Page 96 of The Other Side of the Mirror

The bands around Bash’s, Yael’s, and Rivan’s throats disappeared. My body unclenched a fraction when I heard their gasps for air.

The light that had been forcing them to the ground now pulled them to their feet, a solid sizzling wall herding them toward the black mirror. Rivan hung limply from his bonds, and I went cold as I tried to make out if he was still breathing. Yael dug in her heels, swearing loudly as she tried to find leverage that wasn’t there. Bash’s shoulders hunched with the strain of trying to force himself to me, his face the picture of devastation.

My arms dangled uselessly at my sides while I watched them all fight the inevitable.

“I won’t leave you,” Bash insisted even as he was pulled backwards, his feet dragging with every unwilling step. There was unbreakable will in his stormy eyes when they met mine, even as they swam with dread. “Don’t youdaredo this.”

I could feel my heart cracking in two, as if by doing so, it could somehow reach the one to whom it belonged.

“You don’t have a choice,” Aviel sneered.

Ignoring him, I looked at Bash, desperately trying to memorize every inch of him.

I couldn’t help my cringe as Aviel’s thumb pressed into my lower lip, my every instinct screaming at me to pull away. But I would sacrifice myself again and again if it meant saving him, saving all of them.

For one too brief moment, I saw a glimpse of the life Bash and I could have had together, as if falling into a memory. The life we would have lived if evil hadn’t torn this realm in two. Two young fae royals meeting at some stately event, our parents whispering in delight, the bond between us obvious. The joy, the passion, the life we would have lived. The children we would have raised—one auburn-haired, one chestnut. Their doting aunts and uncles, their progeny playing with our own. The happiness that would have grown day by day if not for fate and the merciless monster in front of me.

And something irrevocable fractured in my heart.

Then I cried out as shining bands of light wrapped around my wrists and ankles. Searing my already scarred skin, branding me further. I should have known Aviel wouldn’t trust me at my word—not once they were safely away.

Bash bellowed my name as he and Yael surged forward, both fighting against every inch left between them and that mirror, even as Aviel’s light dragged them mere feet away. The rage and panic in their voices made me shut my eyes in a futile attempt to keep myself from breaking. Rivan’s deafening silence was somehow worse.

Go, I pleaded silently with Bash as our eyes locked.Before this bastard decides to keep you, too, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Fingers fastened around my neck like talons, dragging me to my feet as Aviel pulled my back against him. I kept my eyes trained on Bash, knowing Aviel wanted me to watch his helplessness, but unable to look away from what might be the last time I saw him.

Aviel’s arm banded across my chest, and I went rigid as his lips grazed the side of my throat—at the possession that touch implied. A tremor went through me that I knew he could feel.

It was an effort not to fight back as Aviel drawled against my skin, “Soon, you’ll learn to obey me without the bindings.”

Then he fastened that too familiar collar, and everything,everythingnarrowed down to the tiny click as it locked?—

I was screaming. Screaming as my soul broke apart. I thought I might be dying as I heard Bash’s echoing roars even through the guttural sounds coming from my throat.

Ouranimabond went painfully taut as the collar tried to cleave it in two, tried to shred us apart.

My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor. For a moment, all I could hear was my own rasping breath and the roaring silence in my heart. I nearly sobbed in relief as I realized that our link was still there, weak and blocked and stifled, just like my magic. But there, like a phantom limb, as if the band had clamped around it too. Bash sagged against his bonds with a shuddering gasp, losing another step toward the mirror.

It was lonely, only feeling the emotions of my own heart.

Aviel smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Insurance for when they’re safely away. Or did you think I truly believed youwouldn’tfight me?” He leered down at me. “I would be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“I can’t—Iwon’tleave you—” Bash’s voice cut off with a pain-filled grunt as light seared up his arms, trying to break his hold where his hands now pushed against the black frame of the mirror.

My fingers curled against my palm, my nails cutting into the rose there.

“Unharmed,” I repeated, amazed my voice was steady while my soul splintered.

Aviel nodded in a farce of gallantry before he jammed that too familiar syringe into my arm. I refused to let him see me flinch as he pushed the drug into me, but I couldn’t help my shudder as I felt it work through my system.

“No,” Bash begged as he sensed the inevitable. “I love you.”

I closed my eyes as I heard those three words for what was, perhaps, the last time. As I heard the echo of my mother’s last words to me. The ones I had never been able to return.

My lips parted to say it back before I couldn’t. But the sedative had worked too fast, and the words stuck on my tongue.

The world slanted as Yael fell through the mirror, raging as she went. As Rivan unwillingly followed. Bash roared as he, too, was forced through the rippling surface, his fingers clawing at nothing.

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