Page 96 of The Mirror in the Mountain

The look he gave me made my heart stutter. “I’ll always believe in us.”

I laid my head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart as I whispered, “Can you just hold me, please?”

Bash’s arms wrapped around me protectively, and I let myself feel safe, pretending tomorrow wouldn’t change the very destiny of the realm as my eyes fluttered closed.

My last thought before I succumbed to the lure of sleep was that I wished I could make this moment last forever.

Chapter 41

Eva

The weight of memory was so heavy it felt suffocating. The fire crackled around me, threading up the walls in the corners of the room, the smoke stifling. Yet I couldn’t feel its heat, even as I heard its roaring in my ears.

I stood mere feet from the rose-covered mirror, feeling like I was already falling. Yet my mother wasn’t where she should have been, nor was my brother.

The hooded figure stalked forward, but there wasn’t anyone to stop him this time.

That blinding, stolen light flashed toward me, far too familiar now. My gaze locked with Aviel’s across the haze of the heat, his pale eyes flashing with the light of his stolen magic. My skin prickled, a shiver running down my spine as his lips curved in that terrifying, soulless smile.

“What’s the purpose of this?” I gritted out the question between clenched teeth, willing them not to chatter. “I already know you’re the one responsible for my nightmares.”

I struggled against the cage of his hold on my mind, trying to calm my racing heart. But even if it wasn’t real…it was, at least to some degree. And I was trapped in the illusion as surely as any nightmare.

“Because you could stop this.” Aviel smirked. “Nottheirdeaths, of course.” He waved an irreverent hand at the burning room. “But you could stop the deaths of everyone else you love before you lose them too. So I thought I would give you one last chance to give up. To give in to me at last.”

My mother wasn’t here, but suddenly, I could still hear her screams ringing through the room. The pain he had put her through before he killed her.

“Fuck. You.”

“Soon, darling.”

My darkness shot out like a spear, aiming for his heart—but Aviel blocked it with a blinding shield of light. Before I could stop him, he was in front of me, one hand wrapped around my throat, burning into my skin as bands of light secured my wrists. He yanked me forward, then his lips violently crashed into mine, swallowing my cry of rage and pain.

“EVA!”

Bash. The panic in his voice made me want to scream his name, but I could barely think, barely tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t in this dream that felt far too much like reality.

Something cold pressed into my hand. My dagger. The reassuring weight of it ripped me from the past before it could keep me here, its pommel humming beneath my palm.

With all my remaining strength, I threw myself backwards, breaking out of Aviel’s hold. His eyes were black as they met mine, a cruel smile curling his lips that made something inside me tremble.

The flames twisted around me as I stumbled away from him—just as before—and fell through the mirror.

Bash was repeating my name like a litany. He sucked in a breath as my eyes opened, his own dark with shadow.

“Eva.Eva.Are you okay?”

“I’m…” I trailed off, unable to voice the lie that I was anything close to fine. Fear-laced adrenaline hit me like a shockwave, lighting up every single one of my nerve endings with the need to fight something that was no longer there. My hand clenched around my dagger, its pommel still in my grip, Bash’s large hand covering mine.

He followed the direction of my gaze. “I thought it might ground you.”

“It did,” I managed to say, my breathing still short and shallow. I sucked in a sharp breath, holding it even as I rushed through my four-count, blowing it out too quickly before trying again.

“Are you hurt?” His shadows ran down my arms, flitting down my body as if checking me for injuries.

“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely, my throat dry from the imagined smoke that somehow, wasn’t.

His eyes were blazing. “Nothing about what just happened was okay.”

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