Page 129 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
Emrys smiled brightly.Everything is fine.
“So we go to the Ruins District?” Countess Teagan asked. “We only have a couple of hours until the ball.”
Quinn narrowed her eyes, not trusting the countess at all.
After the fifteen-minute walk, the group rested in front of the towering mermaid gates. Beautiful yet rotten, unlike the dragon gates of the Gold Quarter.
Quinn’s hands shook, and acid crawled up her throat, her hair the midnight black of unmitigated fear—a torrent of it gripping her in a vise.
The viciously beautiful statues on the gate whispered to life, their tails flicking, hair waving in the crisp wind, and their eyes carving a hole into Quinn’s chest. The hair on the back of her neck and arms stood at readied attention.
“Enter at your peril, wicked humans and creatures most vile,” the mermaids said in sinister unison.
The group hesitated until Giselle held up her skirt and dashed through the gates. Everyone followed.
Two things happened simultaneously. An ocean of screams and curses came from the Mirrors of Trapped Souls, and a chilling invisible barrier attacked the group’s bodies. Once they stepped through, night claimed the sky, casting the entire plane in chilling shadows.
Oh, wicked mirrors.Was this how the souls were trapped? People walked through the barrier and were never allowed to leave.
Panic clawed across her back, leaving scars of sorrow in its wake. She couldn’t be stuck in a mirror. There was nothing worse imaginable. So, she leaped backward, and the barrier gave away, causing her to crash onto the paved street.
She loosed a breath and thanked the stars that they’d have an escape.
Around her neck, the necklace vibrated and glowed with red fire—the mirror shard liquefying and dancing.
They were getting closer.
With pure resilience and utter grit, she stood back up, wiped off her hands, and barged through the barrier once more. Bile rose in her throat as the caged souls shrieked, filling the air with nothing but terror, torture, and turbulence. They were restless and chanting such evil that even nightmares would cower in fear. As the group moved, the mirrors started telling unknowable truths mixed with unimaginable lies.
They said things like: “We want to taste your soul,” “Quinnevere Ashelle fears emotion more than is wise,” and “Your heart is evil and full of hate.” They went on and on, whispering cruel and damaging words into the blackened night. “Magic rests inside. Use it, and you may prevail,”said a mirror with kind gray eyes.
A particularly vicious one screeched. “One of your friends will betray you, little ballerina.”
But that had already happened.
All the while, Quinn’s hair paled to snow-white, and her nails wept midnight tears.
As she trekked farther into the fray, she began to find warm souls that split the wretched with hope. They cheered them on and helped them to continue through. At the edge of the cluster, rested a mirror with a thirty-year-old woman who had sweet eyes, a kind soul, and silky black hair. So much about her was familiar.
Blood. It was Blood.
Quinn clutched her necklace.
Blood whispered, “Stay the course, and only trust the human without magic.”
When they finally reached the clearing beyond, it was like breathing for the first time. All six of them gasped for air. Their reactions ranged from clutching their knees to holding their sides to staring straight ahead at the next obstacle.
The towering vampire ruins.
Stone crumbled at the seams of turrets and looked like the jagged edges of a shattered stained-glass window. The once beautiful, majestic castle festered and rotted like the bowels of a river-soaked corpse. Darkness’s wings surrounded the place and covered it in death. Vines snaked up the shattered stone, and mold grew along the walls like parasites feasting on flesh. Moss and mildew covered the ground, and everything about the place screamed, “Get out!” Including Quinn’s gut.
Monsters worse than death haunted the grounds. Decay breathed life into this place, and nothing was free from its chokehold.
Above the entrance were dripped words written in blood.
It took several moments for Quinn to organize the letters and make sense of them.If you wish to enter the ruins safely, a blood sacrifice must be freely given.
“What does that even mean?” Giselle asked, her eyes wide with excitement or fear. It was hard to tell the difference with her.
