Rose was already asleep. I could see her snoring softly in her bed. Tanned legs lay just outside the white comforter that she curled up in. There was still dust in her wild chestnut hair from the crash.
I felt that same stirring inside me, and I gritted my teeth. This had to be done, and it had to be done soon. Nyx would be here. I touched the mirror and felt the pull. The bridge wanted to be used, wanted to be crossed, and its desires pulled me through to the other side.
I stepped out of the mirror, the surface of the silver and glass rippling as I passed through. Mist covered my black boots, silencing them as always. Creeping across her room, I covered the distance in seconds.
As I approached, I saw her face. Eyes too large. Too far apart. No elongated features. No sharp features. She’d never claimed her magic. How had she done these things?
Yet, just as before, her scent filled the room. Like a campfire hidden in the woods, soft cedar slowly turning to ash. It was intoxicating. I’d never felt this way during a hunt, never met a being who stirred this part of me, a hunger for more than her power.
I needed to know what lay inside this woman, what power she held. I’d never felt this way before. Not in a thousand years. Leaving my daggers in their sheaths, I reached out to touch her. My bare hand crossed the space between us, and with a touch as light as the breeze, I built the connection between us that let me touch the tightly wrapped ball of magic that rested inside every Fae.
This was not a tether, this was a personal connection, more intimate than any physical touch could be. I was letting my soul touch hers.
And I pulled back immediately, shocked at what I’d found. “Gods damn you Seraphina,” I hissed. Stepping backward, I moved away from Rose. It all made sense now. All of it. Especially why Seraphina would give me this contract.
I couldn’t kill this girl. Regardless of the cost, I couldn’t let her die. I began to turn around, to get back to the mirror. My foot caught on her desk chair, and I stumbled, sending the chair racing across the room to hit her wall.
Terrified that she would wake up while I was still in the room, I leaped toward the mirror and managed to hit it directly in the center, sending me across the bridge and back to the abandoned house. Landing in a roll, I stood up.
I took a few deep breaths as my mind raced. Staring at a large swathe of mold that darkened the thirty-year-old wallpaper of the opposite wall, I tried to decide what to do.
Nyx would be coming for her. Soon. Seraphina knew that I wouldn’t be able to kill Rose. She’d given me this charge for a single purpose: to kill me. Finally, she’d found a way to force my hand.
Rose wasn’t a half-fairy. She was full-blooded. Half from the Dark Court and half from the Court of Light. The most difficult to fill requirement in becoming Queen of the Dark Court.
Chapter 7
Rose
I woke to the sound of a crash, and I sat up immediately, my heart pounding in my chest. My desk chair was still spinning against the opposite wall, but that wasn’t what terrified me.
Black strips of cloth that looked to be part of a long coat were flowing into my mirror. Into my fucking mirror. The mirror rippled as the last bit of black went through it, and then everything was as it had been other than the slowly spinning chair.
“What in the holy hell?” I cursed. It had been a very long and confusing few days, and I was done with it.
Something was going on. I’d been a loner for most of my life. I’d gone day after day of feeling like an outsider. I was used to that. This was different. Things were happening that I didn’t understand, and I was done with just accepting them.
I rolled out of bed and walked over to the mirror. I looked at it, and everything seemed normal except that instead of seeing myself, I saw the black cloth that had fluttered through my mirror.
It was part of a cloak. A cloak that some thief from a fairy tale would wear. Strips of tattered black cloth had been sewn together in an odd pattern rather than being made of a single piece of fabric.
It hung from the back of a man who stood looking away from the mirror. A matching hood covered his head, but there was no doubt that the person under it was male based solely on how large he was. He had been in my room. I hadn’t dreamt that.
There had been far too many oddities these past few days. Too many things that were impossible. I reached out to the mirror and felt something, almost an emotion, coming from the mirror. A pulling. It begged me to just let it pull me forward. To let my hand slide through the glass into another place.
With only the slightest bit of pressure, I pushed against the mirror, and my hand slipped through the glass creating ripples across the surface. Inside the mirror, I could see it sticking out the other side. Surprised, I pulled back and looked at my hand.
Nothing was wrong. It was exactly as it had been. The mirror hadn’t hurt me. It was just… a portal? I had a freaking magic portal in my room? I started thinking about what that meant, but then I stopped myself. Not now. I could think later. The man on the other side of the mirror knew what was happening. If I didn’t talk to him now, he might disappear forever. Then,
