Page 94 of Moonmarked

There were more—the Weeping Lady of Midnight, and a general whose name had been scratched off the plaque; a teenager with skin that shimmered like mercury, the canvas cut right below his chin.The Silver Childwas all the plaque said. Next to him wasQueen of Mirrors, and it was a painting within a painting, like she was holding the mirror cracked at the corner, or…the mirror was holding her?

No idea, but it was strange as hell, and I was halfconvinced to get the hell out of here already—I must have gone deep because barely any light pulsated over me here.

But then I looked.

At the next painting, I looked, like a damn fool, and I stopped, my entire body frozen in place.

The left half of the canvas was torn, and only one side of the woman’s face remained painted in colors that somehow looked much more vibrant than the rest.

God, I was shaking so badly a second in, sweating so much the mask became unbearable. I took it off without even realizing it because I wouldn’t be able to breathe with it on.

Because no way was this painting real.No way, no way, no way…

Yet there she was, half her face perfectly visible to me. White-blonde hair, lips a pale pink, and she wore silver around her shoulders—a dress or a shirt or a jacket, I couldn’t be sure.

But the shape of her face. The blue of her eye. The arch of her pale eyebrow…

Impossible,my mind insisted, yet my eyes refused to even blink, because she was there. Only half, but she was there, and she looked almost exactlylike me.

An older me, asadderme, acolderme—but amenonetheless.

My knees shook, but I leaned in as much as I could anyway to see the plaque below the ruined frame—clean,like someone had wiped off the dust very recently. Clean, so that I could read the engraving perfectly:Queen Veyra of the Frozen Court, the Last Sovereign of Ice.

“No,” I said but my ears heard only silence.

I said it again and again anyway, my lips moving, my heart pounding, my legs taking me back slowly. Even themask didn’t make a sound when it fell from my hand and hit the floor.

I didn’t even look at it, though, my eyes on half the face of that woman, the painting so terribly real, the color of her eyes so bright and vivid I could have sworn she was looking at me. She could see me.

The urge to turn around and run all the way back to Earth right this second to make sure she could never find me again took hold of me all at once.

So, I turned with my breath held and my hands pulled up in fists.

And I realized I was not alone.

thirty-two

She was right behind me,barely two feet away, and God knows how long she had been there while I’d stared at that portrait, but I hadn’t heard a single thing. Not a footstep, not a single sound from her dress decorated with crystals, a dark red that looked like blood.

Her mask was on, too, the same red, the same crystals—and even her eyes seemed red from the reflection of the small lights floating above.

But what caught their reflection the most was the curved tip of the knife in her hand, the one she held tightly in her fist. The one she had aimed toward me.

The whole world could have stopped existing outside of this tunnel. Every muscle in my body locked down tightly, even though the fire in my chest was slowly intensifying, fueled by the fear.

This woman had that knife ready to attackme,it was easy to see. And I was terrified that by the time I reacted, she would have already stabbed me in the heart with that thing.

Too late,a voice in my head whispered, as the fire spread under my skin—and then came the cold. Theicethat froze the boiling blood in my veins so suddenly, squeezing what little air was left out of my lungs.

The woman didn’t move.

A second ticked by.

Her wide dark eyes moved from the torn painting of that queen behind me, then locked on mine, unblinking. She was completely frozen, too.

Shewasn’tattacking me, even though her knife was still in her fist.

My muscles suddenly unlocked at the thought. My lips moved and I tried to speak, to ask her who she was and why she was standing here with that knife at the ready, but no voice came out of me. The fucking magic in the room took it away.

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