them.
An entire level of the tower bursting with so much collective magick it made her bones hum.
“What was it trying to destroy?” Surai asked, and they all directed their attention to the shrouded oval-shaped thing in the center of the warped cage.
Haven approached the mysterious item carefully, knowing any second now Nasira or Stolas would appear and force them out. It was because of that very secrecy that she was interested.
Surai whistled beside Haven. “Stolas’s familiar snapped spell-reinforced iron bars like they were twigs.”
“I wonder what’s inside?” A cold, icky sensation seeped into Haven as she drew nearer to the object, and her body instinctively recoiled. “Do you sense that?”
Surai made the sign of the Goddess. “That thing has a wrongness to it, Soror. Let us leave it and be done.”
But Haven’s curiosity had been replaced with a strange enthrallment. “Do you hear a voice?”
A distant keening song trickled from behind the shroud. Calling to Haven. Begging her closer. Begging her to lift the veil. Bile clawed up her throat as she drew even nearer. The thing was repulsive. The decaying wrongness of it sending violent shivers over her skin.
And yet she couldn’t stop.
Haven reached through the gaping hole between the iron bars, her fingers brushing the black lace—
“Get back!” A sharp gust of wind swept through the room.
Haven was torn from the warped cage and sent hurtling backward onto her ass along with the others.
Scuttling to her feet, she whipped her head to see Stolas striding to the cage. He flicked his fingers and the misshapen iron bars creaked and moaned as they began melding back together under his expert touch.
She was so busy watching him reshape the cage that she almost didn’t realize the shroud had slipped away. It must have happened when he flung them back.
Curious, she crept closer to the mysterious object, a tall, oblong mirror framed in exquisite jade carved to look like monstrous creatures were escaping from another world. Held up by a pair of crooked silver legs ending in beastly paws, it stood the height of a man.
Although in excellent condition, it was obviously old, the silver legs tarnished with age and frame fissured with cracks and chips.
Which made the perfectly flawless surface of the mirror . . . strange. Stranger still was that the surface didn’t seem to reflect their surroundings at all but another place entirely.
Squinting, she picked out what appeared to be a . . . a room.
Not just a room but a cavernous chamber filled with opulence and luxury befitting a palace. Dust and something else—possibly spiderwebs—clung to everything. From her vantage point on the floor, she could make out the art on the walls. Most were dark, gruesome depictions of violent battles or demons tearing into mortals, but one piece in particular caught her eye because of how different it was from the rest.
A woman on a golden settee nursing a baby.
Done with the cage, Stolas finally realized the shroud had fallen. With an elegant sweep of his hand, he positioned the veil over the mirror once more.
He had worked quietly, efficiently, but all the while she felt a simmering rage just beneath that polished veneer. Now he turned that fury on her. “How could you be so foolish?”
His voice was like a thunderclap, and it dredged up everything that had happened earlier.
In all the madness, she’d nearly forgotten.
Hot anger swept through her, clumping in her throat and preventing any words from coming out. Which was probably a good thing as she strode toward him, considering what was running through her mind.
Bastard. Inconsiderate, black-hearted bastard.
She halted a few inches away. “What did you expect me to do? Let you die?”
“Yes.”
She flinched. “Then you obviously don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”
“Do you not hate me enough yet?” He flashed a razor-sharp smile, the savagery hewn into his features piercing straight to her core. “Do you need another lesson?”
A whisper of fear flickered to life—
No, she wasn’t doing this. Playing this game. “I know what you’re doing.”
“And what is that?”
“Trying to make me despise you. Is that what you want?”
The strong column of his throat dipped. “Want and need are two very different things.”
“Then what do you want?”
Silence.
The others were frozen around them, busy pretending they weren’t listening. Even Nasira, who was rifling around in the shelves for Goddess knew what, had half an ear pointed in their direction as she eavesdropped.
Haven didn’t care. “I know I will never understand the trauma and hurt you feel