Page 112 of The Mirror in the Mountain

A shudder ran down my spine, but I managed a shaky grin. “Only since you asked so nicely.”

As I turned to my brother, the gold of his eyes glinted in the dim light. But his focus wasn’t on me. He was staring longingly at the smile fading from my best friend’s lips.

I took his hand. “If I die…don’t let them burn me.”

To his credit, he didn’t try to argue. “Only if you promise me the same.”

I nodded once, holding his gaze. Then looked at my best friend, my sister in every way but biological. “Always forward.”

“Never back,” she breathed.

We raised our blades in unison, my trembling determination turning into pure steel.

A torrent of air rushed forward, the doorway violently slamming inwards.

The soldier-filled cavern stilled as the two sides took each other in, its vaulted ceiling soaring into darkness. Then the very mountain seemed to rumble as the silence broke.

There were too many of them, all moving toward us at once. But I could see it—the Seeing Mirror. It was smaller than I had expected. Ancient, yet untarnished, despite how long it must have lived in this cavern. The glass was embedded into the stone wall of the mountain itself, its gilded filigree frame cutting into the dark rock like golden vines. Each swirl and point glimmered in the light of the blue glints hovering around it like shards of sapphire dust. Its six points refracted with the familiar light as if they couldn’t contain the magic within. The glass’s rippling surface gleamed with the same silver iridescence as the doorway…the same silver as the words that found their way to my palm, like that simple heart Bash had once sent that somehow encompassed everything.

We had made it to the mirror we had come so far to find.

Only to be just barely too late.

Aviel stood right next to it, my stolen darkness flaring from his fingertips in a show of Celestial power.

“NO.”

Aviel turned at my cry just as his soldiers reached us. A funnel of flame barreled toward us that Yael countered with an airless void, extinguishing the flame as well as its creators. But my gaze was trapped in Aviel’s. Darkness streaked from his fingertips, the air between us stagnating as his mouth curled in the slightest of smirks.

He broke our gaze first. Twisting bands of night darted forward from each of my fingers like dark vines, my knuckles locking into place as they ensnared a swath of soldiers in my way. My darkness tore them apart without a second thought. It was far too easy to appease my anger, my magic aching to reach out and destroy the one who deserved it.

But I wouldn’t survive this by giving into it now.

My stolen darkness arched across the room. I raised Nightshade, its dark twin twisting around the blade. But Aviel’s magic wasn’t aimed at me. It speared directly at my brother, who was too focused on the fire wielder fighting Quinn to react.

I screamed. Then Yael was there faster than I could see, pushing him out of the way. The darkness slammed into her, throwing her into the air. Her arms crossed over her chest as her magic tried to keep its point from impaling her, a thin barrier of air the only thing saving her from annihilation.

She slammed into the iridescent door with a sharp crack. Then slumped to the floor, sprawled against the stone.

Tobias yelled something I could no longer understand as fury coursed through me, too vast to be contained. I ran forward, wrapping my darkness around me in an impenetrable shield. Dark spikes flew from me in bursts, running through any who tried to stop my progress. Refusing to slow down when Aviel was so close to everything he wanted.

“Eva,wait!”

Tobias was fighting off half a dozen soldiers, Duskbane shining with his pure, bright light. More took their place as his light flared, eviscerating those closest to him. Quinn stood beside him, her amber eyes flashing a deep, blood red?—

But I couldn’t wait for them.

Not with Aviel a step away from the mirror.

It rippled in invitation, sending a shiver down my spine despite everything. It was almost ironic that I was racing toward the very thing I had feared for so long, desperate this time for it to let me through.

Quinn’s yell mixed with Tobias’s from too far behind me. But for them—for my family both by blood and by choice—the idea of facing Aviel no longer seemed quite so frightening.

And it was time for me to face what lay before me.

Aviel’s pale eyes had turned black from the darkness streaming from him. Then his hand pressed against the mirror.

The glass shuddered, and for one elongated heartbeat, hope surged in my chest that all his planning had been for naught. It shattered as he fell through.

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