Page 71 of Too Dangerous To Die

The hallway narrows the deeper I go, the air thickening like breath inside a crypt. There are no torches, no glow from glyphs etched in stone. Only the soft, eerie luminescence of mirrors, tall, warped, dust-covered—lining both sides of the corridor.

I know better than to trust magic like this.

But I step in anyway.

The moment I do, the door seals behind me.

I spin, but it’s gone. No opening. No exit. Only reflection after reflection, mirrors catching me in infinite fragments.

They begin to change.

The first shows a girl who looks like me—but she’s younger, softer. Her eyes are wide with fear as fire erupts behind her. She runs from a crumbling tower, clutching a book and a dagger, sobbing a name I no longer remember.

The next mirror shows me again—older. Hardened. Crowned in gold and blood. I stand atop a pile of ash with Rhaegar at my feet—his wings torn, his chest carved open. My hand glows with power. My face is unreadable.

I flinch.

The mirror after that reveals something worse. Something I didn’t expect.

A throne room. Ancient, yet familiar. At the center, two figures rule: a woman draped in shadows and fire—me, but not me—and beside her, a gargoyle made flesh, crowned in bone and fury. Rhaegar. But not as he is now. As he could be, if Medea had her way.

They look content. Powerful. Untouchable.

But when this version of me turns to the mirror… she smiles. And the smile is wrong. Too sharp. Too knowing. It’s not a reflection. It’s a warning.

“You can still be this,” she says—Isay—from behind the glass. “You can have him. You can have it all. Just stop fighting it.”

“No.” My voice trembles, but I raise my hand.

“You’re running from yourself. From me.” She steps forward, pressing her palm to the glass. “We are the same. You’re just too afraid to admit it.”

“Get out of my head.”

“We’re not in your head anymore,” she purrs. “This is memory. Magic. And desire. All wrapped into one.”

I snarl and do the only thing I can.

I smash the mirror.

The shards don’t scatter. They explode outward, glinting like stars turned to knives. A pulse of energy blasts from the glass—straight into my chest.

A memory sigil, ancient and unforgiving, latches onto my magic and yanks me under.

Darkness.

Then pain.

Memories roar through me—not mine, not wholly. Medea’s. Blood pacts. Binding circles. A thousand battles waged in the name of power. A thousand more in the name of love.

And Rhaegar. Always Rhaegar.

The boy she loved. The man she broke. The monster she tried to remake.

I scream, but the sound doesn’t make it past my lips.

When I finally wake, I’m on the cold stone floor. Every muscle aches. My lungs burn. My palm—the one marked by the artifact—glows like a live coal. The sigil now etched deeper, pulsing in rhythm with something ancient and wrong.

And he’s there.

---