My stomach flops.
There’s a person staring back at me from the world behind the mirror. A woman with opaline skin and a storm of iridescent hair cascading down the left side of her body like a waterfall glistening from the sun’s touch. Her exposed ear tapers to a tip, the outer scoop lined with delicate prickles that shimmer. And hereyes...
Her eyes look to be carved from crystal, glittering with an ocean of iridescent facets.
Freckles dust her nose like a miniature map of the stars, so similar to the ones I painted on my bedroom door. I reach up to brush one and my fingers collide with glass.
Fingers that belong to a hand I’ve never seen before.
The skin is fine and pale, like the petals of a delicate, ivory flower. I touch the back of it, recoiling from the feel—soft and silky and not like my own.
A sharp gasp cuts into me as realization empties my waning well of composure.
No.
Please, no.
The ground seems to tilt, and I grasp the edge of the vanity, eyes wide ...
“What ... what ...”
What the hell.
A tear rips a glistening path down my cheek, leaving a trail so bright and clear it’s hard to look at. Batting it away, I notice a mark creeping up the side of my neck and across my right shoulder—a black, inky stain that looks like the tapered tip of a crawling vine.
Temptation to touch it fizzles in my belly as my lids sweep shut, blocking out the view, sending more wetness darting down my cheek ...
A nightmare.
I’m trapped in one of my nightmares.
“Orlaith ...”
My eyes snap open, but I ignore my reflection, turning my sharpened ire onto the man behind me.
I jab a finger at the mirror. “Who is that?”
“The girl I saved from a Vruk attack when she was two years old,” he grates out, and I barely recognize his voice. It’s just as hard as it usually is, but these words have cracks in their faces. They’re tarnished with age and chipped in places.
These words have been chained inside him for so long they’re wary of their freedom.
“This is you,” he continues. “This is who youreallyare.”
Who I really am.
I shoot to my feet and stumble a step. His left fist unravels, twitching at his side as I grip the vanity to steady myself, that silk pillow slip discarded on the floor.
“How?”
No answer.
“How did you hide me frommyself?”
He responds with a hard stare that says so much more than his absent words do.
I swallow, like forcing glass down my throat, which I swiftly realize is the jagged edges of betrayal slicing me up on their way down.
“You lied to me.”
