Eddie hung back. “I do not wish to come, sire.”
“Too bad,” Charlie snapped. “You’re coming. That’s an order.”
I turned to Abigail and Eldin. “You two stay behind. Buy us some time in case Cassiel comes looking for us. Don’t tell him where we’ve gone.”
I shot a glance at my brother’s Familiar. The peryton was so big and an easy target. Ez wasn’t going to stay behind even if I asked, but at least without Tahoma along, Ez wouldn’t get hurt if his Familiar was targeted. Pig shrank back toward Tahoma.
“Pig and Tahoma will stay back, too,” I said.
At that, I turned to the portal and followed Charlie through. The rest of my friends trailed behind.
Darkness enveloped me at all angles. All around me, my friends appeared to be floating in empty space. The light from endless mirrors flickered by us, and in the distance, a ghostly shriek echoed through the vast emptiness. We were inside the Mirror Realm, which I had become so accustomed to, but the sensation of passing through it usually only lasted a split-second.
Moments passed, and nothing changed.
Panic swelled inside of me. “Charlie!” I cried.
I had the horrifying thought that the Warden must be pushing against Charlie’s magic, or that the Main Facility’s wards had already been reinstated. We could become trapped here in the Mirror Realm, wasting away for eternity, unless Charlie found us a way outnow.
All around me, my friends’ terrified faces reflected off of spinning mirrors, until I couldn’t make sense of what was solid and what was reflection. They started screaming in horror, their voices melting together into a sickening symphony.
“Hang on!” Charlie yelled. His voice seemed to echo distantly. “I’m finding a reflective surface to portal out of!”
One by one, my friends began to disappear. I couldn’t make sense of where they’d gone.
Shit, shit,shit! We were going to be trapped in here!
“Charlie!” I screamed, crying out my last hope.
The shimmering ripple of a broken mirror with jagged edges appeared in front of me. Hands reached through the mirror and grabbed my arms and my chair. I screamed in terror as I was pulled through the portal.
Gravity shifted, and Charlie used his Air magic to steady me. My wheels landed on solid ground, though I was momentarily disoriented. I gasped for breath and looked around to see that allmy friends had made it. I put a hand to my chest, trying to calm my raging heart.
As my balance returned, I found that we were in a small, empty bedroom. Thin curtains covered a miniscule window, and I could see that it was dark outside. We stood in a nice building that appeared newly built, and the temperature was comfortable. It didn’t seem like the kind of place the Warden would hold prisoners. I assumed this was where the guards stayed… only, there was no one here.
A cot with no bedding stood in the corner, along with a vacant desk on the other side of the room. The only other item nearby was a large mirror that had been toppled over and broken. Beneath us lay shards of reflective glass; the largest piece we’d crawled out of lay in the center.
Marcus opened a drawer in the desk, but there was nothing inside. “This is weird. It’s like nobody’s been here.”
Oberi went over to the cot and sniffed it.This was someone’s room, all right. I can smell the stench of angels in this place, though they left some time ago.
The broken mirror indicated that someone had gone in a hurry, though otherwise there seemed to be no evidence that anyone had lived here at all. Everything had been completely cleared out.
“This is the guards’ quarters,” I said hollowly.
“They must’ve known it was only a matter of time before we showed up after their wards fell,” Ez said thoughtfully. “The guards must’ve fled so they weren’t discovered.”
I listened closely for the sound of guards or the screams of prisoners, but I heard nothing at all.
That terrified me, and panic shook my frame. Something wasverywrong.
I had the horrifying thought that Cassiel had waited too long. His words echoed in my mind.In time, he will know, once matters have settled.
Cassiel had been waiting for this.
I shuddered. “If everything’s been neatly packed away, and the guards are gone, that means…”
Everyone else knew exactly what I was thinking, and I couldn’t bear to finish the thought. My friends’ faces fell, but I could see it in their eyes that they weren’t ready to admit what we already knew.
