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“I will protect Quill, Thea, and Elowen as best I can, Deyanira, but Paesha… she has to go with you.”
“I’m not bargaining her life,” I argued.
She shook her head, turning to Paesha. “It’s not a bargain. You’re the only one with the power to find the path.”
“You’ve got my magic confused. I’ve never been to Death’s court, and I can’t find something I have no familiarity with.”
“I can offer the doorway, but you must follow your magic to Ezra.”
All color leached from her face as she tried to swallow and failed. I handed her my drink, and she threw it back, nearly choking on the burn. Eventually, she took my hands, that set of stunning eyes shifting between mine.
She didn’t have to say the words. I knew her answer long before the question was ever given. Still, she spoke, severing all hope. “I’m sorry, Deyanira. But I can’t leave Quill behind. I’ve accepted that I will spend eternity with Ezra when my time eventually comes. I know I’m needed here just a little while longer. And I didn’t say goodbye. I just left her. If I don’t come back…” She shook her head, stepping away from me. “She’ll never recover from it, and I think that might be dangerous for Requiem. She’s powerful.”
“I know,” I whispered, feeling so utterly lost. He’d been right there, attainable. And now there was no path forward.
“Please,” Ro said. “Please reconsider. I’ve promised to look after the child. She can come here. I helped raise Deyanira from her own sorrow as a child. I can do the same for Quill. I’ll protect her.”
Paesha was quiet for a long time, staring at the floor. She didn’t want to be the reason Orin suffered, and I knew it. But Quill was like her own. And still so young. I couldn’t let her guilt eat at her for another second. And I couldn’t let myself become defeated.
I slipped my hand into hers, squeezing. “I’ll find the path on my own, Paesha.”
As if she hadn’t heard me, she lifted her head, staring at Ro. “If I go, can I come back?”
Ro sighed. “If there is a way, you will be the one to find it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to say goodbye to Quill, just in case?”
Paesha shook her head. “I’m coming back for her. If I say goodbye beyond what I already did, she’s only going to worry. Her mother abandoned her. Her father abandoned her. She wanted a friend in Drexel so bad, and he cast her to the side. I’m her constant. More than anyone else. It has to be this way, or she will panic.”
“Okay,” I answered. “I promise when the time comes, I’ll help you find the way home.”
We stood in a room of mirrors I’d never seen before, the air thick with an eerie, hushed tension. The chamber seemed suspended in a timeless void, its boundaries obscured by countless reflections of ourselves. The walls, the ceiling, the floor—all surfaces, every inch of them—were adorned with mirrors, each one casting our likenesses back at us, multiplying our anxious faces into infinity.
“Ready?” Paesha reached for my hand with a faint tremble. “Don’t let go, okay? Whatever happens?”
At the center of the room loomed the ominous mirror that beckoned us toward an irreversible journey into eternity. So unlike the others, with a dark frame of ornate wood that seemed to absorb the very light around it. Its surface was not pristine; instead, it carried an ebb and flow of shadow.
“In case I forget to tell you, Huntress, thanks for coming. See you on the other side,” I said, taking one final deep breath and leaping into the mirror.
Part Three
Chapter 58
As Paesha and I stepped through the clouded surface of the ancient mirror, a surreal chill enveloped me. The world I had known a moment ago vanished, seeming to suck the souls from our bodies as we gripped each other tightly. Everything around us twisted and turned. We fell through a snowy winter sky, the wind lashing us in the face until reality twisted again, becoming a bleak expanse of nothing. Paesha screamed, and her fingers loosened from me. I scrambled as we fell, fighting to keep ahold of her as the world changed again, and we soared toward the open mouth of a sea monster, tentacles surging around a great ocean. Moments before we were swallowed whole, another jerk of reality dipped us into a world of two great moons.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Here. We’re here.”
She threw her other hand around me, chestnut hair whipping in my face as we fell to the black stone ground, into a familiar realm that seemed to defy the very laws of reality. Climbing to our feet, catching our breath, we exchanged a determined glance, a silent vow to protect each other at all costs.
Massive wrought-iron gates, ancient and foreboding, stretched into the obsidian sky, which hosted two moons. Their intricate designs seemed to writhe with a life of their own, like serpents coiled and waiting to strike. The gates, framed by the swirling mists of the underworld, stretched into infinity, their spires disappearing into a dark abyss. The ironwork was as cold as death itself, and I couldn’t help but shiver as a gust of otherworldly wind brushed against my skin, carrying with it the faint scent of withered roses and distant, echoing whispers.
The ground rumbled beneath our feet, and from the depths of the shadows emerged Death’s hellhounds. With eyes that gleamed like fiery embers and snarling jaws that dripped with anticipation of our demise, they were monstrous creatures.
The sharp slice of Paesha’s blade being drawn from its sheath drew their attention. I thought back to her battle in the castle and how she’d nearly fallen. I’d meant to save Orin, but maybe letting Paesha come was a terrible idea.
“Stop it,” she hissed. “I can see the look in your eye, Maiden. We live together, or we die together, right here and now. If you start doubting me, this fight is over. Knock it off.”
The dogs began to circle us as I pulled several small throwing knives.
