Page 104 of The Mortal Trials

My chest heaves as I try to remember what set me apart from Carina. All the things I listed earlier. Our jaws. Hers was squarer. Her freckles were more plentiful. Mine are scattered like the stars, she used to say.

The more differences I seek, the less I understand. Because the features in the glass aren’t mine. They’re hers.

I’m not looking at me. There is no scar from cheek, to lips, to chin.

I blink and question myself again and again, trying to be sure. Until I am.

I’m looking at Carina. At what sets us apart instead of our similarities. I see my sister, yet I can’t be. What does this mean?

“Callalie!” the seer sharply calls.

She reaches for the mirror, to take it away. To take away my sister again. “Don’t touch her!” I jerk it out of her reach, careful to keep the obsidian within the realm of red so I don’t lose Carina.

Carina. My dead sister. Who grins wickedly at me, full of love and life. “I’ve missed you, carnalita,” are her first words. She shakes her head and adds, “August Aymes, Cal?!”

“Is this – how are you real?” I cry. My hands tremble as I hold her.

“There’s so much you don’t know,” she deflates. “If I had more time, I’d tell you everything.”

I sit up straighter. “Are you with Hades?”

“No!” she snarls. “I move between Lugh’s meadow and here…”

Why would she go anywhere else? “Where’s ‘here’?”

“Cal, I need you to hear her out. It’s very important that you sit and listen to what she has to say. You must be patient.” Carina’s jaw sets into that strong, stubborn line. She presses her eyes closed. “And please, please don’t run.”

“Don’t run?” Fear squeezes my heart. I look through the bloody smoke to the seer still seated across from me.

As she pushes the shawl back, I fumble the mirror. It hits the table and shatters into a thousand shards.

I stand, sifting through them, searching for Carina, my chest getting tighter when I can’t find her in any of them.

She’s… she’s gone. My sister’s gone again. A wail tears from my soul. “NO!” I slice my fingers on the broken glass, holding pieces out into the smoke and twisting them. I just want to see her again. “Carina! No, please!”

Let me see her one more time.

Just one more time.

Please.

Gods. Please.

“Callalie.”

That voice.

“Callalie Ryan.” That motherly tone I remember but want to forget.

She only exists in memories I shove into the dark. She’s another reason I hate my reflection and why I started hating it as I grew from a girl to a young woman. I have her sable hair, her height, the proud tilt of her chin, even her eyes.

“No!” I bite, ready to run like Carina predicted and warned me against doing.

This is Ares’s doing.

I scream, using my forearm to brush everything off the table. The broken glass. Its empty rim. The shells and their copal tumble over the floor. Blood-colored smoke plumes from the bare floor.

I search for some way to escape this. Her. Everything.