Page 26 of The Eternal Mirror
“Does it talk?” Laura asks.
I hear a growl reverberating in my ear again and almost smile. “Yes, Grimlet talks,” I say.
She almost jumps back as Grimlet inches along to the edge of my shoulder, spreads his wings, and flies down to the table. He perches on the edge, ears twitching, and looks around him suspiciously. “Grimlet is hungry.”
“Okay,” Killian says. He crosses to the fridge, pulls out bread, cheese, and butter, then places them on the table.
“Beer?” he asks.
I nod. Grimlet nods as well. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but what do I know?
I let out a sigh and relax. I sense there’s no danger here. Killian nods to the table, and I take a seat close to where Grimlet is perched. I help myself to bread and cheese and sit in silence for a minute.
It’s hard to believe that it’s only been hours since we were in Hell, and we escaped, and all was going to be well—and now it isn’t.
I finish the bread in silence and take a swallow of beer. “What do you know?” I ask.
“About what?” Laura snaps. She sounds almost belligerent. But then I look at all of them more closely, and I see the exhaustion hovering over them. And more—a recent pain shadows their eyes.
“Laura,” Killian says, his tone a warning. “It’s not his fault.” Then he turns to me. “I’m sorry. We lost one of our people the night before last. It’s still raw. And he was the second we lost this week.”
“This is all of you?” I ask.
“No, Daniel and Kari are out at the portal...monitoring.” He runs a hand through his hair again. “This is Laura,” he waves a hand at the woman, then points to the younger, blond guy, “and Jack.” Then he blows out a breath. “Christ, I hope you’re telling the truth. It would be...world changing. Unbelievable. But it’s a lot to take in.” He takes a swig of beer. “Please explain; tell us what’s happened.”
I think about where to start. “What do you know about the other worlds? Valandria. Astrali?”
Killian drags out the chair opposite and sits down. “We knew nothing of them until Amber told us of their existence. We knew about Hell. That the shadowguard were coming from there, Khendril told us.”
Well, that gives me somewhere to start, anyway. “Khendril was my brother,” I say. “My half-brother. We share a father.” And he’s a fucking bastard. But that’s something else I won’t mention right now. It will no doubt come out in the conversation.
He sits back in his chair and stares at me. “Khendril saved my life. He was a good man. Amber told me he was dead. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. We hadn’t spoken in a while,” I continue. “He left our home world to look after Amber when I was a boy. I was unaware of where he’d gone for a long time.”
I take another drink of beer. Beside me, Grimlet is nibbling on a piece of bread. I don’t think he can decide whether he likes it or not. In the end, he spits it out, so obviously not. He tries a piece of cheese, and a grin spreads across his face.
I think about what to say next. How to make sense of everything that happened without taking the next two weeks to explain.
“Amber said she was a witch,” Killian says. “What about you? Can you do magic?”
I’m pretty sure I can’t. Selene gave me powers from Vortex. I don’t think they include magic, just fire and dragons, but I’m not going to go into that either. “I am the same race as Amber. We are Astrali. The women of our race are witches. The men are shapeshifters, like you. Except we are born that way—not bitten.”
“You can shift into a wolf?”
A wave of sadness washes over me when I think of Fury. He’s gone now. “I could. But my wolf is dead. Now I’m...something different.” I can feel the dragon almost chuckle deep inside me. But he’s hard to explain. “Amber is also Lucifer’s daughter.”
“As in the fucking devil?” Jack says.
“Yes. It was Amber’s destiny to one day go to Hell and destroy her father. She was brought up to do that, trained all her life—and yesterday...she did it.” That is a dramatic oversimplification of what actually happened.
I can see the doubt, disbelief, and shock in their faces.
“So it’s true?” Laura asks. “The shadowguard are no more?”
“Yes, it’s true. Amber not only destroyed Lucifer, but she destroyed Hell as well. It’s gone. And the shadowguard are all dead.”
I give them a few minutes to let that sink in.
