Page 60 of The Other Side of the Mirror

“Eva,” Bash whispered with an urgent calm, lifting his hand to stroke my hair. “Talk to me. Where are you exactly?”

There was such raw compassion on his face that I had to look away, a lump forming in my throat.

“I’m in his…his chambers.” I winced and Bash’s eyes tightened in barely repressed rage. “There’s a collar on my neck that’s blocking my magic and he has me chained…I wasn’t able to get under the manacles covering my hands or I would have told you sooner…”

He threaded his fingers through mine, desolation and wrath warring on his face.

“You might need a key,” I added with a careless abandon I couldn’t quite get right.

As if mentioning them had summoned them, the chains appeared around my wrists, shackling me to the bed, pulling my hands out of his grasp. I saw Bash’s gaze turn murderous, those stormy eyes wholly black as he looked at them, then down at the bed in understanding. Even in the dream, the air thickened as his shadows swirled around us as if they, too, could protect me.

The dream was ending, I realized in a panic. And I was quickly losing my fight to keep my hold here.

“I’m waking up,” I whispered, unable to hide the terror in my voice.

Bash’s eyes met mine, his face desolate. And fear—there was unadulterated fear written in every line.

“Eva—”

I let out a gasp as pain rippled through me from the waking world. Bash pulled me against himself tightly as if his will alone could keep me here with him.

“No,” Bash begged, his eyes wide. His fingers dug into my arms as I slipped away. “I’m coming for you, Eva. Just hold on?—”

It hit me fully then. The look in Bash’s eyes the first time he saw me, those stolen whispers in a dark forest glen, our moment in the lake, his devastation when he left me in the palace. The way his shadows danced with my darkness, wrapping around me as if unable to stay away even when he was sleeping?—

Bash had truly been myanimaall along. Never the cruel prince who had deceived the entire realm.Bash.

I have to tell him.

But I felt blood drip from my wrists as my chains went taut, digging into the wounds underneath as I was pulled from the safety of his arms.

I was already gone.

Chapter26

Bash

My heart was going to pound out of my chest before we got there. It strained against my rib cage as if it could reach her first.

Smoke was starting to shake with exhaustion, though his strides didn’t falter. Ever since Eva walked into my dream, we had kept a breakneck pace through the trails that led to Morehaven, the dark forest a blur as we raced against time. I had barely breathed the entire ride.

Faster, I urged Smoke silently, knowing he could sense my urgency. My magic wrapped around his churning legs, taking some of the strain as he pushed forward.

When I found Eva bound to that monster’s bed, my heart had stopped beating entirely. Then restarted like a war drum when I saw the blood on her cheek, compounded by every single thing he had done to her.

I thought I had understood fear. Until I saw herchained.

All I could see was the way she held herself, like everything hurt. The way she had trembled as I took in her bloody wrists, the purple bruise darkening the hollow under her eye. The cut on her cheek lay on top of a layered welt, which told me she had been struck more than once. Her lower lip had been split and swollen, quivering despite herself before she was taken from me. It all spun through my mind in a sickening carousel of her mistreatment since I left her there, spurring me onward.

The thought of her injuries made me want to tear Aviel apart—and take my time doing so. The thought of her hurt and terrified made me want to burn down the whole world.

I looked over my shoulder to where Yael and Rivan kept pace in a line behind me, grim faced and wild-eyed. When I woke from the dream, I barely had the wherewithal to say anything beyond that we needed to go,now, before running to ready the horses. I must have seemed utterly insane to them, but they hadn’t hesitated to follow.

As they helped me hastily pack up camp, I managed to tell them what had happened and how thoroughly the realm had been deceived. Then I stomped out the embers of our fire with my boots in my haste, not even thinking of smothering them with my shadows, before galloping off into the night.

They hadn’t questioned the truth of it—not even about the traitor prince who had my soul bonded chained to his bed—just helped me hurriedly draw up a plan to get to her as we rode.

Because shewasmyanima. She might not have understood the significance of dreamwalking but as we had never shared blood, I knew the only way that was possible. My mother had explained the phenomenon to me long ago, and Yael had visited Marin in dreams on our journeys more times than I could count.

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