Page 46 of The Eternal Mirror (Lucifer’s Mirror #3)

The Beginning of the End...

O utside the tent, the sun is rising. It’s a new day. And my guess is it’s going to be as crappy as the last one.

The fires are still burning.

Not the big ones—they’re mostly stamped out. But everything smells scorched. My magic. My skin. The air.

So many dead. And Killian is gone. They didn’t find his body. Maybe he burned. Or...

I’m kneeling next to a soldier with a gut wound, and I’m shaking so hard, I can barely lift my hand to rest it on his chest. There’s blood everywhere. He’s crying. Whispering for his mother.

“Shut up,” I mutter, not unkindly, and push a little bit of power into him.

The light flares, then fades. The wound closes .

But I feel it. The empty spaces inside me. There’s almost nothing left.

Sheela used to do most of the healing. She was better than me—she had years of experience. She was also nicer to the patients. She’d laugh and say I was the worst healer she’d ever seen. She won’t ever laugh again.

The man has gone silent. I force myself to look into his face.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

And I want to cry so badly. To let out some of the pain that’s building inside me. Like lancing a suppurating boil. But my tears seem to have dried up along with my magic.

So, I keep going. Because that’s what Sheela would do. Because someone has to. Because if I stop moving, I might shatter.

Another soldier. A burned arm. A broken collarbone. A child—I don’t even know where she came from—with a shard of metal in her leg. I take it out and seal the skin, and when I’m done, she smiles at me like I saved the world. A woman comes and takes her away. Her mother—they have the same smile.

I’m so exhausted I want to vomit.

But that’s the last of them for now. I sit on my stool and stare at the dirt ground, wondering how I go forward from here.

Sheela’s face keeps flashing in my mind.

I see the moment the arrows struck her over and over again.

Why had she done it? But I know. She’d thrown her life away in a storm of rage and grief and hatred for Khronus.

And I understand, I feel the same way deep in my bones.

“Amber!”

I look up .

Zayne is standing in the opening to the tent, blood on his cheek, holding something—no, someone—in his arms. Another wounded—I think he might be out of luck.

I’m done. Zayne stumbles into the tent and drops to his knees in front of me.

Khaosti follows him in. He looks a little better, and for a few seconds, we gaze into each other’s eyes.

His are as blank as I’m guessing mine are.

Neither of us giving anything away. But I can sense his pain and exhaustion through the bond. And something else...

“I found him,” Zayne says. “By the ridge—he’s not waking up—”

It takes me a second to see. And the world freezes.

Josh.

His face is pale. Eyes closed. Limp.

“No,” I breathe. I’m already reaching for him. “No!”

Zayne lays him on the empty bed, and I reach out with a shaking hand.

He’s breathing. Just. His pulse is faint, his skin clammy.

There are no wounds that I can see. But there’s something wrong.

Not with his body, but with the air around him.

It crackles faintly, like static before a lightning strike, and my stomach clenches.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“I don’t know,” Zayne says. “I think he came looking for you. I didn’t know he was gone until after the battle started. I couldn’t come. I couldn’t risk it. I should have. But...” He’s breaking, ridden with guilt.

“You did right to stay away,” I say fiercely.

“Khronus would have forced you to shift. To kill us.” I take a deep breath.

“He’s going to be all right.” I will not allow anything else.

I will not lose him. Khaosti rests his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

I want to collapse into his arms so badly, but I can’t. I have to be strong for Josh.

I look at him again. Then I close my eyes and feel the magic surrounding him.

It’s dark magic with an echo of the splintered mirror.

He must have been caught in the magical blast when Khronus did his disappearing act.

He’s using the splinter to power his magic.

But it’s unstable power, torn from an unstable source that was never meant to act alone.

Plus, I doubt that mega-asshole knows what he’s doing or what the splinter is capable of.

Magic has a way of screwing you over if you don’t understand it.

Sometimes, it will screw you over even if you do.

Josh is just a little boy. He never had magic. But I suspect he does now.

Zayne watches me, waiting for answers I don’t have.

“I—” My voice catches. I try again. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what to do. Physically, he seems fine.”

Josh stirs. Just a twitch, and my heart leaps.

I lean closer.

He blinks, and for one terrifying second, the light catches his eyes—and they gleam silver. Like starlight…like the Eternal Mirror.

I jerk back. Hard.

“Amber?” Zayne asks.

I shake my head. “He’s not hurt. Not really. Not in a way I can fix.” Maybe Selene will know something that can help. Yeah, like she helped with the witches .

Zayne looks at me as if I’m speaking in another language. I don’t blame him. I barely understand it myself.

I try to explain. “I think Josh must have been hit by the backlash from Khronus’s magic. And now...”

Now Josh is something else. But I don’t want to say that. Zayne already looks freaked out. Josh is not dead. I’m going to count that as a win. Anything else, we can deal with. I press my fingers to my lips, then to Josh’s forehead. “You hold on,” I whisper. “You little idiot. You hold on.”

A soft rustle. I turn.

Grimlet is in the doorway. Eyes wide, ears flat, wings pinned against his body, the tips trembling. He stares at Josh, then looks at me, his tail drooping low.

“Grim,” I say, barely a whisper. “You’ve been looking for him?”

He nods slowly. “He was sleeping, then he was gone.” He looks like he might cry. I almost do, too. He flaps his wings and lifts off, landing gently on the bed beside Josh. He strokes Josh’s hand and looks at me.

“Josh will be fine?”

“Yes. He’ll be better than fine. He’ll be fabulous.”

He nods and settles down.

I glance around the tent. Broken bodies. Smoke in the air. Josh on the edge of something I don’t understand. And Khronus is no doubt organizing his next little excursion.

I know what we have to do.

“We can’t stay here,” I say. “We need to leave. Soon. Go somewhere safe. Somewhere...away from this. ”

No one argues.

Because everyone feels it.

What happened last night is only the beginning. And unless we can pull a miracle out of the bag, Khronus will attack again. And keep attacking.

Where should we go? I don’t know this world, but maybe someone else knows a safe place where we can rest and heal. Then I have an idea.

There is one place that Khronus will likely never think to look.

A faint tingle of excitement runs through me.

I’m going home.

Or at least, what would have been my home if none of this had ever happened.

“It’s time to go home,” I whisper, the words tasting like ash and something dangerously close to hope.

Home. A word I never thought I’d use again.

But maybe that’s where the ending begins.