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I grabbed a fist full of shadows and wrapped them around all three of us.

There was enough torment coming from this room to fuel me for a fucking year, and knowing it all came from my wife was terrifying.

Nausea burned up my throat in the form of acid, but I didn’t slow down.

I knew there’d be shields in place, and probably a trap or two, but that didn’t stop me running down the hall and slamming into the door.

I expected to be blown back, expected crippling pain and blood to stream from my nose or shadows to erupt from around the door and attack us.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Pain murmured. “Tor, don’t—”

Too fucking late. I’d already grabbed the handle and thrown all my weight into it. There was a lock, but it snapped easily under the force of my magic, and then the door swung inward and I spilled into the room.

Movement drew my eye and I struck with an eruption of torment and dark, endless death before it registered that it was my own reflection.

“Cat,” I breathed when I’d made a rapid assessment of the room and found it empty of everything except my wife and a mirror. I kept a shield around me though, ready for attack, and wrapped one around Cat, too. “Beautiful. Cat?”

She gave no response. My stomach dropped, warning spilling through my soul that something was very, very wrong.

“She’s in there?” Death demanded, his voice rough.

“She’s here,” I confirmed, walking around the chair she’d been tied to, desperate to see her face, to have her eyes fix on me, to see her chest rise and fall with breaths because she was too still, terrifyingly still, and I couldn’t fucking breathe, couldn’t stop myself shaking as I reached out to her.

My fingers brushed her neck. I forced them to still, gritting my teeth with the effort to keep them from shaking, praying she had a pulse, praying my wife wasn’t gone forever. We’d know, wouldn’t we? We’d sense it?

“Look at me, beautiful,” I breathed, relief like a punch to the chest when I finally found her pulse.

“She’s alive,” I called to Death as he and Pain pushed into the small room, scanning it for threats and traps like I had.

“We’re right here,” I promised her, words like barbs cutting up my throat.

“We’re right here, we’ve got you. No one will hurt you again. ”

There was blood on her chest, on her arms, and I’d glimpsed it on her back, tried to ignore it while I scanned the room. But there was no ignoring it now. These were deep, bleeding scratches. Not by a knife or blade, but by claws.

“Cat,” I pleaded, my voice shaking. Her face was blank, slack, her eyes staring but empty. Catatonic. “C’mon, pussy cat, my beautiful little succulent. Blink those pretty eyes and look at me. Please.”

“Little one?” Death breathed, kneeling before her to look up into her face. His hand came up to cradle her cheek, but she didn’t react. “God,” he whispered, a catch in his breath. He looked at me, silver lining his eyes. “What did they do to her?”

I didn’t know. I dragged my hand down my face, and nothing could stop it shaking now.

“There’s … so much pain,” Pain said in a choked voice. “I can take it away—”

“Do it,” I snarled, too afraid to soften myself even if he didn’t deserve me snapping at him. My wife was vacant and bleeding and hurt so badly she’d disassociated to cope with it. Would she ever come back? Was she gone forever?

I turned away from her, covering my face as panic carved through my chest like broken shards of glass, my horror cold and far-reaching.

I blinked the tears out of my eyes, and told myself to pull my shit together.

I could fall apart when we were safe, when the threat of Cruelty and Violence attacking was long gone.

“I’ll cut the ropes,” Pain said in a hoarse voice. “Can you carry her?”

“Yes,” Death replied, deep and quiet.

I shoved a last tear off my cheek and composed myself, straightening my spine—and freezing as the mirror reflected my movement. “What did that wall downstairs say? That threat—can you remember? Didn’t it mention a mirror?”

“Fuck,” Death whispered. “Then you’ve made your choice. The mirror will devour her.”

My nostrils flared and my panic transfigured into rage now I had a target for the storm of emotions. I launched myself at the ornate silver mirror, furious enough that a wave of shadows poured ahead of me, slamming into the surface of the mirror a second before I did.

“Tor, don’t!” Pain shouted. “We don’t know if it’s—”

His voice warped, dullened and distanced like a yell heard from underwater, and then I slammed into something solid and gold. Fuck. I jerked back—and my head cracked into cold, cold glass.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach as I turned, dread skittering down my arms like insect’s legs, and I knew, even before I turned, what I would see.

The room I’d just been in. My wife, no longer bound to the chair but swept into Death’s arms where she would always be safe. Pain lunging towards me, alarm on his face. And then a small, greying blonde woman who looked as shell-shocked as I felt.

I was inside the mirror.

And as I fought, as I rallied my shadows to slam into the glass, to crack and fracture and find a weakness, a truth settled in my chest.

There was no way out.