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Vicious Girl

NYX

I n a sea of endless darkness, there was a mirror.

It hovered in mid-air, silently summoning me. I breathed hard, adjusting to my new reality—a darkness I’d become all too familiar with.

The ornate, oval mirror radiated salvation and doom all in one. Every inch of me pulsed with a sensation I didn’t have a name for.

You must face your greatest fear.

My knees trembled. I’d always put on a bravado of being fearless. But the truth was I had many fears. All of them crippling in their own right.

Which one awaited me now? Which of my horrors was deep enough to meet me in the void and be my life’s reckoning?

The surface of the mirror looked pure black and crystal clear at the same time.

I took one step. Then another.

Faintly, from behind the glass, I heard a voice. It spoke inside my head. What outfit should I slaughter everyone’s confidence with tonight?

My pace was agonizingly slow and reluctant until finally, I stood before the mirror.

I braced myself for the nightmare but—there was only me.

My reflection.

Only…different. Outdated. I wore a skin-tight red dress, a full face of makeup, my hair blown out and luscious. A conniving, seductive look twinkled in my black eyes. My reflection grabbed at her mass of hair and held it up, testing to see if it would look good. “Should I wear my hair up or down? ” she asked, but there was no reply. The silence was chilling.

Of course, I’ll wear it down , she thought. She grinned darkly at me as she painted her lips the bloodiest shade of red.

This was from the night I’d met Solaris.

My chest rose and fell. I didn’t understand.

My reflection looked to the side at something I couldn’t see. Her lip curled in disdain.

Ugh, she looks disgustingly mortal. My perfect little sister… She needs to be corrupted… Yes. All I’ll have to do is introduce her to some cute guys, and voila. Innocence lost. I’ll prove to my mother that both her daughters are flawed, not just me…

My hands flew over my ears. “Enough!”

I whirled away from the mirror, but it was behind me now. I stumbled back when my reflection grabbed the metal frame and started stepping out of the glass.

“No! Stop!”

“What? You’re not afraid of little old me, are you?” She cackled, and her voice was outside my head now. Her long, bloody grin mocked me as her dark eyes devoured my fear.

Before I could bolt, her hand shot out, and her fingers wrapped around my throat, fastening like iron. She snarled in my face before she headbutted me, and my vision blew white and starry.

Among the stars clouding my sight, there were visions—memories.

It was me, it was all me.

The night I met Jedidiah. I saw the club, heard the music, and felt the chaos. There I was in the center of it all, a devious look on my face as I burned him and humiliated him in front of everyone . I’d been so bewitched by him, but all I was capable of was cruelty. The look on his face compared to the look on mine—I was a monster .

A malicious bitch, laughing at him as he jumped around to put out my fire, devouring his humiliation like it was soul food.

The vision rippled and went quiet, the crowd and the club and Jedidiah fading away until there was only me.

Now, looking at myself from the outside, I saw it. When no one was watching me, my mask slipped to reveal my fear.

It glimmered in my onyx eyes, and despite my full face of makeup and revealing outfit, I looked like a child. A scared, lost, hopeless child.

That was exactly what I had been when I first got to Luna Academy. I had acted tough and fearless, but it couldn’t have been any further from the truth.

And when Jedidiah had come up to me that night, and he was so cocky and valiant and interesting, it had stirred me. I instantly felt connected to him, like we shared a likeness—two lost souls ebbing on the outside of a society we knew we’d never truly belong in.

And it had terrified me. The idea of getting close to someone.

So I’ done the only thing I knew how to do.

Stars gobbled the vision up, and I was staring into the brutal glare of my mimic. She wasn’t wearing the red dress from the night I’d met Solaris anymore.

Her smile was bone-chilling as she squeezed my throat and waited to see if I’d fold.

“Stop!” I choked. “That’s not me anymore.”

“No?” my mimic sneered.

“No!” I grabbed her hand and yanked it from my throat, shoving her away from me. She grinned, elated to have me riled up. “But I’m not sorry! I needed you!”

She cocked her head to the side. “Why?”

“To protect me.”

“From what?”

“FROM EVERYTHING!” My outburst cracked through the inky black realm with an arcane boom that had the form of my mimic rippling as if she were reflecting off the surface of water.

She started morphing again. She was still me, but older, sharper, crueller. She sat upon a throne, her silver hair slicked back into a tight, long ponytail. The same signature hairstyle as my mother.

I shuddered.

The tattoos on her golden flesh were black and unmoving. On either side of her throne, stood two girls. My minions .

Oh my Goddess. What is this?

“Come forward,” the alternate version of me called.

A girl stumbled into view. My third minion. She was beaten and battered and burnt, missing half her hair. She whimpered as she approached my throne, and I regarded her with pure disdain.

“For your treachery, you shall never be free,” I told her. Then I snapped my fingers and she lurched forward, crumpling to the ground in front of me. She collected herself but didn’t stand up. She got on her hands and knees and positioned herself in front of me, where I then leaned back in my throne, and kicked back to rest my legs on her back like a footrest.

I shook my head as I watched. No, this couldn’t be real. That would never be me. It couldn’t…

The version of me in the throne laughed, dark and mocking, and then her face started to glitch.

Now I was looking at my mother.

The wind was punched from my chest. My minions and the throne went up in smoke as she lunged at me.

“Vicious girl!” she hissed. And then she charged me, and the flaming palm of her hand collided with my cheek. “Do you see yourself now?”

I stumbled back, an all too familiar pain roaring through me, and slipped off an edge. I plummeted with my furious mother diving after me.

“You are here to seek redemption, but you will not find it!” she screamed, her hands lashing out, trying to grab me or claw me or choke me. “The moment I laid eyes on you as a baby, I knew you were wicked. That’s why I never loved you. I prayed every night for Death to claim you so we would be free of you!”

I hit the hard, dark ground, and the wind was ejected from my lungs. My mother landed on top of me, heavier than the world, her eyes on fire as she snarled and wrapped both hands around my throat.

“The Goddess is wrong about you. The dragon will never claim you. You will die alone and rot in the mountain for all eternity!”

I was writhing and trying to scramble free, but she was made of steel and terror, and I was helpless.

“Do you see now! What you were destined to be!”

“No!” I screamed. “No! That wasn’t me! That wasn’t real !”

Her snarls became intelligible. Her face glitched like a broken TV stuck between two channels. She was herself, and then she was me; over and over, she flickered and morphed between two different devils.

“It was you! You were marching onward to be a tyrant! Playing queen at your school was just the beginning!”

“NO!”

“And for what you did to your baby sister, you can never be forgiven!”

My heart blew out like a fuse.

Emilia.

I remembered it so vividly from the shadows. Her hanging there, burned…

“It was an accident!” I wept. “I didn’t mean to. I would never hurt Em—”

“LIES! You wanted her to burn! You still do!”

“No! No, no, no.” I was shaking profusely. “I love Emilia. I love her. I have been a terrible sister, but I love her .”

Suddenly I was looking up and myself, as clear as looking in a mirror, I saw myself lying in the shadows, face warped in terror and grief.

I looked so weak .

Then her face shifted back into the one that had glared loathsomely at me my whole life.

But I felt nothing.

No emptiness where a mother’s love should have been. No nagging urge to somehow get her approval.

“I don’t need your love,” I told her, taking full advantage of her silence. My voice wobbled, but I didn’t care. “I may have needed it once, but I don’t need it now. You made me cold like you. You made me live in a constant state of defense. You made me believe it was safer to be hated. You had me conjuring enemies in friends. Initiating conflict in peace. If that vision of me was the true future once, it isn’t now. I’m not on that path anymore. I won’t be like you . I’ll be better! Do you hear me? I’ll be better! And if I ever have a daughter, I will love her no matter who she is! You—”

My mother vanished.

I was no longer on the ground but standing where I had been before, in front of the mirror.

My reflection was a child.

With her long silver hair and dark eyes full of wonder, she peered sheepishly up at me. Eye contact with her had memories exploding through me. Memories of Emilia and I playing in the woods. Playing princesses and dragons.

Oh, that’s right … I had forgotten that game. We’d spend hours in the trees searching for dragons. We were so sure that one day we’d find one.

I blinked rapidly as the memories faded, and despite the tears staining my cheeks, I smiled.

The child smiled back at me. “We finally found our dragon,” she told me in her little squeaky voice. “His name is Glorious.”

I made some kind of choking sound. Before I could reply, the darkness spat me out.

I inhaled sharply as the cave reassembled around me. I was gasping and crying out to the little girl who was no longer with me.

My chest heaved, and my skin felt strange. A light, airy tingle rushed up and down my arms.

My arms were—aflame.

Blue flames.

My jaw dropped, astonishment weaving around my heart like a caress. I angled my hands—my clawed, shifted hands—around to watch the otherworldly fire dance from my flesh.

The serenity that radiated from this new element was a dreamy breeze through my soul.

If my gold fire was the wrath of the sun and stars, then this was…

Moonfire.

I almost laughed, having sunk into some forgotten sense of childlike wonder, but I choked on the sound as two piercing azure orbs loomed toward me.

I dropped my hands and locked eyes with the dragon, who had doubled—or tripled—in size, just in time to watch his jaw gape open and snap at my face.