm, about the “human” life that wasn’t quite so. About how diligently my parents had insisted on training Tobias and me—the endless hours of sparring and lessons disguised as military rigor and family bonding. But there had always been joy in it, despite the intensity. Fencing with Tobias down the stairs, our mother cheering us on until one of us tore open a pillow in the living room, feathers and stuffing raining down around us. She had laughed the loudest of all and urged us to keep going.

I had long since figured out that my childhood hadn’t been entirely normal. Most parents didn’t train their children to battle in their dining room or learn archery in their backyard or encourage them to fight like their lives depended on it. Nor did they teach them how to canvas their surroundings to anticipate danger, reading the subtle shifts in body language that could mean life or death.

Even the strategy lessons had been well hidden in discussing human wars and history, my mother helping us pick apart battle plans and quizzing us on how they could have been done better. But I had never realized the true desperation behind it, their need to protect us from what was coming…whohad come for us.

I told Bash about Tobias, my twin who had always been my other half, my male mirror. My throat closed as I told him about memories of us finishing each other’s sentences or showing up at school in unintentionally coordinating outfits on the rare occasion we didn’t drive together. I told him about the sense of something missing that had plagued me long before I lost my family. And wistfully expanded upon my all-consuming desire to learn more about who my parents were to this world.

“I feel closer to them here in Agadot than I have for a long time,” I finished breathlessly. “Like just being here can show me who they were.”

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