Chapter 3

Chapter Three: The Mirror’s Debt

 The woman—the thing—that stood in the doorway was a mockery of everything I was.

 She wore the same ivory lace I had picked out with such hope in Life Nine. But the lace was now yellowed with the rot of the grave and stained with a dark, vertical spray of blood across the bodice. Her head hung at a sickening angle, the neck clearly snapped, swaying like a pendulum with every jerky step she took.

 But it was the eyes that broke me. Or rather, the lack of them. Where my eyes should have been, there were only twin pits of seething, oily smoke.

 "Julian..." I choked out, my knees giving way. I collapsed against the stone railing of the balcony, the cold wind howling behind me as if the sky itself were screaming.

 Julian didn’t hesitate. He stepped in front of me, his body a shield of muscle and silk. The silver dagger in his hand vibrated with a faint, blue light. "Get back, Elowen! Don't look at it!"

 "It's me," I sobbed, clutching my stomach. The sight was a physical blow. "Julian, that’s me. That’s how I looked when... when you..."

 "I know!" Julian roared, his voice thick with an agony that surpassed my own. "Do you think I don't see that image every time I close my eyes? Every night I am haunted by what I’ve done!"

 The corpse of Life Nine tilted its head. A sound emerged from its throat—not a voice, but the wet, clicking sound of bone grinding on bone.

 "Husband," the creature clicked. The sound seemed to come from the shadows in the corner of the room rather than the body’s mouth. "Why do you keep her? She is a broken vessel. Let us finish the cycle. Let the Tenth join the Nine."

 The creature raised a hand—a hand that looked exactly like mine, right down to the small mole on the wrist—and pointed at Julian.

 "The Darkness is hungry, Julian. And you are so very tired of pretending to be a man."

 With a screech that shattered the glass of the remaining windows, the creature lunged. It didn't move like a human; it blurred, its limbs elongating into jagged shadows.

 Julian met it head-on. He was a whirlwind of steel and rage. He slashed the silver blade through the air, cutting deep into the shadow-flesh of the creature. But there was no blood—only a thick, black smoke that smelled of sulfur and lilies.

 I scrambled away, my mind racing through the fragments of the diary I had managed to read. The mirror in the North Tower. The reflection isn't him.

 I looked around the tower room. In the center, covered by a heavy, dusty tarp, sat the Great Mirror of Valerius. It was an artifact brought back from the crusades, whispered to be a gateway to a realm where truth couldn't be hidden.

 "The mirror!" I screamed over the sound of the combat. "Julian! The Great Mirror!"

 Julian was struggling. The creature from Life Nine had wrapped its shadow-fingers around his throat, lifting him off the ground. His face was turning a dangerous shade of purple, his boots kicking uselessly at the air. He was being strangled by the ghost of the woman he loved. The irony was a poison.

 I ran to the Great Mirror. I grabbed the edge of the heavy canvas tarp and pulled with every ounce of strength I had left in my Tenth Life.

 The fabric resisted, snagged on the ornate carvings of the frame. I heard Julian’s windpipe groan under the pressure. I saw the "Shadow Julian" beginning to emerge from his own skin, those hollow black eyes bleeding into his silver ones.

 "Please!" I shrieked, my fingernails tearing as I yanked the tarp.

 With a thunderous rip, the canvas fell away.

 The Great Mirror was revealed. Its surface wasn't glass; it was a pool of liquid silver, swirling with a light that didn't come from the sun.

 I didn't look at my own reflection. I looked at the reflection of the battle behind me.

 In the mirror, Julian wasn't fighting a corpse. He was fighting himself.

 The reflection showed Julian holding his own throat, his face contorted in a mask of self-loathing. The creature of Life Nine was nothing but a manifestation of his own guilt, a psychic parasite that lived in the space between his heart and his curse.

 But there was something else. Attached to Julian’s back, like a monstrous umbilical cord, was a towering silhouette of a king with a crown of thorns and eyes made of stars.

 "The King of Sorrows," I whispered, the name surfacing from a memory I didn't know I had.

 In the mirror, the King of Sorrows looked at me. It smiled. And then, it reached out from the silver surface, its hand passing through the glass as if it were water.

 It wasn't reaching for Julian. It was reaching for me.

 "No!" Julian gasped, his voice a strangled rasp. He managed to drive his silver dagger into his own thigh.

 The pain seemed to shock the system. The creature of Life Nine vanished into smoke. Julian fell to the floor, gasping for air, blood blooming red and real against his black trousers.

 The King of Sorrows hissed, its hand retreating back into the mirror, but it didn't disappear. It stood there, watching us from the silver depths.

 I rushed to Julian’s side, tearing a strip of my nightgown to bind his wound. "You stabbed yourself," I cried, my hands shaking.

 "It was the only way... to break the connection," Julian panted, his forehead resting against mine. He was sweating, his skin deathly pale. "The shadow... it feeds on my desire for you. It uses my love as a bridge. If I hurt myself... it loses its grip for a moment."

 He looked at the Great Mirror, then back at me. His silver eyes were clear now, but filled with a terrifying resolve.

 "Elowen, I know how to end it," he whispered.

 I shook my head, a sense of dread pooling in my stomach. "How?"

 "The Tenth Life is the final life because the soul is spread too thin," Julian explained, his hand cupping my cheek. His touch was cold, but steady. "The King of Sorrows wants to claim you fully this time. He wants to pull you into the mirror and make you his Queen in the realm of shadows. If he does that, the loop breaks, and the world continues... but you will be trapped in eternal agony."

 "I won't let him," I said, my voice firm. "We'll fight him."

 "There is only one way to bar the door," Julian said, a single tear escaping and rolling down his cheek. "He can only take what is offered in the moment of total surrender. Elowen... we can never touch again. If we fall into the passion of the marriage bed, the gateway opens. That is the trigger. That is why I kill you—because the demon takes my body to claim your soul at its most vulnerable."

 I stared at him. "You’re saying... if we want to live, we have to live as strangers? In the same house? For the rest of our lives?"

 Julian looked at the Great Mirror, where the King of Sorrows waited with predatory patience.

 "Worse than that," Julian whispered.

 Before I could ask what he meant, a loud, frantic knocking came from the tower door. But this time, it wasn't a monster. It was Julian’s head guard.

 "My Lord! My Lady! The King’s army is at the gates! They say you have practiced necromancy! They’ve come to burn the estate!"

 I looked at Julian. This hadn't happened in the other lives. The script was changing more than I thought.

 "They aren't here for me," Julian said, standing up with a grimace of pain. "They are here for you. The Shadow has tipped the scales. It’s forcing us into a corner, Elowen. It wants to drive us into each other’s arms for 'protection.'"

 Julian grabbed my hand and pulled me toward a secret passage behind the tapestry.

 "We have to go," he said. "To the catacombs. There is a priest there who knows the old ways. But Elowen..."

 He stopped and looked at me, his eyes burning with a desperate, forbidden hunger.

 "If we enter the dark together, I don't know if I can keep the monster contained. The closer we are, the louder he screams."