Immortal Consequences(125)

But this time…she’d have to do it alone.

Once her vision adjusted and she realized where she was, Irene couldn’t help but gasp.

She was inside what appeared to be a Blackwood building. But even though everything looked the same on the surface—dark floorboards, ivy crawling on the walls, iron sconces lining the path forward—she could see the strange cracks in the Ether’s projection. The mirrors were warped. The floor slightly crooked.

But it was more than that.

As she walked forward, making her way down the corridor, it almost felt like she wasn’t moving. Like the corridor was stretching out endlessly in front of her, like the ground itself was moving beneath her feet.

Irene fixed her gaze forward, unwilling to succumb to the Ether’s tricks. She had an innate suspicion that the mirrors lining the walls weren’t meant to be looked into. That if she allowed herself even a single moment of weakness, she’d find something terrible lurking beyond the glass surface.

She wasn’t sure where she was meant to be going. Each turn she took led her to another identical corridor. She called upon her magic, sensing her internal map. She could feel the faintest flicker of something in the distance. Something familiar.

She tried to keep track of how many turns she’d taken, a way of staying focused, but it didn’t take long for her to lose count. She’d been walking for what felt like hours, and the Ether’s draining properties had already begun to take effect. Her legs grew numb beneath her. Her chest heavy and head pounding mercilessly.

She glanced to her right— A mistake. One sudden, stupid mistake.

She looked straight into one of the mirrors, forgetting her promise to keep her eyes forward, and screamed when she saw what looked back at her.

It was her own face. Tired and exhausted. But she wasn’t alone.

“You left me.”

Masika stood behind her in the reflection, her face bloodied and scarred. Her words echoed in Irene’s skull, flooding through her mind in a disorienting loop. The logical part of Irene knew it was an illusion, but the other part of her, the one that was grief-stricken by the sudden loss of her friend, couldn’t help but respond.

“I had to keep going,” Irene told her. “You would have done the same thing.”

“I would have said goodbye to you.” Masika’s voice echoed all around her, her expression shifting from heartbroken to rageful. “I would have tried to find you.”

Irene stepped closer to the mirror. “I’m not a good friend. I’m not even a good person. If anything, I did you a favor. I made it easier for us both.”

Masika’s face glitched, warping within the mirror.

“You aren’t a bad person, Irene. You cling to that idea because it’s easier to do that than to face the person you’ve become. You want to run from the monster inside you. The darkness that follows you. But that isn’t who you are.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

Masika tilted her head. “You and I both know that’s a lie. I was the only person who saw the real you. Who saw the scared little girl hidden behind the mask. The one you thought you got rid of.”

“Stop,” Irene choked out. She stepped away from the mirror, but the wall behind her narrowed, trapping her within the constricting passageway. She had nowhere to run, forced to listen to the illusion’s words.

“Your mother hurt you, so you vowed to hurt the world. You took that rage and anger and let it turn you into the person you were most afraid of.”

“Stop—”

“But I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth losing the one friend you had.”

An anguished scream tore through Irene’s throat as she smacked her hand against the mirror. Glass shards exploded as her fist made contact, a splintered crack splitting the illusion of Masika in two.

“You can’t keep running from yourself,” the other girl whispered, voice fading. “No matter what choice you end up making. No matter where you go—you will always be there.”

When Irene blinked, the image of Masika vanished. The passageway had widened back to normal, exposing the path forward. Irene inhaled a ragged breath, hot tears prickling at her eyes, and faced the mirror once again. She waited for Masika’s face to reappear, to hear her friend’s voice one more time, but she was gone.

All Irene was left with was the one thing she’d always been truly afraid of. The real monster lurking in the darkness of her room.

The one thing she could never escape.

Herself.

60

Wren

She was in her room.

Everything was the same as the space she’d grown so familiar with: the oak dresser and tarnished mirror. The bedsheets adorned with depictions of wildflowers. The white lace curtains and dust-filled shelves. But Wren knew it wasn’t really her room. For one, she could feel the effects of the Ether around her—that intoxicated feeling in her limbs, the heaviness pressing down upon her skull. But there was also one glaringly obvious difference between this room and her real one. When she looked outside her window, she didn’t see the familiar trees dotting the path to the Main Yard. Instead, there appeared to be an endless black sky of glittering stars, an entire universe stretching out beyond her.

Wren glanced into the vanity mirror and assessed her reflection. She hardly recognized the person looking back at her. They shared the same physical characteristics—bright auburn hair, a pale complexion, thick brows—but that wasn’t who she really was. She knew there was someone else, someone lingering just beyond what the eye could see.