Page 15 of Demanding Discord
The secrets, the lies, the solitary actions. I hated being alone.
I gazed at my reflection, at my disheveled hair and the dark circles beneath my eyes. My mom had been training me to be self-sufficient my entire life. Being high priestess is a lonely undertaking, she would say, but it’s a burden you must learn to bear on your own.
But what did she know? My mom didn’t have sisters. She didn’t understand what it was like to be forced to keep secrets from the people she loved the most. And she wasn’t truly alone as high priestess. She’d married my dad when she was eighteen, long before she ascended to the position. She had a partner, someone she confided in.
My sisters used to be my partners, but training to run the coven isolated me, forbade me from sharing things with them, and I hated it. I hated everything about it.
The humming intensified, the red sigils pulsing brighter, demanding my attention. In the center of the mirror, an elemental fire witch sigil glowed deep blue…exactly where I had drawn it in my breath.
I touched the glass, tracing my fingers over my sigil and then the others. Nothing happened, so I tried again, going the opposite direction. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
The sound of something hard hitting stone echoed from the other end of the room. I jerked my head toward the sound, hoping to see Discord charging through, but the wall remained intact.
The mirror, with its glowing sigils, showed me nothing more than the lonely woman staring back at me. If this was some sort of test, I was failing miserably.
“I’ve got nothing.” I shrugged and lit another fireball before pacing to the end of the room. Holding the flames toward the wall, I searched for another way out. This wall was as solid as the front.
I peered along the row of mirrors to my left and then to my right. They had all been placed flush with the wall, so unless one of them was a hidden doorway, there was no way in or out of this place without Discord’s help.
Of course, I had to try them all.
I ran my fingers along the edges of the nearest mirror. I found no seam, no indentation, or bump to indicate where the mirror ended and the wall began. I tried the one across from it, but it felt the same. I worked my way down the wall, feeling, searching, hoping to no avail. The reflective glass was a part of the stone, no doubt magically created when the temple was erected.
I returned to the glowing mirror, the only one that offered my reflection, and extinguished my flames. “Hecate, please hear my plea.”
A loud crash sounded from the other room, like stone cracking against stone. The temple groaned again, and bits of basalt fell from the ceiling. Whatever the boys were up to out there, I needed to figure out this puzzle before the entire temple collapsed on top of me.
Okay, think, Cinder. This mirror, these sigils… I highly doubted this was the work of a demon. I recognized the strength sigil on the right side of the glass, and one for endurance was etched into the bottom left. They were witchcraft symbols. The mirrors seemed to be part of the temple, which meant whatever test this was, it came from the goddess.
Good. Witchcraft I could handle. A demonic trap, not so much.
“Show me what you need me to see.” I stared through the fire symbol, letting my vision soften so I could hopefully receive whatever message Hecate had for me. My eyes watered at the brightness of the sigils, and as the light intensified, I had to squint. The symbols dimmed, and the rest of the room plunged into darkness. I mean, complete, utter, total darkness. Seriously, I couldn’t see anything but my reflection…not even my hand in front of my face.
“Okay, I take it you want me to see myself.” I laughed dryly. “Here I am. All alone.”
My heart sank at my words. “I know. I need to get used to it. Is that what you want me to see? That my birthright, my duty to my coven, comes first and I need to prepare myself for a lonely life?”
I’d hoped my revelation would reignite the firelight, or a secret door would open behind me. Hell, I’d have settled for a ringing bell and a winner, winner, chicken dinner. Anything to say I’d passed the test and could find Hecate and end this nightmare. But nothing happened. My reflection didn’t change. The same miserable woman, who looked like she hadn’t slept in a week, stared back at me.
“I don’t understand why it has to be this way.” I shifted my weight to my right leg. “I get tradition. I get ritual. But sometimes, doing things a certain way because that’s how they’ve always been done does more harm than good.”
The crimson light pulsed twice, and I crossed my arms.
“Or is this because I broke the rules? Am I supposed to see that I shouldn’t have told my sisters about the curse? That this was my burden to bear alone because every high priestess before me handled it on her own? If so, I call bullshit.”
The fire sign wavered, the blue glow around it growing larger, egging me on.
“A coven should be able to operate in whatever manner works best. My sisters are as much a part of the Holland bloodline as I am. I should have brought them in on the secrets as soon as I learned them, because a true leader keeps her people informed.”
The fire sigil flashed, its blinding light freezing me to the spot. I no longer saw myself reflected in the mirror. Instead, my mind floated in the ether, in a trance similar to scrying, though I wasn’t searching for anyone but myself.
Or maybe I was.
Deep down, in the core of my being, I knew I needed my sisters. The vision showed me flashes of them in the earthly realm. Ash burning through roots, Ember slaying demons, both battling fae bigger than any I’d ever seen. The veil had grown so thin…and it kept getting thinner. They couldn’t mend it on their own.
It would take all of us…all six of us…to make things right again.
I gasped, my vision returning to the mirror’s reflection, only this time, Ash and Ember stood behind me. I whirled to face them, but of course they weren’t there.
