To the Shadowsinger | Azriel

Chapter 81: The End

I wish I could tell you Azriel and Raisa got their happy ending together. I'm sorry I haven't been a more reliable narrator. But I never told you to trust me, or perhaps I should have told you sooner not to trust me. To tell you the truth, reality is distorted after spending such a long time locked away. I only have whispers carried by the sun and the lingering echoes from a harp. Time and reality, for me, is not set in stone.

Raisa was never freed from the mirror. She had believed with her whole heart that she was free, but it was all a horrible and, at times, a beautiful lie. All of it. Well, most of it. Let me explain. Or don't, I won't be able to tell either way. My words may echo through empty space and fade until there isn't a single sound left. Or perhaps they'll dance through someone's deep frustration.

Where to start... where to start... Well, I suppose I shall tell you who I am. I was once one of the great beings that walked this earth, not the Mother, but something close. In some worlds, I am known as the Maiden, but in this world... I was a prisoner trapped inside a mirror. The Ouroboros. Not in the same way Raisa was contained for I am what makes this mirror different from any other. I may not leave the mirror, but behind the glass I stay. I sit and wait to show those who dare try to look at me horrible things. Beautiful things. I shatter them or I bless them.

Don't hate me for not freeing Raisa sooner. My entrapment had been as lonely as the womb. Events and people no longer brought me joy or any kind of emotion. I have seen the most evilest of acts without blinking an eye and seen the purest of moments without so much of a twitch of my mouth. It wasn't until Raisa found me, did an ember of joy spark in my hollow chest. She did find me, not in the way I earlier described. No, that was just a possible timeline I showed her to help her pass the time. Something that could have happened if she never looked into the Ouroboros. Azriel didn't even lend a thought to her existence. He had seen her once, when she was a little girl and decided to enter a field of corpses. He had seen her then but had not known she was his mate. He had thought of her only as an unlucky child, never learning the Queen of Vallahan was his mate.

As for how Raisa appeared to the mirror. Well, before the War, Vallahan was in possession of the mirror. Of me. I was a weapon Raisa's mother insisted on using. I didn't let her at first, but I also had nothing to trap her with. There were no weaknesses, insecurities, and her mind was protected with the greatest shield I have ever witnessed. It was even stronger than the current High Lord of the Night Court's. Nothing, not even me, could break through it. If I could, I wouldn't have let her use me to obliterate thousands of humans and fae. I felt their flesh melt from their bones, their screams raked down my skin, and for the first time in what felt like centuries, I cried. I pressed my palms against the glass and cried as she made me kill all those people and I could do nothing but watch from my glass prison as all living things in front of me turned to ash and bone.

At night, the previous queen had tucked me away in a dark room. Not a single hint of light bounced off the glass and I was left alone in the darkness with my heart bleeding out of my chest. Not once, ever in my long life, did I play a hand in death. I may have taken many's sanity, but it was their choice whether to live or end their lives. That was the Crone's work- death. I was youth, love, passion, ambition, joy, friendship, and so many beautiful things. I was good. And the Queen of Vallahan had used me for slaughtering.

Alone in this dark room, I did not know when or how the War ended. I did not know that the Queen had died and Raisa claimed the throne. She was married off to the previous' Queen's lover and General, Caius, but she still held her childish curiosity. Perhaps even foolishness. I had been in that room long enough for dust to collect along the frame of the Ouroboros. My tears had dried and my heart was filled with rage. My thoughts were vile, all I could imagine was pulling the Queen who had stained my hands with blood into the mirror and showing her worlds of horror. I wanted to rip her to shreds and stick the pieces back together just to pull her apart again. I would do that over and over and over until the delusions stopped her heart.