Chapter twenty four: Dream state
Darkness came first, warm and thick, like velvet draped over her mind. But beneath it pulsed a sound — slow and steady.
A heartbeat.
Not hers. Deeper. Stronger.
It drew her forward.
She opened her eyes into a world not entirely her own.
The manor stood before her again—but different. Draped in frost and shadow, moonlight catching on the spires like knives. The trees in the courtyard had no leaves, their branches stretched upward like skeletal arms pleading toward a sky of swirling violet mist.
And she stood barefoot in the snow, wearing a thin, white gown. Her breath came out in silver clouds.
I've been here before…
But something was wrong.
The snow beneath her feet was not white—but faintly red, dusted like ash with blood. The sky rippled unnaturally, as if water were falling upward. Whispers echoed around her. Some she recognized.
"Elira…"
Calen?
She turned—but saw no one.
"Elira," the voice came again. Fainter now. "Don't trust the mirror…"
Mirror?
She stepped forward. Her feet didn't leave prints.
The courtyard gates loomed open. Inside stood a tall mirror, its gilded edges crusted with frost, like the one she had seen in Thorne's manor. But this mirror was cracked, spiderwebbed through its center.
Yet when she approached it, her reflection did not mimic her movements.
It tilted its head. Smiled faintly.
Then the glass breathed.
Her reflection leaned in close and whispered in a voice too much like her own:"You don't belong to him."
What—?
Suddenly the mirror shattered outward — not in shards, but in a liquid ripple, like falling through ice.
She plunged forward—
And found herself in a hall of portraits.
Dozens of faces lined the walls, all staring. Some she recognized dimly — the noble guests at the Crimson Feast. Some were strangers. Some had no faces at all.
But at the far end, under a tattered crimson curtain, hung two massive portraits.
One of Lucien Thorne, painted in chiaroscuro shades of black and crimson. Elegant, cold, untouched by time. His eyes glowed faintly red.
The second… was her.
But not her. This version of Elira wore a dress of blood-red silk. Her collar was gold. Her eyes were glowing violet, and in her hand she held a blade made of mirrored glass.
As she stared, the portrait's lips began to move.
"Break the bond…
Elira stumbled back—
The floor opened beneath her.
She fell.
Soft and endless.
Then—light. Not warm, but silver, like moonlight cast through frost.
Elira stood barefoot in a marble corridor that twisted like a helix, rising and falling with no visible end. The air shimmered, carrying the scent of roses long dead. Petals crumbled beneath her feet—black and brittle.
Her gown was white. Or had once been. The hem bled crimson.
She moved without thought, drawn by a sound. A whisper—not words, but a name, her name, fractured like glass: Elira... Elir—a... El—
The walls rippled like water.
Then she saw it.
A mirror stood ahead—tall, framed in dark iron thorns. But it did not show her reflection.
It showed Lucien.
He stood in a field of ash, cloak billowing, surrounded by crows. He did not speak. But his eyes found hers through the veil of dream—obsidian and eternal.
She reached toward the glass.
"Why?" she whispered.
The mirror cracked.
Behind her, chains slithered—alive, sentient, dragging across the marble. She turned—too slow—and saw a dozen shadow-figures: versions of herself, faceless, bloodied, crawling toward her on broken limbs. One wore a collar like hers. Another held a cup of gold. Another wept silently.
"Pet," one rasped."Monster," said another."Queen," murmured the third.
A flash—Lucien's face again. But this time not from the mirror. From memory. From sensation.
The heat of his breath as he tethered her.The anguish buried beneath his fury.The taste of her blood on his lips—a tether not of power, but possession. Protection. Desperation.
Elira staggered back. The ground beneath her splintered like glass.
She fell again.
Fell through shadows.
Fell into herself.
Elira now stood in a grove of ash trees. The sky above was bruised violet, and the ground pulsed faintly beneath her bare feet like a sleeping heart. Wind stirred the brittle white leaves overhead, making a sound like broken chimes.
There was no path.
But her feet moved anyway.
She wandered until she reached a clearing.
And there—beneath a bone-white tree knotted with thorns—stood a boy.
He was no older than seventeen. Pale, sharp-featured. Eyes like a winter night: bottomless and black. He wore no crown, but the shadows bent around him like a throne.
Lucien.
But not as she knew him.
Younger. Before the centuries turned him cold. Before the weight of blood had calcified into silence. His hands trembled slightly as he reached up to touch the hanging thorns, his fingers careful not to bleed.
She stepped forward.
The boy turned—but did not seem surprised.
"You came," he said quietly.
His voice was the same. Gentle, cold, threaded with grief.
"I don't—" she began, but her throat ached to speak.
"You always do," he murmured. "In every life. Every version of you."
He moved aside—and there, at the base of the tree, lay a girl. Her body cradled in roots.
She wore a gown of crimson silk. Her hair was wild and dark, her collar a mirrored replica of Elira's own. A crescent scar gleamed above her heart.
And though her skin was gray with death, Elira saw her face clearly.
Hers.
But older. Wiser. Regal.
Lucien looked down at her.
"I couldn't save her," he whispered.
His hand curled into a fist. "I swore I would never taste her blood. I failed. And then they took her from me anyway."
Wind howled through the trees. The leaves turned black. The thorns began to bleed.
Elira stumbled back, throat burning.
"She died…" Elira whispered. "But she was me."
Lucien nodded.
"You don't remember. Not yet. But it's all coming back, little by little. The collar knows. The blood remembers. And I—"
He looked at her. Really looked.
"I have waited long enough."
Suddenly, a hand gripped her wrist.
It wasn't Lucien's.
It belonged to the dead girl beneath the tree.
But her eyes were wide open now—silver and glowing.
Her voice echoed like a thousand women whispering at once.
"You must choose, Elira. Die a pet... or rise as something else."
Elira screamed.
The forest collapsed.
Darkness slammed shut like a door.