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Chapter One
Volkov Castle
Gwendolyn’s emerald eyes were wide with panic. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead and was smeared across the crescent scar that split her right brow. Her breathing was shallow. The blade of her kidnapper’s sword pressed against her pale throat.
In battle, Sirus was always calm. Level-headed. Calculated. Only when the time was right would he let the monster, the hunger, free.
As Sirus stared into the mirrored eyes of Gwendolyn’s attacker, the monster within him clawed to be unleashed. Fueled by rage. By vengeance.
“Nestra may want her whole, but she will settle for alive—and alive is all I need to get what I want,” the cursed man declared with a wince of pain from the damage Sirus had already inflicted. The kidnapper dug his blade deeper into Gwendolyn’s smooth skin.
She whimpered as fresh blood formed beneath the edge the fae silver.
Sirus tightened the grip on his swords. Despite his growing hunger, he resolved not to drink a drop of his enemy’s blood. The taste of Gwendolyn’s salty sweet skin still lingered on his tongue after their embrace in Abigail’s garden, and he would not sully it with the filth that stood before him.
Sirus would make the wretch pay for what he’d done to Gwendolyn. In pain and blood, until the stone floor was washed and slick with it. Until?—
A soft knock came at the door.
Sirus opened his eyes and took in the familiar surroundings of his study. With a focused breath, he calmed the tension the memory had brought on. He inhaled the familiar scent of woodsmoke, worn leather, and polish; replacing the phantom scent of her kidnapper’s blood. He closed his eyes again and summoned a different memory. One of Gwendolyn smirking at him amongst the roses back in Abigail’s garden. A heaviness settled in his chest, and another knock came at the door.
He opened his eyes once more and beckoned Levian to enter.
The mage slid into his study quietly and took the worn leather chair by the fire across from him, adjusting her layers of green silken skirts around her. “You look…well-recovered,” she said with slight yet clear surprise, her sharp violet eyes taking him in.
He was well-recovered. Even Sirus couldn’t believe how quickly he’d healed.
It had been two days since he and Gwendolyn had escaped the magick mirror. He’d carved into the cursed attacker with precision, but not before the bastard had gotten a chance to plunge a poisoned Dökk blade into Sirus’s gut.
Gwendolyn’s magick had managed to purge the dark poison from his blood. Not only that, but it had rebuilt him stronger. Better than before. All that remained of his nearly fatal injuries was a quickly healing wound left by the Dökk blade. Sirus’s fingers tensed around his nearly empty tumbler of scotch, the dull pain in his torso a welcome reminder of why they were here. Why he was here.
Gwendolyn still slept, her mortal body drained by her sacrifice. By what he’d taken from her. Sirus felt the firm grip of guilt in his chest as he met Levian’s gaze. Only Rath, his mentor and the keeper of Volkov, had seen him since that night he and Gwendolyn came hurtling through the mirror. Since he’d slipped through the clutches of Death like black sand through her fingers.
He’d summoned Levian for a purpose, one beyond proving his quick recovery. “How did you come to be here?” he asked the mage.
Levian took in a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “After you and Gwen fell into the magick mirror, I tried to open it—we tried to follow you. I even tried to return to Abigail, but she’d already closed her side.” Her voice was pained with memory. Sirus was unmoved. “I couldn’t think of what to do, where to look.”
She tilted her head to look into the fire. “Niah suggested Rath. We used my mother’s traveling stones and arrived somewhere beyond your clan’s shielding spells. Niah led us through the barrier and into the forest. By the time we’d found Rath and started to explain, you’d come through the mirror.”
Levian confirmed what Sirus had assumed: only those of his vampire clan could pass through the warding spells that surrounded the forest of Volkov Castle. His sister, Niah, had to have escorted them in to find Rath.
The memory was still vivid. As if it all had happened only hours ago. He, Levian, and Gwendolyn had gone to visit the witch, Abigail, at her country estate in France, hoping her scrying bowl could uncover truths of Gwendolyn’s past and provide guidance on her mysterious magicks. The witch hadn’t given them answers, but he’d discovered other things during that visit. Things that weighed heavily on him now.
Sirus rested his ankle over his knee. He’d pondered heavily on what must be done. Now it was time to execute his plan. “What I tell you is to remain between the two of us,” he told the mage before downing the rest of his scotch.
He began with Marcus, how the zephyr had invoked a blood debt to contract Sirus to protect Gwendolyn and her magicks from their High Priestess, Nestra. He then recounted all that had occurred in the magick mirror. He told her everything he could recall of Aldor, the labyrinth of mirrored halls, the strange essence of magick that lingered in the cursed place. Levian listened in silence, devouring each morsel of information and processing them as they came. When he was through, she leaned back in her seat, her face slack. For several minutes, the mage stared at the small table between them, the gears behind her violet half-fae eyes toiling to piece it all together. Eventually, she stood, the skirt of her silken dress flowing behind her as she stalked over to the small bar at the edge of the room, poured herself a large brandy, and shot it back. She poured another, then came back to her seat.
“The Hall of Reflections,” she declared, her usually velvet-smooth voice scratchy from spirit. “That’s where he took you.” Sirus was not familiar with the place, which she seemed to anticipate, as she continued, “It’s written of rarely, and with little detail. I thought it a myth, but you must have been there. It is said that when the magick mirrors were first forged, their makers connected them by creating a place not in the world, but between it—a place beyond the touch of time. It’s where the magick that tethers the mirrors together lives. A network that binds them all.” Her eyes drifted into the void of the fire. “I’ve also read of people cursed by the Pool of Mirrors,” she said. “It was supposedly destroyed by the fae long ago. I cannot fathom how it would have come to be, but if Gwen’s kidnapper is such a creature, it would explain why he would be able to enter the Hall of Reflections.” Levian’s expression grew grim. “You said he’s soulless?”
“Yes.” Sirus had known Gwendolyn’s attacker was one such creature the moment those eyes of mirror met his own. All creatures afflicted with curses carried a mark, but they were not all soulless. Sirus had felt it. Whether you wanted to call it a soul or the essence of life, as a vampire he was particularly attuned to recognizing it—in particular, to recognizing when it was absent. There had been an unmistakable hollowness to Nestra’s lapdog. He lived, but not wholly.
Levian raised her glass to take a sip, but stopped short. “The Pool of Mirrors is a place only the desperate seek, in order to undo what cannot be undone. It is said to provide a single gift, but at a high cost. The price is only vaguely mentioned in old texts, but a sacrifice was required to forge the magick mirrors themselves. The bastard’s soul is not lost; his life force is simply bound to the Pool and, in turn, the mirrors. It’s why he couldn’t die in the Hall after…after what you did to him.” She sipped her drink and grimaced as she swallowed. “You could have torn his head from his shoulders, and he would have lain there for eternity. Unable to die. Unable to live.”
It was a bleak reality, but Sirus couldn’t be stirred to compassion. A flash of Gwendolyn afraid and bleeding under her captor’s grip caused him to tense, sending a jolt of pain through his middle. Sirus had torn into the cursed man with ferocity, but he regretted he’d not gone so far as to do just as Levian said.
“I left the mirror,” she confessed, a touch of guilt laced into her voice. “Back in London. If he can use mirrors, it would do him no good here. The magick of this place would make it impossible. And there are no other magick mirrors in the castle; I confirmed with Rath. I suspect you were only able to use the mirror you came through because it was yours.”
His? Hardly. The magick mirror had belonged to his predecessor, Kane. When Sirus had taken over as leader of the Clan of Wolves after Kane’s death, he left several of his mentor’s more cherished belongings just as they were, including the mirror. If he’d known its true nature, he would have cast it out of Volkov long ago. He felt like a fool for not suspecting it, but he was eased knowing it was that mirror that had saved Gwendolyn.
