Page 45 of The Eternal Mirror (Lucifer’s Mirror #3)

Khaos

T he world burns beneath my wings.

Ash coils up from the forest, curling through the night air in glowing orange spirals. The last of Khronus’s army scatters like insects, their screams barely audible beneath the roar of fire, the collapse of trees, and the pounding of my own heart, like war drums in my chest.

Amber is behind me. Safe. I made sure of that.

I’m not sure what’s left of anything else.

The battlefield is a graveyard. Bodies litter the camp like discarded weapons.

Some of them are ours. Most of them are not.

All around the camp are the charred remains of those who tried to flee—beast and man alike.

They came here to crush us—but instead, I crushed them.

Claws, teeth, and fire. No mercy. Not today.

And now there’s one left to kill.

I see him below. Khronus. My father.

He stands at the center of it all, inside his wards, surrounded by burning bodies, cloaked in silver-blue energy that flickers and cracks like lightning. There’s blood on his hands and a smile on his face that I want to tear off with my teeth.

I dive.

He doesn’t run. Of course he doesn’t. He stands there like a god carved from broken glass.

Then he lifts a hand.

A blast of light erupts from his body—wild, fractured magic, radiant and wrong. It hits me mid-dive, hurling me backward through space.

Pain explodes down my side. Amber screams but doesn’t fall. Then the blast fades, and I’m spiraling out of control. I crash hard into the burning treetops. I manage to right myself, skidding through the dirt and ash.

Finally, I stop. I stand, head hanging, wings torn and bleeding. Amber slides from my back.

“Crap,” she mutters. Then she crashes to her knees and throws up, hair hanging down over her face.

I give myself a shake and turn to face where I last saw Khronus. He’s gone. Vanished in the explosion caused by whatever magic he used to bring me down. He’s out of my reach and I throw back my head and roar my rage .

The camp is wrecked. We won. And I’ve never felt more hollow. More like a total loser.

I shift back.

The pain follows me. Human again, but my side feels like someone tried to rip me in two. My skin is scorched. My breath is fire and dust. Usually, shifting will heal the damage from a wound, but damage from magic is tricky.

Amber pushes herself to her feet, wiping her mouth, then steps toward me.

She lays her hand on my chest, and some of the pain fades.

“I have so little left.” Her voice breaks at the edges, as if she's speaking through broken glass. She doesn’t say Sheela’s name.

She doesn’t have to. It’s carved into the hollows of her face.

I can see that she’s drained. Using the celestial fire always exhausts her. Her cheeks are hollow, her eyes shadowed.

“Then save it for others who need it more.”

She nods, then looks around at the carnage. “Where did he go?”

“Vanished. Some sort of spell. He’s getting more powerful.”

“He’s learning new ways to use the splinter.” She presses her lips together. “We’ll never stop him.”

“We will.” We have to.

She shakes her head. “I have to go see to the wounded. There’s no one else now.”

I stagger down the hill in her wake, stepping over corpses and broken weapons. The survivors part around me like water around a rock. They stare at me like I’m something holy. They whisper “dragon,” and as the word spreads through them, they fall to their knees .

Now I know why Amber hates it so much.

I walk past them.

I’m not any fucking god.

I find Thorben directing survivors to clear the bodies and get the injured to the healer's tent, the one where the witches lived and died. I leave him to it. Amber disappears inside the tent without a backward glance. She’s losing all hope.

And who can blame her? We won tonight but lost so many good men and women.

And Khronus will come back with another army.

Amber’s right; as it stands, we will never beat him. We need something else.

I help to move the wounded, working on automatic mode. Not thinking, just keeping going. There are men and women in worse shape than me still working.

Dawn is just lighting the sky when I see Zayne.

He stumbles into the camp, with cuts across his cheek and his jacket torn. And in his arms—

Josh.

Unconscious. Pale. His limbs too still, too loose.

Zayne’s voice is raw. “He ran away from the camp in the night. He said he wanted Amber. He must have woken up, scared, and came looking for her. I didn’t even notice he was gone until after the battle was over.

I found him behind the ridge over there.

” He nods toward where Khronus was last seen. “He won’t wake up.”

I can hear the panic in his voice. I move fast, meeting them in three strides.

I look down .

Josh is breathing. But barely. And there’s something wrong with the air around him. It shimmers—just a little—like magic. He must have been caught in the magical blast.

My stomach knots.

“Let’s get him to Amber.”