The candle flame danced in the foggy mirror. It lit the small, black cracks running around all four sides. I remembered the mirror and the world it leads to—creatures who glowed like me, mermaids, and minotaur dancing with the unimaginable. Drake had taken us back to Limbo. This morning, I had stood beside him on the stone steps of the castle bridge as a rider brought him a wax sealed message. He read it quickly—while I felt like I had fallen into the fourteen hundreds—then shoved it crumpled in his pocket, cursing a stream of words in a language I only partially understood. Everything after that point happened in a whirl, he swept through the house like an avenging tornado, nearly grabbing Lily and Alexie and shoving us all into a carriage, then, a white rattling taxi. He pulled us down a long alley, and we went through the small, wooden door. We stepped inside the dark room, badly lit by that single candle, sitting under the large, silver mirror—always burning. The torn purple wallpaper, and grey stones were the same, the corners populated in numerous, intricate webs spun by tired spiders.
Drake waved his hand in front of the flame, and the mirror rippled like water. I heard Lily’s sharp intake of breath, squeezed back when she grabbed my hand.
“Are you afraid?” I whispered.
Lily snorted. “Of course not.” I felt her hands starting to get hot, she glanced at them, then back at me. “I’m never afraid, anymore.”
“You never were,” I said. My coat brushed the ground, the cotton material was soft and molded to my skin. The tassel hem was tipped in sparkling beads that shimmered around my ankles. Drake handed the strange, beautiful coat to me before I left the castle, saying it had once been mine. My black gloves protected me from fingertip to elbow, still, touching the coat made me feel like dreaming. The dress I had left the house in was small and black—only bravery and my new devil-may-care life view made me put it on—my heels were unusually high and felt precarious.
“You look gorgeous,” said Drake. “Just breathe.”
He was the gorgeous one, his leather jacket looked like it wore a moving shader, blue light spilled under his collar igniting the gold in his eyes. “It’s difficult,” I said. “To breathe, that is. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into the first time I came here. Now that I do...”
“Anticipation killing you, is it?” he asked, smiling down at me.
I said nothing, only bounced on my toes and melted a little under his tender gaze.
Lily reached out her fingers and touched the rippling mirror, the glass bounced and writhed. She wore a red dress that swathed her in yards of skintight cloth, and a woolen coat of a matching color, her gloves were a soft blue-gold. Her lipstick was almost black, and I could see flecks of silver in the gloss—she was tantalizing as Lilith, and just as sinful—like Drake and Alexie both, she looked made for this place. If my skin had not been glowing a soft shade of resplendent, I would have been the odd one out, as it was, I shimmered like bottled starlight. I held my hand out in front of me and stepped through the glass pulling Lily with me. This time we walked through a curtain of beads, and there were no visible doors in the round, humongous room. Torches lit the space, and I saw golden harps, and oil-skin drums instead of strobe lights and DJs. Sparkling moss peppered with blades of red grass covered the floor, the ceiling was a twilight sky painted silver and ivory. Purple, and yellow vines swung from the moving tufts of springy clouds. A blue haired girl flew to me on peachy wings and stuck a garland of gardenias on my head like a crown.
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