MIRA'S DREAMS WERE VIVID, WRENCHING. NIGHTMARES filled with tears and anguish and loss.
Such unbearable loss.
Kellan . . .
She came awake on a start, her eyelids lifting in the dark silence of a room that smelled of damp stone, distant brine . . . and him.
Thank God, only nightmares.
Kellan was right there with her, both of them naked in his bed. His heart thudded leisurely beneath her cheek, his bare chest warm under her palm. He was there. He was safe.
He stirred beneath her, and Mira held herself very still, not wanting to disturb his sleep after the long vigil he'd kept atop the bunker.
Not to mention the hours of unrushed lovemaking, which must have worn him out as well. Though she wouldn't have imagined it then, when he brought her to shattering orgasm three times, his own release never far behind.
The thought of his passion, the pleasure they'd given each other just a short while ago, helped soothe the panicked beat of her heart. It calmed her to recall his words - his tender promise of love - as they'd embraced under the waning starlight in the moments before he'd brought her to his bed.
Kellan loved her. He didn't want to leave her; she knew that. But he would. As he'd told her so gently tonight, when he was ready to surrender to the Order, he would do it alone. He didn't want her there.
And thinking about him facing judgment - and her vision's prophesied outcome - by himself put an icy knot in the bottom of her stom-ach.
She had to work to tamp down her dread, willing herself not to go back to her nightmares of a few moments ago or to the unbearable thoughts of what Kellan had described seeing in her eyes. Although the urge to cling to him now as he slept verged on desperation, Mira was too wired to lie still. Her head was buzzing, her limbs restless, worry nagging at her like tiny fish nibbling at her sanity.
Carefully she extricated herself from Kellan's side and eased her way to the edge of the bed. He sighed and rolled over, his breathing settling into a deeper slumber. Mira rose, unsure what to do or where she could go to shake off the heavy weight of her anxiety. What she needed more than sleep or distraction was answers.
She needed to know what her future held with Kellan. More than anything, she needed some glimmer of hope that they could, somehow, overcome the trouble they were in and find a way to be together.
She shot a glance over her shoulder, toward the foot of the bed. Her eyes lit on the trunk that rested there on the floor. The trunk that held Kellan's grandmother's mirror.
No. It was dangerous even to consider it.
She didn't even know if it would work.
And yet she reached for her empty contact lens case on the night table beside the bed, then her feet were moving her silently across the floor, carrying her to the wooden locker. She crouched down in front of it. Silently lifted the lid.
The silver hand mirror lay facedown on top of a stack of Kellan's shirts. Mira picked it up, her fingertips brushing over the carved design of the Archer family emblem.
She had to try.
She had to know, even if it terrified her to do this, something she'd never attempted before. The worse terror was not knowing, fearing that what Kellan saw might actually be his fate.
If there was any chance that looking into her own unprotected gaze might give her even a slim hope of a future together with Kellan, she would risk anything. She would pay any price to know for certain if he was destined to live . . . or doomed to die.
Mira pivoted, putting her back to the trunk as she kneeled on the floor and removed her contact lenses to their case. The mirror in hand, she closed her eyes and took a steeling breath deep into her lungs.
She could do this.
She had to do this.
She brought the mirror up in front of her face, her eyelids still shuttering her talent. Her heart banged in her chest, so erratic and nervous, so loud in her ears, she half expected Kellan to wake from the sound of it. Her palms were damp, mouth dry as ash.
She had to try.
She had to know.
She lifted her lids and froze at the sight of her face staring back at her in the oval of polished glass. She looked so different without the purple lenses muting the crystalline intensity of her gaze. She hardly recognized herself like this - her features, of course, but lit with an icy fire that seemed ageless, not quite of this world.
Extraordinary, Kellan had said.