Mirrors ✔️

Chapter 8: Running

Valarie

I don't know what I'm doing, not really. I'm acting entirely on impulse and adrenaline, and I know I'm not thinking clearly.

But without Eva, this is the most sane I'll ever be.

I'm here. I will help you, Eva hisses, and I wince away from her. She's not real, she's not, she can never be real-

I can hear the servant girl-Renee, isn't it-pounding on the door and screaming about how she is trapped.

No matter. No one will hear her. No one had ever heard me, not even when my screams seemed to pierce the skies.

I wonder if she will starve there. I wonder if she will see the blood, in the end.

I wonder why that doesn't fill me with guilt, not like it should.

No matter. I only care for Eva.

I walk down the cold stone steps, noticing and ignoring the slippery blood that hides in the corners. I smile at it, tracing my fingers along the cracks in the walls. They are cold, too, but my face, my expression, is colder. I refuse to play for him anymore.

I am on my own side now. For always.

Perhaps this will help others. Perhaps it will save them. But the killing blow is for me, and me only.

Me and Eva, that is.

Yes. And who will die first, little Valarie? The executioner? The King? Your mother, maybe, the woman who lied to your face when she spoke of the plans for our kingdom? Hmmm. It's your choice.

I cling to Eva's voice like a lifeline, and yet....this doesn't sound like her.

I stop listening. Nothing will distract me, not when I'm so close.

I turn left, making my footsteps softer, light. I can just barely hear the noises of the castle, the castle I used to think of as home.

Now, every voice is an enemy.

Suddenly, a pair of footsteps gets louder, and I spin around, a snarl on my lips. My hand raises instinctively, ready for the first strike. The first move.

But it is only a boy. Maybe fourteen, and innocent. His eyes widen at the sight of me, his mouth opening to shout a warning, and I run forward to launch myself at him-

"Princess Valarie." Is what he says instead, grabbing my arm and tugging me into a side corridor before I can do anything to stop him. "We've been looking for you."

I smirk up at him. "Ha. Ha. Ha." I gasp out. "You're funny. No one is looking for me! They're....looking......for a pretty. Little. Princess. No one.....expects....me!" One of my father's puppets, then. Well, I can make his death extra painful, just like Eva's-

"We do, actually," The boy says, shocking me into stillness. "Have you heard of the Midnight Star?"

"Oh. That little rebellion." I tilt my head, catlike.

Oh, you will regret this.