Page 4 of The Mirror in the Mountain

She clucked her tongue at me disappointedly as if I should have known this already.

“He’s stealing magic from the realm itself?”

I couldn’t seem to stop shaking, whether from the drug leaving my system, being back in Aviel’s bed, or the shock of what Alette was telling me.

No wonder we weren’t able to stop him.

I swallowed; my mouth painfully dry. “Who knows about this? How do you?—”

“Oh, I know a lot of things I shouldn’t, little bird,” Alette said, her unblinking gaze unnerving as she slowly cocked her head to the side. “No one notices the fly on the wall.”

Looking at her more closely, I realized the shadows beneath her eyes had multiplied, her complexion sallow like she hadn’t seen daylight in far too long. She had always been willowy, but now her skin seemed too loose, like she had lost weight too quickly, her simple black linen dress billowing on her thin frame.

“How are you even alive? After you freed me, I thought he would kill you.”

Her head slowly tilted to the opposite side, a blank sort of smile plastering across her face. “No one notices a flyinthe wall either.”

I thought of the hidden passage she had taken me through to escape from Aviel the last time I had been trapped here in this bed. Its faintly glowing stone, leading downward. Of course it wouldn’t be the only one of its kind.

Would I be able to use the same escape a second time?

“Alette—”

“The first thing you need to do is get him away from the source of his might. Or, well, youshouldhave.” She giggled, repeating “would’ve” and “should’ve” a few more times in a possessed-sounding chant that had my already bleary head pounding.

“Alette, please,” I urgently interrupted her, earning me an annoyed pout. “I need to get out of here before he returns. Do you have the key?”

She shook her head as she leaned closer. A manic gleam reflected in her too-wide eyes as she started stroking my hair. “But don’t worry, little bird. We’re friends now. So I’m going to help you.”

The words sank in strangely, like the other shoe was about to drop, just as I realized the light gray of her eyes had morphed into the reddish orange of an ember. A nonexistent fire reflected inside them—an inferno blazing to life like a backdraft given oxygen.

I opened my mouth just as all the air seemed to suck out of the room.

And then everything exploded.

Chapter 3

Bash

The not knowing was torture. Not being able to feel her through our bond. Being left to imagine her suffering in Aviel’s hands. Knowing that the bastard sought to claim her against her will had long since ignited my fury into pure, unadulterated vengeance.

My shadows eddied around me in agitated circles. I clenched my fists, feeling them stream between my fingers—wishing I wasn’t so damn helpless to help her in this moment.

The people I loved tended to be taken from me. I had been a fool to think she would be any different, not when it was the same perpetrator that haunted all my nightmares.

I couldn’t draw a deep enough breath as that soul-crushing fear threatened to destroy me. She was gone, she wasgone—and I had been unable to save her, despite my promises that I would keep her safe. My stomach turned over as I remembered the sight of how shattered she had been after the last time he had held her captive. The marks he had left, the shadow behind her eyes…it wasn’t something I could ever forget. And now she had given herself up to him to save us with the full knowledge of exactly what he would demand in return.

I hadn’t been able to stand the sight of the way he looked at her—like she washis. The greedy way he had held her against himself, that proprietary hand stroking her cheek making me go blind with rage. Yet she had held firm, her determination unwavering as always as she stubbornly saved the rest of us—even as I saw the slight quiver to her lip, the terror in her eyes I could no longer feel across our bond. I had been helpless to stop it as she laid down her freedom for ours.

I had to get her back, to save her from the very fate from which she had already saved herself once before. There was no me without Eva, no future I would consider without her in it. When I thought about a world without her, I wanted to burn it to the ground, everyone else be damned.

Something wretched burrowed into my gut, a mixture of rage and bitter grief that knocked the breath from my lungs at how thoroughly I had failed her. I couldn’t leave her there with him. Just as I knew we couldn’t risk going back unprepared and make her sacrifice be for nothing.

But one thought managed to break through the chaos of all the others, silencing the storm in my mind.

She’s alive. And as long as she still breathed, I would come for her.

As I made myself eat something to maintain my strength, each bite tasteless on my tongue, Marin placed our mother’s invention on Tobias’s still-collared neck that would absorb its magic, Yael and Rivan looking on. Tobias closed those familiar eyes as the stone hummed, his chestnut hair falling across his gaunt face. His body shuddered as the band fell to the floor.

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