Zach nodded. “We need to find that egg.”
As a particularly loud buzz echoed through our cave, Brom slipped from his stance against the wall and fell with a surprisingly loud crash of…metal?
Confused, Zach, Millennia, and I converged on Bromley. Millennia held the ball of fire in her palm, casting its orange glow at his feet. Scattered across the cave floor was an array of ancient-looking mining tools and a slew of small glittering gems. The magical firelight danced over the jewels’ surfaces, making them look liquid.
I bent and touched a rusty pickaxe then winced as the blade nicked my finger. Still sharp. Only dwarf tools and weapons could remain that sharp after all these years.
“Dwarf mine,” I whispered under my breath, a little excited. This could’ve been the cave where the dwarves of the story had dwelled, guarding their jewels and luring unsuspecting humans to trade and double-cross—sometimes murder. Could this be the legendary cave where the hunter Raed was cursed into a beast and fled to Maid Freida’s cabin? It was a silly thought—there were so many caves in these mountains.
“I’m not surprised,” Millennia said, lifting her fireball higher to give the room a wider glow. “According to legend, these caves had been full of them long ago.”
“Yes, but they also should have been cleared out by Royals hundreds of years ago. After the dwarves stole away the first heir, Myriana and Raed personally led an army to these mountains and tore apart the mines.”
Zach shrugged. “There must’ve been hundreds. Maybe they missed one.”
I didn’t reply. Something…something felt strange here. For the past two days my Sense had been pulling me in a certain direction. It had been strong and painful, barely able to ignore or push down. But the moment I’d stepped into the cave, my Sense had been…muffled. Almost like someone had placed a pillow over it. It was there, ever-present, but muted. I’d never experienced anything like it before. That alone made me insatiably curious.
I moved deeper into the cave, seeing more relics strewn about that had been tested by time. Most of them were jewels and mining tools, and others were tablets with dwarven curses carved into the stone.
Millennia suddenly gripped my arm tightly. I turned to look back at her, and her eyes looked strangely…purple in the firelight.
“We shouldn’t venture far,” she said, her voice low and heavy.
I pried her hand away and turned deeper into the tunnel. My Sense was almost entirely deafened now, replaced with a strange inner toll. It was like when I was in Myria Tower and its bells pealed over the kingdom, sending vibrations into my bones.
We entered a room much bigger and cleaner, as if someone had cleared away all loose rock and pebbles, but it held more dwarven items. Large symbols were carved into the stone, and against the far end of the room was a full-length mirror, more symbols lining the edges, like a decorative frame.
The mirror was dusty and tarnished, but I knew, without a doubt, that this was where the vibrations inside me were coming from. I moved toward it, not even sure what I wanted to do, just knowing I had to find their source, like the bells in the tower back home.
“Ivy.”
I flinched at the sound of my name, and looked over my shoulder to see Millennia standing there with wild eyes. They were back to being blue, but she clutched her head like she was in terrible pain, as if a wedge had been driven into her skull.
“Ivy, don’t. What are you doing?” she whispered.
Her voice was frightening, in a way that made me both scared of it and scared for her. I looked behind her to see Zach and Brom, both staring at me, completely mystified.
“Ivy, what is it?” Zach asked. “Talk to me.”
“It’s a magic mirror. It has to be. And I feel something strange, like…like bells or…”
Millennia gripped her head, her hands buried deep into her raven black hair, her breath coming out in wheezes.
I looked back at the mirror, close enough now to see the symbols clearly, and I realized that what I had thought were dwarven symbols were actually spell words, more specifically, the words of shared memories.
Don’na illye min’na.
“Ivy,” Millennia hissed, “back away.”
Zach, Brom, and I stared at her in surprise. Her voice was like a viper’s hiss, unnatural and…and evil.
I glanced back at the mirror. What did she so desperately not want me to see? “You know what this is,” I muttered, finally recognizing what I saw in her eyes—fear.
She said nothing, but her shoulders were tense, her hands clenched at her sides. The flames that she’d once held now danced across her knuckles, turning her hands into two glowing balls of fire. But her long sleeves did not catch. Perhaps a strange thing to notice, but seeing the crazed look in her eyes, I knew there was no way she was fully concentrating, so why was her fire so controlled?
Like I’d suspected from the beginning, Millennia was too skilled for someone her age. I’d chalked it up to a natural-born talent, but even that was farfetched for her level of control. It was too strange…impossible, even.
Then there was the place she’d said she came from: Raed. The forests of Raed. It was where my mother had said there’d been a sighting of the Evil Queen—she had asked to send troops to investigate the sighting.
It was too much of a coincidence, and it all came down to one important question.
“Millennia,” I breathed, taking a backward step toward the mirror. “Who…who did you say your master was?”
She lunged for me, as I somehow knew she would, but I flung myself at the mirror and collided into the glass.
“Ivy!” someone screamed. Zach, or Brom, or maybe both. They sounded far away.
Amber light poured around me, sucking me into the world of the mirror.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Shared Memories
“The world of the mirror, my child, is a place you should never enter. It holds the memories of its owners, including their thoughts, hopes, and dreams. Spend too long within the shared memories of a magic mirror and you will begin to lose yourself and forget that these memories…are not your own.”
Gelloren’s words from a childhood lesson came back to me in the glow of the brilliant amber light. It seared my eyes and made my head scream in pain, as if it was about to split open. As quickly as it came, the pain faded, and a scene swam into view.
I recognized the Hall of Ancestors, half-built, with the roof still still open to the sun and clouds. The arches had yet to be joined in the middle or the carved faces added to the walls.
The details of the memory were crisp, as though whoever it belonged to had retained it from that morning.
A handsome man, with dark brown hair and a clipped beard, wore fine clothes and a cloak that was such a deep red it reminded me of Weldan’s. He stood in the center, arguing with a group of other men plainly dressed. He gestured wildly and shook his head, finally raising his voice to the nonexistent ceiling, “I don’t care what they all think. This is the end of the discussion.”
“But King Raed—”
Raed. That means the magic mirror holds the memories of…
Anxiety flowed through me as I stood watching Raed, my husband, argue with those from the village.
“I said no. Now leave. I must talk to my queen.” His gaze shifted back to me.
As the scene transformed into shades of amber light, the people and the half-built hall contorting, I tried to hold on to who I was—I was Ivy, not the owner of these memories. But I already felt unbearable sadness flow through me like white-water rapids, pulling me under until I couldn’t separate my own self from the memories that now surrounded me.
I was in a bedroom, curled in the sheets, sobbing, a pool of blood between my legs.
“Darling,” a soothing voice called to me from the end of the bed, “you should let them clean you up. Don’t worry, we can keep trying.”