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“We?” Thanouq says, staring at me. “You can create mirrors?”

“I’m a mirror mage,” I say. “Like my mother.”

I can see the wonder in his expression. I’m clearly everything he’s ever dreamed of in a queen. Ugh.

“So why did you need to find Lucifer’s Mirror?” Khaosti asks. “Why not just make another.”

It’s like twenty goddamn questions. But these are all things I’ve been going over in my own mind since I got my memory back. “When I say we can create mirrors between places, I actually mean any place…except Hell. It’s something about the nature of the place. There were once mirrors there, but my mother destroyed them all except one, which she hid.” And which I now happen to have tucked away in my bedroom on Earth. “That’s how Lucifer became trapped in Hell.”

We’re all quiet for a few minutes while they digest everything I’ve said. I become aware of Thanouq’s intense stare. He’s looking at me with a frown on his face. I have an inkling I know what’s bothering him.

Crap. But it had to come out sometime.

“So your mother came from Hell?” he asks slowly.

I glance at Hecate, and she shrugs, leaving it up to me. There’s no easy way to say this, so I just blurt it out. “I’m Lucifer’s daughter.”

My statement is met with a resounding silence.

I feel Khaosti’s warm hand on my thigh. He squeezes. Someone still likes me despite my paternity.

Then all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose, and they’re all talking at once, the generals and the political advisors. I don’t even try and make sense of what they are saying, though the occasional word… spy, infiltrator, devil’s spawn sneaks through.

Thanouq says nothing for a long time.

Then he stands up and roars, “Quiet.”

A deathly silence falls over the room. I realize I’m holding my breath as I wait for what he has to say. I’d like to pretend that I don’t care. But I like Thanouq. I mean I don’t want to marry him or anything, but I respect him, and I don’t want to hear that he thinks I’m a monster.

He walks around the table. Beside me, I sense Khaosti ready himself, his hand slides away, and all his muscles tense.

Thanouq comes to a halt in front of me. “That’s unexpected,” he says.

“You’re not kidding,” I reply. “It came as something of a shock at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“It doesn’t?”

He smiles. Then he goes down on his knees and takes my hand. I hear Khaosti hiss but he doesn’t move.

“You are not your father’s mirror,” Thanouq says. “You can be whatever you want to be.”

Aww, isn’t that nice? I want to pat him on the head. At the same time, I wish he’d get up. I’d hoped that at least one good thing would come out of my big revelation—that people would stop kneeling around me. It seems it’s not to be.

“Thanks,” I say. “That means a lot.” And it does. “Now get the fuck up off the floor.” He flashes me a grin, but he does at least get up.

The tension has drained from the room. His people love Thanouq and are willing to follow his lead. Even to the extent of accepting Lucifer’s daughter in their midst. I sigh. “So, what do we do now?” I finally ask, because I’m hungry and I hate meetings. The way I see it, we have two choices. We can run and hide, or we can stay and fight. Or rather, they have two choices. I have a third. I can go straight to Hell.

As I wait for someone to answer, it occurs to me that I came back here because—at least partly—I wanted someone to tell me what to do. I’m starting to understand that’s not going to happen. Or it might happen, but that doesn’t mean I will do it. I’m not a puppet. Sometimes, I wish I was. It would enable me to deny my responsibility. If everything goes to shit—which I’m pretty sure will be the ultimate outcome for a world relying on me to save it—I could blame someone else.

The truth is, I might be the most powerful witch the world has ever seen, but I’m also a nineteen-year-old girl. And a nineteen-year-old shouldn’t be making decisions like this. What I should be making is mistakes. And falling on my ass, getting up, and making more mistakes. That’s how we learn. But if I make a mistake in this, the worlds will descend into chaos.

What do I know of saving worlds? It’s ludicrous. On the other hand,ifI’m just following orders, I can always convince myself that it’s not my fault, that Hecate told me to do it. Or Thanouq or Selene…

Finally, when I’ve just about decided no one is going to say anything at all, Zayne speaks up. “What are the choices?” he asks. He sounds a little lost, but then for all his size, and his basilisk badassedness, he’s only nineteen as well. I wonder if he’s regretting his decision to come with me right now.

I leave it to someone else to answer. I think I’ve said enough.