Legend has it, if you stand in front of a mirror, shuffling an enchanted deck of cards, you can open a doorway between dimensions.
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Prince Teodric of Springport remembers the promise he made his father: to *not* try to reenact the legend of dimen...
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I wasn't sure how long I stood there, my jaw collapsing at my feet, my eyelids stretched apart, my fingers gripping the veil as if its fabric was the only thing keeping me alive.
But was I alive? How could I be? How—
I tried to speak, but my throat was too dry from having kept my mouth agape for what felt like centuries. If I tried to swallow anything, I'd regurgitate it, for certain. Because this...
This was unexpected. Impossible.
Beneath the mask was a face most might have found ordinary, but I didn't. It was diamond-shaped, with a piercing pecan gaze and luscious lashes that rivaled Lady Ossenna's. A round mouth with smooth, plump lips. A light-olive complexion devoid of bruises or blotches, perfect like a peach. Waves of ash and raven tresses sliding from pins and unfurling on either side of impeccable, high cheekbones, turned maroon in shame.
Minus the hair, and the slightly darker skin...it was like looking in a mirror. Like seeing a ghost.
She was a ghost, wasn't she? In Springport, she was supposed to be dead.
"Mother?"
There was no mistaking her; I'd admired that face for years. Complimented it while she powdered it, preparing for father's festivities. Touched it when she nuzzled me in one of her heart-warming hugs. Kissed it when she lay limp and frail in her bed, her brows heavy with sweat. And cried over it when she—
"No...no, this can't be. You're dead. You died. Dead! I saw your body, you—"
Mother was in Springport, draped in blacks, sleeping forever in her velvet inlaid coffin of white marble, hands clasped at her navel. Tranquil, safe in her afterlife.
This person...it couldn't be her. This was an imposter, an impersonator—a magical fiend.
She unleashed one of her signature chuckles, though her lips still wavered between a frown or a smile. A sound I'd never forgotten, and it shattered through me.
"Teo," she said, in her voice, not the gender-less one that belonged to Arden. "Did you see me, though? Are you one hundred percent positive it was me you laid to rest?"
"I—" There was that dryness again, so intense it was painful, and so painful it prompted me to grimace and seal my eyes, to review my past as it flashed before me.
Had I seen her? It was her slender silhouette in that coffin. Her copper crown atop her thighs, to be buried with her; her cascading curls circling her veiled face—
Veiled face.
"You were...no, you had a veil over your face. Much like," I waved the mask still in my clammy grasp, "this one. But...it was you; it was you, how could it not have been?"
She unfastened the ebony cloak about her shoulders; the one that concealed her entire body, concealed who she was. It slid down her arms and pooled at her slippers. A faint glimmer of green, like a satin cloud, whooshed out from around her. As if she'd lifted a spell that had been cloaking her, keeping her captive.
