“Let me help you,” she said and took my hand. I got to my feet and then sat on the bed. Ana crossed to my nightstand, pouring me a cup of water. A sour taste still lingered in the back of my throat and on my tongue.
“What happened?” she asked as she handed me the cup.
It was cool to the touch, and instead of drinking it, I placed it to my head.
“I don’t know. All of a sudden, I do not feel well.”
“Are you with child?”
Ana’s question shocked me, and I looked up to meet her gaze, which was soft and gentle.
“No,” I said quickly and paused, going cold. “I can’t be. I…”
I am going to die, I thought, though I knew there was a very real chance that I actually was pregnant, and if that was the truth, then I had just signed a death warrant for my child.
I stood, shaking.
“Ana, I can’t be pregnant.”
“You very well can be, Yesenia.”
“You do not understand—”
“I know you’ve said it before, that you are going to die—”
“I am. Dragos asked if he would conquer the world, and I foretold that his attempt would end in his demise,” I said. “He will murder me, Ana.”
Her lips slammed together and her jaw tightened.
“Then you must flee,” she said, as if it were that simple.
I shook my head. I had seen the future, seen my death at the stake, but why had I not seen life? My chest felt as though it were being ripped to shreds. I pressed my hands to my stomach and then hugged myself, tears streaming down my face.
“How did I not see this life?” I asked, my voice broken.
Ana rose and placed her hands on my shoulders. “You can change the course of the future, Yesenia. Perhaps you did so here.”
I wanted to believe her, and perhaps stupidly, her words gave me hope.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Adrian will figure it out,” Ana said. “But first, you must tell him.”
Ravena came back into focus. She stood opposite me, and it was the first time I’d ever seen any kind of expression on her face beyond hateful smugness.
I remembered the rest of that night. Adrian and I had fled to the cottage under the mountains where we would spend a final night together. It was the same place Adrian had buried the bones of High Coven. It was where we had been captured, where Adrian had been beaten and where Dragos had raped me.
“I never told him,” I whispered, staring at Ravena now. “I never told Adrian.”
This revelation was a knife to my heart. There was a part of me that wanted to wonder what might have happened had we lived. Would I have had a boy or a girl? Would I have been able to use those names I had chosen?
“That is what Dragos took from you,” Ravena said. “It is what men did to you because they feared you. Shall we give them something to truly fear?”
Ravena held out her hand, and while I had no real insight of what she wanted, I knew that I needed inside that portal if I was ever going to stop her.
I took her hand.
Entering the mirror felt exactly like running through glass. It hurt, as if a thousand pins were scraping over my skin, but once inside, I was awash in brightness. There was no floor or ceiling or walls. I existed in nothing, but I was not alone here. Only the woman opposite me was not Ravena.
“Ana?” I breathed.
I looked behind me to see out into the great hall. When I turned around, Ana was still there, slight and silver-haired.
“I don’t understand. You’re…aren’t you at the Red Palace?”
“I have not woken up, but I will…after this.” She smiled at me sadly. “Are you quite devastated?”
I could not speak, but the pieces were falling into place.
“Mirrors show the truth,” she said. “I cannot hide from you in here.”
“Please do not say it,” I said, shaking my head.
“I wanted you to remember me,” Ana said, and I closed my eyes against her truth. “So badly, but when you didn’t, I knew I would be on my own.”
“This whole time, it was you. Why did you create such havoc for The Book of Dis? You could have just taken it.”
“I did,” she said. “I have been using it for quite some time.”
I shook my head.
“I have created a lot of monsters testing the spells you created,” she said. “I often wondered what you were thinking, especially with the crimson mist.”
The mist, I thought. Isla.
But that would mean that Ana had cast the spell that killed her lover.
Worse, though, was that I was the one who had written those spells.
“I don’t understand. You are saying…I am responsible for the mist…for all monsters?”
“Indirectly,” she replied.
“Why would I…？”
“Before Adrian was chosen as Dis’s incarnate, she had chosen you. She fed these spells to you,” said Ana. “You were to bring balance to the world, but of course, men got in the way.”
“Dis hates me,” I said.
“She hates you because she loves Adrian,” said Ana.
“Then why did she allow me to incarnate again?”
“To keep him on her side,” said Ana. “Though I think you know it is too late for that. That is why she takes control of him, to remind him that he is a pawn.”
“And instead of destroying Dis, you wish to destroy Adrian?”
“There is no other way, Isolde,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Isolde—”
“There has to be another way!” I screamed, my pain and anger tearing from my chest.
“Adrian is Dis upon this earth, and when we were powerful—when witches ruled the earth—we could keep the power in check, but too many of us are asleep.”
“Then let’s wake them up, Ana!”
She shook her head. “Look at you, one of the most powerful witches of our time, and you can barely wake up. You are so terrified.”
“You do not want anyone more powerful than you,” I snapped.
She shook her head. “You love him too much to see the truth.”
“The only truth I see at the moment is how you betrayed me.”
“One day, you will understand,” she said. “And then we can work together to bring balance to this world.”
“Is your idea of balance siphoning magic from the bones of High Coven?” I asked. “That does not seem like balance to me.”
“Oh, but it is,” she said. “I did not siphon magic from your bones for myself, Isolde. I used your bones to create the one monster who could destroy Adrian—Asha’s incarnate.”
No. I ground my teeth and charged for her, but I was hit with a blast of energy and thrown into the great hall once again. I landed on my back near Nadia, my breath knocked out of me. A horrible shattering sound filled the hall, and I rolled onto my side, covering my head as pieces of mirror rained down.
When it was done, I rose to my feet and stared at the ruined hall.
“Isolde!”
My eyes shifted to the open doors where Adrian stood, fierce and angry and beautiful. An ache filled my chest beyond anything I had ever felt before in my life. I wanted to tell him so many things, but all I could manage was a desperate sob, and just when my knees gave out, he caught me and held me to his chest.