Page 143 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
She sucked in a deep breath, and her body trembled, but she needed to do something. She couldn’t allow the pain to jolt her. She’d danced through worse agony. She could fight through it, too.
I’m not a mouse in a trap.
She rolled her shoulders back.
I’m a lion.
How do you beat chaos?
By cheating.
Jevon pulled her up by the chin, and she let herself get close because now he washer prey.
Her eyes locked with Giselle, who’d somehow managed to break free of the magic. Almost as if they were psychically linked, Giselle pushed over a massive vase, creating a distraction. At that exact moment, Quinn thrust her arm up and released the scalpel into Jevon’s throat.
“Seren, now,” Quinn yelled.
Three things happened instantaneously. Jevon crumbled to the floor, as did the reanimated dead bodies, and everyone was released from the magical hold. Seren plunged forward and tried to reach Jevon’s mirror, but she was knocked off track by an attacking vampire. In the madness, Quinn snatched Emrys’s painting from the floor.
A battle started between the newly created vampires and the originals loyal to Emrys.
With a quick pirouette and a grand jeté jump, Quinn dodged an attacker. With another jump and a somersault, Quinn avoided a vampire who had his sights set on her. In doing so, one of Emrys’s vampires was able to intervene.
It was a clash of immortals.
And humans were stuck in the middle as collateral damage.
Quinn fought well. Ballet was a handy skill to have while fighting vampires. She ducked and pliéd, avoiding another vampire. She was trying to get to the wall and to a painting of Emrys displayed on it. To save the prince, she’d switch out his painting and hide it somewhere.
Reaching the wall, she pulled the artwork off with her good hand, ran, jumped, slid on her knees across the room, dodged vampires, and slid under a table concealed by a white tablecloth as fast as she could. Quinn plucked off the frame with her good hand, clutching her bad one to her chest and begging away the pain still shooting through it. Quinn clumsily rolled the art into a scroll. Then she flipped her skirts up, untied the other paintings, and added Emrys’s to the pile before rolling them up again. With one hand filled with scrolls and the fakes in the crease of her elbow, she peered out from under the tablecloth.
Across the room was a gilded vase big enough to stash the real paintings. If she put them there, she could give the fake of Emrys back to Jevon. She shoved the real paintings underneath her stays before sliding out from under the table and navigating around the battle.
Quickly, she got to the vase, and with her broken, useless hand, she parted the white feathers stashed inside. Blocking the sight lines with her body, Quinn stuffed the paintings between the feathers.
Hopefully, that worked, and no one saw. Because if anyone noticed, she would be caught and in a far worse position than before.
But for now, the paintings were safe. Emrys’s painting was safe! And that was all that mattered.
The only problem was that in hiding the real paintings, Quinn was forced to let go of Seren’s, and she was now free and able to fight her. Quinn hated losing that control, but it had to be. It’d be worse if Jevon got his hands on that power. Besides, she hated the idea of taking someone’s choices from them.
With her task complete, Quinn was finally able to breathe and clutch her broken hand to her chest.
But the battle wasn’t over. Across the room, Giselle frantically searched the floor for something until . . .
Until her fingers slid onto an object. Quinn’s heart leaped into a sissone jump as her best friend maneuvered the reflective stone and chandelier light. But the stone must’ve been too bloody because she frantically wiped it on her dress.
Finally, reflecting the light, she dragged it to the ignition spot, her fingers visibly trembling.
Quinn’s heart exploded . . . or maybe it was the bombs because silver confetti erupted from the walls and fell from the ceiling like snow.
Giselle was successful, and warmth spread through Quinn’s chest as pride swelled.
The effect was instant. As soon as the silver touched the vampires’ skin, they screeched in guttural pain. It incapacitated the majority of them, but some tried to crawl and stumble away. Some passed out from the pain.
Every movement wrote agony across their faces.
Humans, on the other hand, were gorgon statues. Frozen in terror. Some even had puddles running from their suits. But they needed to get out. They needed to move. This was their chance—the chance to live.
