Page 4 of Sweet Nightmares (Wicked Mirrors #2)

Chapter Three

W hat would a Den of Nightmares look like?

Not this.

Or perhaps this was precisely what nightmares looked like: grand, luxurious palaces with turrets scraping against the sky and stained-glass windows allowing rose-honey light to illuminate gilded walls and enchanting halls.

It was a fairytale come to life, and Jane Whitfield-Klein hated fairytales.

She hated damsels in distress and Prince Charmings fighting great beasts to save them. But, most importantly, Jane hated happy endings. They didn’t exist—no prince was coming to save her, and none ever would. Because princes were daydreams, and Jane lived in a world of night terrors.

How fitting that this is where she had ended up.

A snake of nerves coiled up her arm. If Jane didn’t bargain with the Mirror of Nightmares for enough riches to satisfy both the Cobra Lilies and her horrible husband, then the gang would kill her. And she wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of dying.

So, she squared her shoulders and swallowed hard, causing her mouth to purse and her split lip to sting.

Just another reminder of the gang and their price. At least they’d had a healer patch her up a little before forcing her into the mirror. It was the small niceties Jane had taught herself to cherish. It didn’t matter how pathetic that might make her

Jane was used to being pathetic.

But right now, she had a goal to accomplish: find the biggest villain in the world and somehow convince him to bargain with her for an impossible amount of money with no lasting consequences.

Easy.

So fucking easy, right?

The sound of her heels clicked against the ornate marble floors as she walked further into the opulent lair. The Mirror God had to know she was inside his domain. Yet, he hadn’t appeared.

Because he was toying with her.

Building up the anticipation and drama. Wanting fear to soak into her soul.

But Jane wouldn’t be scared. Her life was horrific outside the mirror glass, so no matter what happened next, it wouldn’t matter.

Death and abuse were her options out there. But hope existed inside the glass—even if that hope was also horrible.

Jane knew the legends, and she knew the Looking Glass was evil, but the depths of his evil was unknown. This made her hopeful in a strange way.

So, no matter how hard the Bargainer tried to unsettle or break her, it wouldn’t work.

Nothing broke Jane Whitfield. Not her parents’ deaths, not losing her sister and being abandoned by her uncle, not marrying an abusive, disgusting man thirty years older than her.

Not being tortured by a gang, and definitely not a Mirror God.

Because Jane’s strength was unbeatable. Unbreakable.

As if on cue, a string quartet began playing an off-key melody in a three-four time signature—a rotten waltz.

The god was trying to unsettle her. He had chosen the wrong trick for the wrong girl, because music could never harm Jane. Music was her comfort. Even the creepy kind. Especially the creepy kind.

Jane pinched her eyes closed and let the chords hit her as if they were a physical force, visualizing them as ballet ribbons floating and pulsating through the air. The silk caressed her arms, legs, and face like a lover after a long round of lovemaking—not that she knew what that feeling was like.

With her eyes shut, her other senses took over, and the scent of lavender, mixed with hints of basil and jasmine, wafted toward her as if mingling with the music and ribbons.

And it was casting a calming spell.

A deep sense of peace settled into Jane’s bones. It was probably the opposite of what the god intended. Even though it was utterly ridiculous and unadvisable, Jane felt safer in the mirror with a devil she didn’t know than the ones living in the outside world.

If she could bottle this moment and keep it forever, she would.

But moments never lasted.

Opening her eyes, she walked to the edge of a balcony overlooking a massive ballroom lit by hundreds of red bayberry candles in elaborate gilded sconces.

In the corner were four translucent ghostlike string players—two violins, a viola, and a cello—and across the floor were translucent couples dancing a waltz.

Floating through the air were aerialists and acrobats.

A ghost ball.

The hairs on Jane’s arms rose, and her heart pounded in her ears, ticking like a broken grandfather clock.

“Beautiful,” she whispered so low only a vampire would hear it.

All the candles flickered at the sound of her voice, and time slowed.

Jane sucked in a breath, and time crashed into her, and so did a man. She choked on her breath as a forceful gust of wind hit her in the chest. Her body was thrown off its axis, and her back hit the wall opposite the balcony railing with a loud thud.

Before she could orient herself, a large hand clutched her jaw hard.

“Witch,” a man hissed with the low, dark tones of a bass singer.

Jane blinked twice, trying to get her eyes to focus, and when they did, all the air in her lungs was knocked out of her once again.

Because there was no question who was pinning her to the wall.

The Lord of Nightmares. And, oh, was this man—god—the most attractive person she’d ever seen.

So stunning, her eyes instinctively flicked away in shame.

Her heart drummed in her ears because she was not worthy to look upon such a being.

Yet she also couldn’t help but look at him. Because he was fucking beauty and fury made manifest.

He was tall, muscular in frame, but it wasn’t just that.

His demeanor and being were so striking that no words could do him justice, not even the word “divine.” If Jane had to try, she’d say it was like his body had been carved out of the rarest diamonds in the world, which then morphed into unblemished, unwilling flesh.

His eyes were also indescribable. The color was the deepest azure she’d ever seen, laced with sparkling silver. But even that description didn’t do them justice. They were simply magic.

Every part of this man was enchanted. Inhuman.

Impossible.

His hair looked like it had been dipped in melted silver, one black streak remaining. It was almost as if the mirror prison were slowly taking over him. The strands of silver were pure magic, they glowed and shimmered like liquified metal, like mercury.

Jane imagined that, like mercury, this god was also toxic to the touch.

As she took him in, he did the same. His gaze tracked up her body, pausing as he moved. Oh, so slowly tracking over her skin. Jane shivered from the phantom contact, his stare a physical force touching her in the most indecent yet alluring ways.

Her breath hitched as he finally made his way up to her face and hair.

“Cinnamon red,” he said, seething, anger pouring out of him like paint dripping off a canvas.

What was happening? This response wasn’t normal… at all. This wasn’t the anger of trespassing. It was something else. Something darker.

“Witch,” he growled again.

Jane swallowed. “I’m not a witch.”

“You reek of witch.” The vein in his jaw ticked, and his finger-pads dug deeper into her neck.

“I am not.”

His eyes sparked and grew distant, as if lost in a memory. “She said you’d come.”

“Who?”

He blinked, and his gaze moved to hers. “Two thousand years, witch. Two thousand years I’ve been waiting.”

Acid crawled up her throat, and she didn’t know what to do or say. This Bargainer was crazed. Beautiful but unhinged.

“Why have you come? To destroy me?” His voice was a cobra readying to strike.

“Destroy you?” Jane placed a palm against the wall to steady herself. “I just want to bargain, Mr.Nightmares.”

The god cocked his head. “Mr.Nightmares.” He twirled one of her curls between his fingers with his free hand, as if enchanted by it. “Red, that’s not my name.”

Jane’s chest heaved, matching her frantic heart and breath rate. Yet she kept her voice steady. “What is your name?”

“Lord Gavriil Alexei Dimitris Draven Hawthorne Wrixon Wryte, the Count of Draculei.”

“That’s quite a mouthful.”

His lips twitched. Unclear if in amusement or worsening anger. He twirled a curl again, fixated on it. “You are far prettier than she ever was, and that truly is dangerous.”

“Who is she?”

“Do not ask questions,” he snapped, his grip growing tighter on her throat. “Now, tell me why I shouldn’t simply snap your neck right now, prophecies be damned.”

Prophecies ?

Jane swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I—”

Fuck . This was going much worse than she had ever imagined. But then, she should have known better. Nothing ever went well for her. Ever.

Her fingers clutched the wall, digging in as if she could escape behind it. She looked for a way out, but there wasn’t any. This man was a god and far, far stronger than her.

“I just want to bargain with you,” she whispered.

Nightmare’s gaze turned up to the ceiling as if in thought. His movements were slow, like a snake stalking its prey. So irritatingly slow. It felt like it took hours between each thought. And maybe it did. What was time in a mirror?

“I think I will kill you.”

Jane shuddered. But she held her resolve. “If you want to kill me, you really must get in line. The men waiting outside your mirror also want to kill me, and will if I don’t get them what they want.”

His eyes snapped back to her. “Only I get to kill you.” Nightmare leaned in closer, and his thumb tracked across her split lip as if he were noticing it for the first time. “You are a fragile little thing, aren’t you?”

Jane’s nose flared, and she felt the tiny grooves of the wallpaper for comfort. This Bargainer wanted to kill her. The men outside wanted to kill her. Half of the time, her husband threatened to kill her.

Did anyone want her alive? Or even want her at all?

Of course not.

“Will you at least do it quickly?” she asked, the corners of her eyes stinging.

At this, he blinked again, and with his free hand, he caressed her cheek. “So fragile. So weak.”

“Yes.”

“You are mine.” His thumb caressed her lips again.