The Crumpled Mirror by Elizabeth Loea (free novel reading sites TXT) 📕

We exchanged panicked looks and, as one, ran for the door. In the hall, the house’s perpetual warmth had faded to an uncharacteristic chill, and the cold only worsened as we raced down the main staircase for the foyer. Socks sliding on marble steps, we slipped and slid the last few paces to the main hall.

“DAMN IT!” came Adrian’s shout from the foyer. Then, a sound like hands banging on sheet metal, a heavy clanking.

Lilac was the first to the foyer, pushing the heavy doors open before her. Ginger and I followed close behind, and Indigo’s shout from the other end of the hallway told me that he was headed our way.

Adrian banged his hands on thin air, his bottle abandoned. Silver liquor spilled onto the marble. The air shook beneath Adrian’s hands, lashing back with every bang of his fists. I reached out next to him, refusing to acknowledge that—

“Oh, gods,” I said. “We’re trapped.”

Adrian stopped his assault on the wall and stared at me. In the silence, blood dripped from his hands onto the marble.

“This is your fault,” he said, and pointed to the rune that had been drawn in front of the threshold to keep ghosts out. “It has to be this magic.”

He bent and wiped at the rune with his hands, blood smearing the ink until the rune was destroyed. I could do nothing but stare at him.

Outside, the day was bright and beautiful. The grass in front of the house practically sung in the breeze, the far-off burned trees so distant that I felt as though I was just watching a memory of them. The sky curved blue and smooth overhead, clouds slipping across it like suds across tile.

Adrian stood and tried to shoulder his way through the barrier, but it wouldn’t budge. Ginger stepped up beside him and pressed as hard as she could, leaning her full body weight against the air, but nothing changed.

“We’re trapped,” she snapped. “We’re fucking trapped.”

There would be no sneaking away that night.

XXIV

Indigo found me in the greenhouse later. I was staring at the door to the pocket world beyond. Poppies wilted around me, their perfume almost rotted through by now. I’d watered them earlier that day, but it probably hadn’t been enough.

I should have run when I had the chance. I should have put two and two together and found Oberon as soon as I guessed it was him. If he was this committed to killing us specifically, he could do it at any time now.

Maybe it was the tests that made him angry. Maybe he was living out some sick version of the tests where he could control what happened, whether we lived or died.

It didn’t matter. For now, all I could do was find Oberon.

And I couldn’t let anyone know my name.

None of us could go home. Not until I found a way to end this once and for all.

Indigo sat down next to me with a rustling of fabric and leaned his elbows on his knees, his eyes on the floor.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You couldn’t have kept us safe all by yourself.”

“It was my fault,” I shot back. “I should have done more research. I should have thought harder. They were already angry at me. And now…”

He waited a few seconds before I felt his fingers on my forearm, warm and sturdy.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated. “No more than it’s my fault for my inaction, or Adrian’s, for not trying to use his foresight better, or Ginger’s, for not reading our emotions and responding to them, or Lilac’s, for not resurrecting Mint during the day so he’s forced to deal with us.”

“That’s not—”

“Exactly,” he said. “Look at me.”

I did. In the dim glow of the light through the greenhouse windows, Indigo’s smile was softer than ever, sturdy, and comforting. He clasped his fingers with mine.

“It’s okay,” he told me. “It’s not our job to get this perfect. You’ve been trying. Trying is enough right now. Mint dragged us into this new world with promises of answers. Instead, there are more deaths and we’re getting absolutely no help. It’s not your job to make up for Mint’s failings. Or anyone’s but your own, for that matter.”

I propped my head against his shoulder and watched our clasped hands. His breaths, slow and steady, lulled me almost to sleep, but his voice brought me back to wakefulness.

“So…” he started. “If we figure out how to keep our worlds separate, that means...”

“I don’t want to think about it,” I told him, and looked up to meet his eyes again. “I really don’t want to. This has been the best week of my life, despite every terrible thing. Being trapped in the same world I’ve lived in all my life is just...I don’t want to think about it.”

“Okay,” he said, even though none of this was okay in the slightest. “C’mon. Let’s go check on the others. Maybe they’re preparing for the test tomorrow.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He laughed and tugged me into the main house.

It took no time at all to know things were getting worse and worse among the others. An explosion rattled the floor above us.

I looked to Indigo.

“Ginger,” he said. “Earlier, she asked me where you keep the spellbooks you’ve been using.”

“And you told her?”

He winced. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess.”

I groaned. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

We clambered up one of the many half-hidden staircases in the house and jogged to find Ginger. The second floor was particularly impenetrable, probably to delay any potential intruders. From the ash outside the door to a room I hadn’t explored yet, I assumed that the explosion had originated from there.

Indigo came to the same conclusion a second earlier and headed for the door. It groaned and cracked a little as he pushed it open, the wood already splintered from the magic. Hopefully the spell hadn’t been targeted at anyone, but—

“Mint,” Indigo said, half greeting for Mint and half