I turn my head, the thought of consuming anything making my stomach churn.
“It’ll help,” he insists, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Not that I’d be able to argue if I wanted to. That part of my brain is in full hibernation mode.
I can’t stop the tears now, and they blur my vision as I let the bitter liquid slide down my throat. It tastes like grass clippings steeped in flat beer.
“How can it hurt more now than it did when it happened?” I choke out between sobs.
“Healing is more difficult than dying.” He sets down the mug and turns the washcloth to the coolerside. “Close your eyes. Go back to sleep. You’re safe here.”
His words are meant to comfort, but the fear doesn’t dissipate. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want the darkness, the unknown, the fear of never waking up. I close my eyes, try to steady my breathing, but the pain and fear sink their teeth in and refuse to let go.
“I would love a morphine drip right now.”
The sharp taste of herbs lingers in my mouth, its effects slowly spreading through my body. The edges of the pain dull, the sharpest points blunted, but it’s still there. I feel so delicate, so broken, so far from home.
“Talk to me,” I beg. “Distract me.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Groaning, I close my eyes. “I don’t know,” I mumble. “I’m just desperate. Please, help.”
“I am helping,” he says. “I’ve been helping you all this time.”
I crack my eyelids and peer up at him. “Tell me what you were doing in the elevator.”
He tilts his chin, the corners of his eyes creasing as he narrows his gaze.
“I saw you in the elevator,” I explain. “Back in…my world.”
The firelight dances in his eyes, and for a moment, I see a flicker of something softer, something almost tender. It’s enough to keep the darkness at bay for a little while longer. “That wasn’t me. It was a mirror version.”
“A mirror version,” I repeat, gritting my teeth against another wave of pain.
The thought of duplicates—copies of people living their own unique lives in different worlds—is hard towrap my sluggish thoughts around, much less figure out how it would work. Are the mirror versions identical in every way, or do they have different personalities? Different lives? Different fates?
And if Kane has a mirror version, then that must mean I have one too. The realization hits me with a force that makes me gasp.
“The mirror version of me, is she here?”
Kane shakes his head, his dark hair falling into his eyes. I want to brush it back or trim it or tell him that headbands exist. “The Empress would not have brought you here if you already existed. Besides, if there were a version of you within Towerfall, I’d remember her.”
My eyelids grow heavy, the combination of exhaustion and the herbal tea pulling me toward sleep. I fight against it, the fear of the unknown keeping me alert. “If you know about things like mirror copies, then you know about other worlds. About…portals,” I say, my mouth dry, my voice barely above a whisper. “I went through a portal.I went through a portal.Shit. It sounds unreal.”
“And yet it is real. Although not many know portals exist,” Kane says, his words carrying the weight of something I can’t quite place. “The Tower called you here, and the Empress sought you out for a reason.”
“What reason?” My mind swirls, spinning with portals and palaces and the fact that a tarot card reached from one world into another.
“I do not know for sure, but the Tower is never wrong.”
I would laugh if I didn’t feel like falling apart. “It is.It’s wrong. I want to go home. How do I get home?” I ask, voice splintering under the weight of it all.
“When there’s a way in, there’s a way out.”
“Can’t you answer a single fucking question directly?” I snap.
He holds the mug to my lips, and I take another acrid sip. “Let the magick do its work.”
