Page 89 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
Quinn never thought the first time she’d dance on with the Royalle Ballet would be in a stolen tutu in the middle of a murder investigation and vampiric conspiracy. But this was her life now.
The dance started within a croisé devant position and was full of tricky steps. Quinn knew the sequence, having performed the ballet once before, but it’d been a long time, and she was sloppy. She needed her fellow dancers to call out moves as they went.
Trying to position herself as close to the mirror as possible to keep an eye on it proved difficult while also trying to perform. Every turn she took, she spotted the mirror; every lift, her eyes watched the scarlet waterfall, checking and making sure no one approached it.
The music didn’t flow through her like normal; it burned, singeing pieces of her. It wasn’t beauty or passion; it was death and destruction.
But she didn’t care. She had a mission. Protect the mirror. Watch the mirror.
As the ballet continued, more and more dancers and Mirror-Blessed performers flocked to the floor, making even the simplest of moves impossible. The stage became a labyrinth, and she kept getting pushed farther and farther from her task.
A dense, enchanted fog invaded the stage. It was ominous and full of deadly secrets, the mist too thick to see much of anything.
The room smelled of iron and broken hearts.
Rain poured from the ceiling, coating Quinn’s tutu. The lights flickered as the music built into a crescendo, constructing a tense climax. Each strum of the violin echoed through her chest as she clawed her way to the mirror.
Something was wrong.
A drop of rain landed in her mouth, and it tasted like blood—real blood.
Quinn’s heart stumbled, and dread licked at the back of her neck. This was not supposed to happen. Something had gone terribly wrong. She tore her way through the dancers, and as the song climaxed, and an explosion rattled the sky, sending shards of crimson glass through the air.
Sharp, massive shards sliced through the air, cutting everything in their path—including the flesh of the dancer’s skin. Glass daggers.
Coming straight for Quinn. She threw her arms up to protect her face as she was about to be pummeled with the pieces of the mirror.
In a blink, Emrys appeared in front of her and pulled her into his chest, shielding her body from the shattering glass. The glass clinked against the ground, and time stilled. The sound was a thick, broken melody of death and destruction.
Screams burst through the glass melody, and chaos climbed into the night.
Quinn tilted her chin up and met Emrys’s amber eyes which were coated in deep concern.
He’d saved her, taking the impact of the glass daggers—using his body to protect hers, and even though he was a vampire, it had to hurt.
“Are you okay?” she breathed.
His lips tilted up in a half smile. “Yes, Quinnevere. I am fine”—he stroked her chin with his thumb—“and so are you.”
Quinn gulped. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
The rotten melody played on while they stood frozen in each other’s arms, but as the sound faded, the mirror glass evaporated into nothingness, leaving a scarlet stain across the floor—the sign of a dead magic mirror.
Quinn swallowed, her throat tight and aching. “We failed . . . again.”
Thirty
Formalin and crusted blood laced the air. On the exam table lay a corpse with lacerations caused by broken shards of glass. A Mirror-Blessed dancer. The only person to die in the aftermath of the second Blood Mirror being destroyed.
A dancer like herself, except Emrys saved her, blocking all the shattered glass from impaling her, too. Hesavedher, but she didn’t know how to feel about it or what to do with that information.
Quinn’s throat worked.
At least no vampires died in the attack. Which was a blessing and a curse because it meant the killer must have gotten the paintings out before they shattered the mirror.
Quinn rubbed her eyes, tired from lack of sleep. It was hard to get any rest when adrenaline from the attack coursed through her body. She yawned as if to prove the point, and her uncle glared in her direction. He disapproved of displays of weakness, including tiredness. But at least Uncle Matias said nothing about their fight or the council meeting. As if ignoring the whole situation would make it disappear. Just another example of how her family avoided emotional conflict.
