“You’re not keeping him,” I said.
Etan’s gaze slid to Bianca, and the mirror rippled. For a split second, I saw her reflected, but older, silver-eyed, lips parted in something that might have been a scream. Then the image snapped back to Etan’s grin.
Raven swooped down from his perch, feathers puffed. “Enough games.”
Etan tilted his head, like he’d just noticed the bird. “You again. Tell her the truth, little herald, the Realm doesn’t give up what it takes. It only trades.”
The mirror pulsed once, twice, each time spiderweb cracks racing from the center. The glass gave a sound like a distant bell being struck.
“Back!” Raven barked.
I yanked Bianca away just as the surface burst into a spray of silver-edged shards. They dissolved before hitting the floor, leaving only the frame, empty, dark, and humming.
Bianca let out a shaky breath. “So, that’s a no on luring him?”
“On the contrary,” Raven said. “He knows we’re ready for him. That makes him reckless.”
I wasn’t sure if that was good news, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The mirror maze rattled like it was about to shatter into a million pieces. Nate’s reflections were everywhere now, his pale, desperate, fists pounding on the glass. I could feel him slipping away.
Etan’s voice echoed from every direction. “You don’t have to do this, Jessica. We could make this world ours. You, me, no limits.”
The inner salt ring flared white, iron filings sizzling like tiny fireworks. Etan stopped short, his eyes darting between the mirrored walls that reflected him a dozen times over, each image sharpening into something meaner, hungrier. The scent of burning rosemary and rue filled the air, smoke curling at the edges of the room.
I tightened my grip on the peach lip gloss in my pocket. Raven’s voice from earlier echoed in my head: Especially the peach one.
“Looking for this?” I held it up, letting the light catch the shimmer of its enchantment.
Etan’s gaze snapped to it, his expression flickering between curiosity and suspicion. “You think a trinket’s going to save you?”
“Not save me,” I said, and tossed it just inside the second salt ring. The gloss hit the ground with a faint chime, releasing a puff of allure magic.
Like a magpie with a death wish, he stepped forward—right into the tighter ring. The sigils Raven had inked on my hands burned hot, responding to his presence. The mirrors blazed, folding his reflections inward until there was nowhere left to look but at himself.
He snarled and lunged for the seam in the barrier. The inner ward cracked, lines splitting like glass—only for the ward echo spell to ignite, sealing the break with twice the strength. The iron filings sparked again, driving him back toward the center, toward the gloss that had baited him in the first place.
Bianca coughed through the rosemary smoke. “That’s one way to make peach look lethal.”
Raven swooped down and landed on my shoulder, shouting over the wind. “End it now, before it’s too late.”
“I don’t have enough power,” I yelled back.
Then, my hand brushed my skirt pocket, the one holding my backup gloss. And another. And another. My entire enchanted lip gloss collection. Weeks of work. Love charms, protection spells, even the one I’d made for perfect karaoke confidence.
“Oh, this is going to hurt,” I muttered.
I yanked them all out, uncapped them, and let the magic pour into the flamingo mirror. The mirror drank the magic like it was parched. A faint whisper threaded through the sound of the vortex. It wasn’t words, but the cadence of something calling from far away, hungry and patient. The glosses hissed and sparked as the enchantments bled together, glitter swirling in a golden vortex that slammed into the mirror maze like a hurricane. The scent was overpowering, sugar-sweet peach tangled with metallic ozone, like a thunderstorm blooming inside a candy shop.
The golden vortex roared, each swirl catching the light until the air looked molten. Shards shattered in slow motion, glittering down like dangerous snow. The wrong Nates and wrong Jesses dissolved one by one, their mouths opening in silent screams that left frost on the air. My arms ached from holding the spell steady, the magic thrumming through my bones like a drumbeat that wanted to split me in two.
I ground out the words of the banishing spell, my mind focused on holding everything together, but behind my eyes, I saw Nate, his smile, his eyes.
Etan appeared in front of me, close enough that I could see the silver in his eyes ripple. For a heartbeat, he didn’t try to stop me.
Instead, he whispered, “Remember me.”
“Etan—”
