pieces of glass at her feet. She touched her cheek. Blood smeared her fingers. She recoiled.
Had Shang really just given an order to kill her? The Shang she knew would never hurt her.
“Shang,” she said, her voice quavering, “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but my deal with King Yama is for all of us. You, me, and ShiShi. We have to work together and find a way out of here.”
“Zhen told me how to get out of here,” said Shang, crossing his arms. “You fight your inner demons, Mulan. And mine is that the friend I trusted most lied to me. The only way I can vanquish that is if you take my place in Diyu.”
There was a trace of regret in his face. It softened his features for one fleeting moment, long enough to make Mulan’s heart lurch. Maybe it was him.
Then his expression hardened. “China needs me, Mulan. More than it needs you. So this is how it must be.” He turned to the soldiers behind him, motioning for them to prepare for another attack.
Mulan kicked her leg back into a lunge and raised her fists. She wasn’t going down without a fight. She’d find a way out of here—for both of them.
Her father appeared at Shang’s side. “You should never have come back.”
Her mother and grandmother echoed Fa Zhou. Then the villagers and the rest of the soldiers. Mulan even saw the Matchmaker among them.
“You are a disgrace!” the Matchmaker yelled. She turned to the other villagers, her bright red lips curling into a smirk. “I knew she was trouble.”
“How dare you show your face back here!”
“You will never bring your family honor.”
As the shouts intensified, Mulan’s cheeks grew hot with shame and anger. Her heart pounded, her skin tingled with sweat. This was one of her greatest fears: to go home and be reviled by her parents, their village, and her friends—for bringing shame upon her family name.
I fought for you all, she wanted to yell. What does it matter if I’m a girl? I held my own. I saved our army from the Huns.
But she pursed her lips tight and reined in her anger.
This is a hallucination, Mulan told herself. Don’t listen to them. Don’t lose control.
She couldn’t even understand what they were shouting anymore. The commotion grew so loud that all she could make out was her name.
Find a way out, she reminded herself. It was hard to see where the walls were. The frames around the mirrors had disappeared, and if she hadn’t known better, Mulan might have believed she were actually outside and not trapped in a chamber of mirrors.
She ventured closer to the walls, but Shang obstructed her way. She tried to move past him, but he was too fast.
“A life for a life,” Shang said. “King Yama can’t afford to let both of us leave Diyu. Only one of us gets to go, and it isn’t going to be you.”
“Watch me.” She bolted left, running for the mountains behind the tents. She thought she saw a way out—a brightly lit path that led toward the distant moon. If she could reach it—
Another wave of shards shot out of the mirrors. As soon as Mulan heard the glass whizzing across the chamber, she slammed her body to the ground. The glass fragments looked sharper this time. They were thinner, too, with sharp points that glimmered as they flew.
They hurt like needles. Just pricks at first, but as more and more shards bit into her flesh, the pain seared into her arms and legs. Some pierced her skin, and others cut her only as they flew past. As glass shattered all around her, echoing and echoing in her ears, Mulan realized she had no idea how to get out of here.
In the Chamber of Mirrors, you only battle the demons within, Zhen had warned her.
Even if everything in this chamber was an illusion, the gashes on her cheeks and arms were real. The staggering pain from her battered body—that was real too. If she didn’t fight back, she would die here.
So she got up, shielding her face with her arm. The shards flew at her so fast there was no time to blink. Only fight. She raised her arms and jabbed at the glass pieces. She didn’t hold in her fear. Every time a fragment pierced her, Mulan let out a cry. Then she channeled that pain into anger and determination to live. She kicked and whirled, swooping her legs