Page 148 of The Eternal Mirror
And with that thought, something cracks open in my mind. A memory.
Not a dream. Not a vision.
This actually happened. And I buried it. Where I buried all my memories of Hecate. They hurt too much. And just like that, I remember. Not in fragments. Not in pieces. I’m back inside the memory, living it again.
“Sink down inside yourself,” Hecate says. “Look with your inner eyes. Search for a break, an opening.”
Itry my best to clear my mind, but it’s like asking the ocean to be still. Thoughts churn and crash, and underneath them, something lurks. Something I don’t want to acknowledge.
Except...it’s always been there.
At the thought, a pressure forms in my head. It feels as though I’m standing at the edge of a high cliff, staring into deep, black, bottomless water.
And now, Hecate wants me to dive headfirst into it.
My stomach knots. My breath comes too fast. Ugh. I don’t want to do this.
But once again—it’s not as though I have much choice.
I close my eyes and sink inward, peeling back the layers of myself. Deeper, deeper—
And then I find it. Deep down, something stirs. A flicker. A whisper. A crack in my defenses, thin and jagged, like fractured glass.
And through it—
Darkness.
Not just the absence of light. It’s a living thing, churning, slow and thick, like oil spilling through water.
Cold slams into my chest, as if I’m stuck beneath ice. My lungs seize. My hands turn numb. My pulse is erratic. My skin burns cold-hot. My heartbeat is everywhere—throat, fingertips, skull.
There’s something evil in there. I can feel it. I know it. And it recognizes me, calls to me.
What if I’m not meant to stop the darkness?
What if I am the darkness?
A violentsnap—
The crack slams shut.
That’s what I saw.
And I slammed it shut because I was afraid of what I would find.
But maybe...maybe it’s time to take another peek.
“What is it?” Zayne asks. “You’ve thought of something. And from the look on your face, it’s not something good.”
Not good, but maybe...
“I’m Lucifer’s daughter,” I say.
“Yeah, we know that.”
“Conceived after Khronus used dark magic from the mirror splinter to create the devil. Lucifer had dark magic inside him—that’s what made him so powerful. And I think...I think he might have passed it on to me.”
“The dark place inside of you,” Khaosti murmurs.
