For a moment, a single, aching moment, I allow myself to believe. To hope. To bask in the solace of this stolen closeness.
Then a hand.
Not mine.
It rests gently atop her belly.
My blood turns to ice.
The figure behind her shifts into view.
A shock of pale blond hair. Piercing blue eyes behind a bronze mask.
The Golden Son.
He leans in, his lips hovering near my wife’s ear.
No.
He presses a slow, reverent kiss to her temple.
No.
I roar.
The sound rips from my chest, a violent, shattering thing, shaking the very walls of the chamber. The mirror fractures, the image vanishing in an explosion of light and darkness.
I stagger back, my breath ragged, my fists clenched so tightly my nails cut into my palms.
I do not dare look back.
Even the memory of what I saw is agony, raw and festering, a wound torn open too wide to close. The rage coiling inside me is enough to burn this house to the ground, to reduce every stone and artifact to nothing but cinders if it means destroying that fucking mirror forever.
But I am no better than the male before me. I am not immune.
The pull of the mirror is insidious, a force that sinks its hooks deep. Even as fury surges through me, I feel it dragging at my gaze, whispering, calling.
And before I can stop myself, I am standing before it once more.
My hands brace against its cold, molded edges, my breath uneven, my body taut as if awaiting a blow.
But it does not show me Amara or the Golden Son.
Instead, the mirror delivers me elsewhere.
To the cold, darkened halls of Baev’kalath.
Lightning tears open the blackened sky. Thunder roars, rolling like war drums, a relentless beat that matches the crashing of waves against jagged stone.
It is so real. So vivid, I can almost feel the icy rain pelting my skin, seeping into my bones.
Then I find myself in a room, a pulsing blue circle etched into the stone beneath my feet, glowing with a slow, rhythmic throb, as if the very rock is alive.
Voices chant, low and rasping.
Then a scream.
A sound so raw, so desperate, it carves through the solemn thrum like a blade through flesh.
