Page 88 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
The Blood Rebellion Ballet started with slow, elegant moves, with the dancers pretending to be the Vampire Gods. They depicted the total and utter control vampires had over humans. Humans were prey—victims—fully lacking power.
The dance was dark, alluring, and utterly captivating.
The Royalle Ballet’s Mirror-Blessed dancers shined in the number, flying, hovering, and manipulating the stage. One of the performers had hair made of diamonds, and another shone like that of the North Star. Glimmering and gliding across the stage.
Quinn was transfixed, allowing the music and movement to fill her soul. But she felt the prince’s gaze on her face like a phantom wind, and she turned to meet him.
“I wish I could see through your eyes,” he whispered. Herbreath hitched, and her lips tingled with the memory of his kisses. “You see the world and all of its beauty.” His gaze caressed her cheeks. “All of its possibilities. You study it, and you understand it.”
She gulped.
A surge of passion built in her belly, and she leaned into him, his energy pulling her closer. A magnet needing to touch him, to feel his lips on hers. He was an intoxicating drug, and she wanted to get lost in him.
But then she remembered Constance’s words from earlier. He still wanted her—longed for her. His roguish ways were due to his pain from losing Constance. Quinn didn’t want to be a consolation prize or just another girl he played with. If she wanted him—which she absolutely didn’t—she wanted to be more. She wanted to mean something.
She tore her gaze away and focused back on the stage, where there was a sudden flash of blood. Quinn gasped.
“Emrys, do you see it?” she said, tapping his arm and pointing at the stage.
At the back stood a massive two-story crimson mirror. It was a waterfall of sparkling blood, and it blended in perfectly with the coloring of the theater as if it belonged there—as if it had always been there.
She turned back to Emrys to see if he felt the same adrenaline surging through him at the sight, but he only glanced at her with crinkled brows. “I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t see the mirror on the stage?” At this, everyone in the box’s eyes landed on her, confusion lacing their faces. “None of you see it?”
Under her corset, her mirror necklace pulsed and burned. She pulled it out of the fabric, and the glass melted into liquid metal. Then danced a pas de deux in its cage.
“Has it ever done that before?” Emrys asked.
“Yes,” Quinn whispered. “Once.” Was the necklace the reason she could see the mirror, but others couldn’t? Testing her theory,she looped the chain over her head and placed the chain in Emrys’s palm. “Be careful not to touch the shard, but do you see it now?”
She was unsure if that was the correct answer because when she removed the jewelry from her body, she was still able to see the mirror.
“Yes,” Emrys breathed. “I see it.”
He passed the necklace to Constance, who passed it to Giselle, who passed it to Jevon. Within a matter of minutes, they all saw the sparkling liquid mirror at the back of the stage through the glamour.
Possibly because the Blood Mirrors were connected.
“How in the world are we going to get to it with a packed audience and dancers littering the stage,” Giselle asked.
“Quinny, are you thinking what I am?” Constance said.
Quinn moaned. “We’re gonna steal the dancer’s costumes, aren’t we?”
A mischievous grin painted Constance’s face. “Yes, we are.”
“What exactly is the plan?” Francois asked, raising a brow. “The cost of taking the paintings out is a soul, so we obviously aren’t going to bargain for them, and the mirror is far too big to move during the ballet.”
Emrys rubbed his forehead. “We need to guard it and maybe send someone in to ask if anyone has tried to bargain with it recently.”
“I believe the killer has a mirror object that is allowing them to either watch us or be a step ahead. They might even be here now,” Quinn said. “So, we need to make sure we keep them from getting what they’ve come for and then possibly figure out a way to lure them and trap them.”
“We get as close as we can to guard it until the show is over or the murderer shows?” Jevon asked.
“Yes,” Emrys and Quinn said in unison.
After slipping from the Royalle Box and using Emrys’s vampire abilities, the group split into four groups. Giselle, withthe gang, tried to get to the mirror from behind the stage. Emrys compelled two dancers to sleep in their dressing room so that Quinn and Constance could join the show. After helping the girls, he used his vampiric abilities to make himself invisible and get as close as he could, and Jevon watched from the stage wings.
