Rise of a Fallen Man (A Look in the Mirror #2)

Chapter 29

Salas

“ B ack off!” Ari pointed a long dagger at the guards.

The queen paled. “Ari? What are you doing?”

“Stay in your seat, Mother,” Ari snapped. “Everyone, stay where you are and listen—”

The Head of the Council rose from her seat.

“Take the prisoner away,” she ordered the guards. “Now.”

A guard shoved against me, sending me back into my chair.

The fucking sleeping potion. It’d been two days since they shot me in the back with the crossbow bolt laced with the potion during my arrest on the forest path. But once it’d entered my bloodstream, the aftereffects had been taking forever to wear off.

Another guard pointed a crossbow at my head.

“I said stay back.” Ari lunged forward and slashed at the woman’s arm, drawing blood.

My mouth fell open in shock.

Was it the same princess who had so adamantly claimed she had no aptitude for weapons?

The guard groaned. Her injured arm jerked to the side. Her weakened fingers released the bolt. It missed my head and embedded into the shoulder of another guard. Both guards then stomped on their feet unsteadily before crashing down to the floor.

“Is there a sleeping potion on your dagger too, Princess?” I staggered to my feet.

She shrugged a shoulder, looking focused and tense. “Beat them at their own game.”

Sleeping potion was a nasty thing. They tried to give me some with tea that morning. Once I’d realized what it was, I damped it out when no one was looking. I was glad I didn’t drink it, finally finding my footing now.

When two other guards trained their weapons on Ari, a hot bolt of anger shot through me. They could do whatever they wished to me, but how dared they put her in danger?

“Not the princess!” the queen shouted.

The councilors gasped.

I grabbed the arm of a guard so hard, she spun, sending her crossbow bolt up into the ceiling. Wrapping my other arm around the second guard, I pressed her hands to her torso and bent her over, her bolt hitting one of the marble petals of the rose on the floor.

“Guards!” The Head Councilor yelled at the top of her lungs.

The doors to the throne room swung open, and an entire army of guards poured in. Most women had crossbows, but seemed confused where to shoot.

“Ari!” the queen screamed in panic, running across the floor to her daughter, but the guards separated her from us. “Don’t shoot the princess!” she yelled at the guards.

“Get away from him!” Ari held out the dagger, protecting me. “This is not a trial. It’s a joke. You just can’t wait to be rid of him. But he’s not an inconvenience to be swept away and forgotten. He’s a person. You can’t erase him. I won’t let you.”

Her hand trembled slightly. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but her voice came loud and firm.

The guards formed a semicircle in front of us, their potion-laced weapons aimed to kill.

Lady Wal craned her neck, peeking over the shoulders of the guards.

“Your Highness, it’s such a foolish notion on your part. He isn’t worth all this aggravation.”

“He’s worth everything,” Ari replied adamantly.

I gently moved her behind me. The two of us retreated to the left, toward the frame shrouded in black velvet on the wall. There was nowhere to retreat any further.

Hugging my waist with one arm, Ari held the dagger in her other hand. She was ready to fight for me. She’d already attacked a guard. But if she actually killed someone, I feared, even the queen could not protect her from the consequences.

“I’ll take it, sweetheart.” I freed the blade from her trembling fingers.

I’d fight my own battle. Ari had already given me more than anyone could. She made my life worth fighting for.

“Salas...” She wrapped her arms around me. Her body was shaking. Her eyes were open wide in horror. Tears streamed down her face.

“You’ll be alright,” I promised.

She’d be safe, even if that was the last thing I did in this world. My crimes were mine to answer for. She was innocent.

“Do you trust me?” she asked unexpectedly.

“You know I do.”

“Then fall with me, Salas.”

I stared at her, unsure what she wanted me to do, but willing to do whatever it took to erase the terror from her face and from her heart.

“Kill the man,” Lady Etah ordered.

The guards rushed us, their crossbows aimed at my head.

“Fall with me!” Ari screamed, shoving me backwards. “Now!”

And I did.

I pushed away from the floor with my feet, letting my body fall backwards against the wall with the giant frame behind the black velvet.

The fabric fell. The frame held a mirror that reflected my face when I glanced at it over my shoulder. Then a ripple distorted it as my elbow hit the surface.

Instead of shattering into pieces, the glass in the mirror turned into a pool of liquid darkness. Ripples of light and shadows enclosed us.

And we fell through it. Ari and I. We fell together.

Ari

HORROR SEIZED ME. THE play of light and shadows disoriented me. Memories rushed me.

Once again, I was scared. Only my terror wasn’t for me this time. I felt helpless to save the man I loved, and terrified at the thought that I’d be forced to watch him die.

It wasn’t the mother’s arms that held me this time as I crashed through the mirror, but his. Salas held me tight. Somehow, he managed to keep his bearings in the chaos because he turned, hitting the floor first and keeping me on top of him unharmed.

We landed in the darkness. I glanced back at the large mirror on the wall behind me. Mother’s pale face stared back at me, her features distorted in the expression of horror. The guards’ crossbows remained aimed at the mirror.

“Don’t shoot!” Mother yelled. “Don’t break the mirror!”

Scrambling to my feet, I leaped aside, out of the line of view of anyone in the throne room. A swell of darkness flooded the mirror, washing away the view of the throne room.

“What the fuck was that?” a dry, unfamiliar voice croaked nearby.

Loud music with a hard beat boomed from a distance. Multi-colored lights from the floor below pulsed to the music, casting their glow onto the concrete stairs.

A flash of a lighter in the corner illuminated a group of young men sitting on the floor and heating something in a metal spoon held over the flame.

One of them got up from a crouch, whipping under his nose with his sleeve.

“Bitch, where did you come from?” he sniffled.

I tossed a glance around as my eyes had gotten used to the dark. It was the same mirror I’d come through to Rorrim ten years ago. The same stair landing in the orphanage. The white painted doors to the girls’ bedroom were now boarded up, the white glossy paint scratched and chipped. The wooden parkette floor was broken and filthy. But the mirror was still there—probably too plain, too old, and too heavy to move it anywhere else.

I raised both hands, taking a step away from the junkies.

“I want no trouble, guys.” The familiar fear zapped through me, as if it had never left. As if the past ten years had never happened. “I’m leaving.”

“The fuck you are.” Another one got up, his eyes glistening wild in the darkness.

“Not until we have some fun first,” the first one chuckled, shuffling closer.

Two or three more shapes lurked in the shadows, unsteadily swaying on their feet.

“Come on, baby. Get over here, warm my dick—” The last word got stuck in the guy’s throat, choked by his own shirt, as Salas lifted him by the scruff from behind.

“That is not a way to talk to a woman,” Salas gritted through his teeth.

The guy kicked his feet, dangling in the air and gasping for breath.

“Hey!” His buddy stepped forward.

A switchblade opened with a click.

“He has a knife,” I warned.

“Not anymore.” Salas knocked the knife out of his hand with a casual gesture, as if swatting a fly away. “Ari, where is the way out from here?”

“Um... This way.” I waved a hand down the stairs.

“Perfect.” He tossed the guy down the full flight of stairs. “Go work on your manners, boy. Next?”

The one who had lost his knife ducked after his weapon, but Salas caught him by the back of his pants.

“Let me go!” the man squeaked. “Hey, we didn’t know she was with you.”

“And what difference does it make? How is disrespecting a woman when she’s alone any better than when she is with a man?”

He tossed this one down the stairs, too, then grabbed another one.

“Women are our birth givers,” he lectured the thug, lifting him over the staircase. “They are the foundation of our society. The gods made them physically weaker than men, to give men a purpose too. What is our purpose as men?” He asked the guy.

“I... I don’t know, dude. Really—”

“Wrong answer.” Salas tossed him down the stairs like a trash bag.

The remaining two tried to sneak past him, but he caught them both, grabbing them around their torsos and lifting them both off their feet.

“Our purpose in this world is to protect our women, gentlemen,” he said firmly. “Will you remember that? Protect. Not attack.”

“Yes! Sure!” they yelled as he sent them both rolling down the stairs too.

“Do you think they got it?” he asked me, after they all scrambled away at the bottom of the stairs.

“Let’s hope they did.” I shrugged, feeling positive they got nothing.

I took a look down the stairs to make sure they were gone, then picked up the switchblade from the floor.

“I’m sure there is more of that down there. Be ready.” I hiked up my long purple robe of the Rorrim’s Council and took the first step down. “Well, for what it’s worth, welcome to my world, Salas.”

“Wait.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Can you return to the palace the same way we came?”

He gestured at the mirror on the wall. It remained dark, reflecting nothing but the dirty opposite wall of the landing. Maybe I could still see my mother and the throne room if I stood in front of it. But I wasn’t going to try.

It felt like an enormous weight fell off my chest. Salas was safe. His secret no longer threatened his life. And for once, I didn’t have to say goodbye to him.

Our future remained murky. But in this world, we could have a future. Together.

“No.” I shook my head. “The one thing I want to do in life I can’t do in Rorrim. I can’t be with you there.”

“Ari.” Placing both his hands on my shoulders, he turned me to him. “You had terrible things happen to you in this world. I know how much you despise it. I can never give you what you’re giving up.”

I took his face between my hands.

“But you give me what no one else can, Salas. You make me happy. They will kill you back in Rorrim. Here, we can be together. It’s a very simple decision for me, really. I’m no longer alone in this world. I have you. You will protect me. When society fails to look after one of us, we’ll look after each other.”

He stared at me intently. His eyes flicked between mine as if trying to read the truth. I held his stare, having nothing to hide. I’d go anywhere, as long as he came with me.

“Then let me say to you something I never could say before.” He brought his face closer to mine. “I love you, princess. Maybe not from the first day we met, but definitely from the first time we kissed.”

Air rushed into my lungs, making me feel lightheaded with happiness.

“I love you, too, Salas. And it feels so fucking good to say it out loud at last,” I breathed out before his lips touched mine, taking my breath away.