Page 74 of Immortal Consequences (The Souls of Blackwood Academy #1)
Irene
It had been years since she’d traveled the Ether on her own.
She was used to having her partner by her side.
Her constant companion. And Masika’s absence hit Irene harder than she could have anticipated as she crossed the threshold and transitioned into the Ether, a gaping emptiness spreading through her chest.
She gasped in a breath. Her ears rang. Her stomach churned. It was the familiar transition. Nothing new.
But this time…she’d have to do it alone.
Once her vision adjusted and she realized where she was, Irene couldn’t help but gasp.
She was inside what appeared to be a Blackwood building.
But even though everything looked the same on the surface—dark floorboards, ivy crawling on the walls, iron sconces lining the path forward—she could see the strange cracks in the Ether’s projection.
The mirrors were warped. The floor slightly crooked.
But it was more than that.
As she walked forward, making her way down the corridor, it almost felt like she wasn’t moving. Like the corridor was stretching out endlessly in front of her, like the ground itself was moving beneath her feet.
Irene fixed her gaze forward, unwilling to succumb to the Ether’s tricks. She had an innate suspicion that the mirrors lining the walls weren’t meant to be looked into. That if she allowed herself even a single moment of weakness, she’d find something terrible lurking beyond the glass surface.
She wasn’t sure where she was meant to be going. Each turn she took led her to another identical corridor. She called upon her magic, sensing her internal map. She could feel the faintest flicker of something in the distance. Something familiar.
She tried to keep track of how many turns she’d taken, a way of staying focused, but it didn’t take long for her to lose count.
She’d been walking for what felt like hours, and the Ether’s draining properties had already begun to take effect.
Her legs grew numb beneath her. Her chest heavy and head pounding mercilessly.
She glanced to her right—
A mistake. One sudden, stupid mistake.
She looked straight into one of the mirrors, forgetting her promise to keep her eyes forward, and screamed when she saw what looked back at her.
It was her own face. Tired and exhausted. But she wasn’t alone.
“You left me.”
Masika stood behind her in the reflection, her face bloodied and scarred.
Her words echoed in Irene’s skull, flooding through her mind in a disorienting loop.
The logical part of Irene knew it was an illusion, but the other part of her, the one that was grief-stricken by the sudden loss of her friend, couldn’t help but respond.
“I had to keep going,” Irene told her. “You would have done the same thing.”
“I would have said goodbye to you.” Masika’s voice echoed all around her, her expression shifting from heartbroken to rageful. “I would have tried to find you.”
Irene stepped closer to the mirror. “I’m not a good friend. I’m not even a good person. If anything, I did you a favor. I made it easier for us both.”
Masika’s face glitched, warping within the mirror.
“You aren’t a bad person, Irene. You cling to that idea because it’s easier to do that than to face the person you’ve become. You want to run from the monster inside you. The darkness that follows you. But that isn’t who you are.”
“You don’t know who I am.”
Masika tilted her head. “You and I both know that’s a lie. I was the only person who saw the real you. Who saw the scared little girl hidden behind the mask. The one you thought you got rid of.”
“Stop,” Irene choked out. She stepped away from the mirror, but the wall behind her narrowed, trapping her within the constricting passageway. She had nowhere to run, forced to listen to the illusion’s words.
“Your mother hurt you, so you vowed to hurt the world. You took that rage and anger and let it turn you into the person you were most afraid of.”
“Stop—”
“But I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth losing the one friend you had.”
An anguished scream tore through Irene’s throat as she smacked her hand against the mirror. Glass shards exploded as her fist made contact, a splintered crack splitting the illusion of Masika in two.
“You can’t keep running from yourself,” the other girl whispered, voice fading. “No matter what choice you end up making. No matter where you go— you will always be there.”
When Irene blinked, the image of Masika vanished.
The passageway had widened back to normal, exposing the path forward.
Irene inhaled a ragged breath, hot tears prickling at her eyes, and faced the mirror once again.
She waited for Masika’s face to reappear, to hear her friend’s voice one more time, but she was gone.
All Irene was left with was the one thing she’d always been truly afraid of. The real monster lurking in the darkness of her room.
The one thing she could never escape.
Herself.