The Mirror of Infinite Endings — Epilogue

Epilogue

LaLa Missingness: When there is a hole inside of you, but you cannot remember what caused it, or what was taken. You simply know that something was there, and now it is gone. Poof. Vanished. No more.

This was the feeling that LaLa always carried with her. She couldn’t ever leave it behind—although she had tried.

When Dane had returned, she thought he would finally take the feeling away; she thought his love would fill the jagged hole inside of her. But she was struggling to return the love, which left her feeling as if she was missing even more than before.

The closest she ever came to relief from the missingness inside of her was on days like today.

The sun had set, but the Hollow was covered in glowing lanterns. The light was warm and the air was smoke-touched, but LaLa could still smell all the sugar and pie crust. Everywhere she looked, people were smiling and chattering, and children were squealing delightedly as they climbed trees full of sparkling light and hunted for hidden treasure.

And for a moment, LaLa was almost-happy.

LaLa adored Evangeline. She loved that her friend was so full of love and hope and all of those beautiful emotions that LaLa sometimes struggled to feel. But just then, LaLa particularly loved her friend for how she had brought back a form of magic to this most beloved place.

LaLa had half grown up in the Hollow. When her family was alive, they had lived so close to the Hollow that she had spent much of her childhood running around it like a feral little dragon.

Arliss and Henrick—Jacks’s long-gone parents—had hosted craft fairs for every season, and these fairs were always full of the kind of magic that usually only sat in the background of fairytales. LaLa’s mother called it cupboard magic.

Cupboard magic is the kind that happens when a person discovers a door and opens it for the very first time. Most doors don’t lead to magic, but her mother always said there was nothing like that feeling of discovery.

Usually, young LaLa’s fair discoveries had involved spools of lace or hand-stitched ribbon. As she strolled through the Hollow now, she could still picture some of her favorites from those long-ago fairs. A moss-green velvet ribbon that she had sometimes tied around her neck. A crimson satin ribbon with hand-stitched bronze stars that she used to wear in her hair. A stretch of cream lace covered in little bells, which she had once attached to a pair of gloves, so that all eyes would turn her way when she entered a room.

Although LaLa’s human life had ended long ago, the memories of it still felt so much fresher than any of her others. For a Fate, most humans and human things were so dull, it was difficult to retain memories of them. The brightest memories LaLa possessed were from when she was still human and all the world was still bright.

It almost felt that way again tonight, LaLa mused, as she wove between tents selling everything from hot cocoa with flavored whipped cream to pirate ships inside of bottles.

“Would the lovely miss like some charms for her hair?” called one vendor, while another offered to paint a portrait of her heart’s true love. She was about to pause and ask a question about the portrait when she felt a

spark of heat dance across the back of her shoulder blades. Someone was

watching her.

He was watching.

Chaos.

She could feel him, close, but not too close. If she turned to look— which she absolutely would not do—she imagined she’d find him standing just beyond the circle of torchlight that surrounded all the tents.

LaLa didn’t know how she could sense him so acutely. Unlike his older brother, Dane, LaLa had very few memories of Chaos from before. From when he was Castor and she was Ariel and they both lived life under the

bright sunshine.

Until one of them didn’t.

LaLa tried to focus on the vendors and the tents and the barefoot children running with their sticky treats. Keep your chin up. Keep your head high. Don’t let him see you’ve noticed, LaLa told herself.

But it was hard not to notice him when she could feel him stepping closer. She could feel the warmth along her shoulder blades turning hotter.

A fire instead of a spark. Chaos was watching her with the same intensity with which she was trying not to watch him.

But now he was getting too close. In one second, he would be walking right alongside her, and then it would look obviously disingenuous if she didn’t notice him.

LaLa flicked a calculated glance to the side, tilting her head just slightly. She didn’t like to acknowledge the fact that he was so much taller than she was. But LaLa believed it was always wise to look an opponent in the eyes. And Chaos was her opponent—even if she couldn’t truly look in his eyes.

It was foolishness to look into the eyes of a vampire, especially one like Chaos.

LaLa’s memories of him from before might have been scarce, but there was one memory she would never forget. Eyes wide. Unmoving. Throats ripped into by teeth.

Even now, just the thought of it poured ice all over the heat.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice came out shriller than she had intended. Shrill sounded frail, and she wanted to be strong. If Evangeline had noticed the effect that Chaos had on her, then Chaos was undoubtedly aware of it, too, and LaLa didn’t want that. She wanted him gone. Away.

Dane might have left her with a sense of more missingness, but Chaos left LaLa feeling as if he’d torn open a wound that she couldn’t shut, no matter how hard she tried to heal it.

He might not have actually bitten his teeth into her, but she felt as if he was a danger to her, merely walking by her side. So close that she could no longer ignore him.

And, still, he had not answered her question.

Finally, he said, “I imagine I’m here for the same reason as you?”

“You came to buy lace?”

The corner of his mouth turned upward. “I do have a fondness for lace, on the right occasion. But no—I just wanted to see this place once more.”

His eyes went from the hanging lanterns above the cobblestoned walkway to the colorful tents full of shining wares—a safe sort of magic that humans could touch. He looked at everything, and yet his gaze avoided everyone.

His eyes didn’t linger on any humans.

He was trying.

But it didn’t matter.

A wolf could try to be a rabbit, but it was never going to be able to live on grass and flowers.

“Well, now you’ve seen. You can go.” She made a shooing motion with her hand.

The other half of Chaos’s mouth lifted, giving him an actual smile.

Instantly, the head of every woman—and a few of the men—turned his way, eyes drawn to the smile like bugs to a honeyed web.

“You shouldn’t do that,” LaLa scolded.

“All I did was smile.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t smile like that.” She turned to glare but her gaze went a fraction too high, and she found herself looking into his eyes. Chaos had always possessed beautiful eyes. When he was a human, they had been forest green, the color of leaves and trees with a little damp, but now that he

was a vampire they were mesmerizing. He was mesmerizing. His handsome face, his cut jaw, his eyes, his height, which she pretended to hate but of course she didn’t. When she saw him, she thought he was capable and strong and— His hands clamped onto her shoulders, heavy and forceful. “Don’t,” he gritted out. “Don’t. Ever. Do. That.”

His eyes met hers once more. The look in them was agonized, and then he was gone. Vanished with a swiftness that left her unsteady on her feet as dust from his quick departure swirled around the hem of her dress.

Eyes that had been on her and Chaos now looked bewildered. The humans would wonder for a second, but then they would forget what they had seen, or they would remember something different. They would most likely recall seeing a wolf pup run through tents. Something safer that their minds could make sense of. Something that would still allow them to have a night of merriment. They would have no idea that death had stalked so near to them.

Only LaLa would remember it for what it was. Only her night would be shattered. She walked a few more steps, but she no longer felt almost- happy.

The missingness was back. She was about to leave—maybe she’d go home and sew, or cry, or cry and sew—when she saw the tent with the mirrors.

It was several tents down, near the end of the row, and there were two mirrors in front of it, both taller than the average person and lit by fiery torches that flickered dramatically on the mercury glass, with a tall young man standing between them.

The harsh light danced over his leather boots covered in leaves and his green velvet doublet.

He was the young man from the Emporium of Else.

And he was beautiful.

LaLa did not often find humans beautiful. She had lived so many lifetimes that all faces had started to look familiar. To her, humans were usually just young or old, but this young man fit into an entirely different category.

LaLa did not like it.

She did not trust this young man’s uncanny beauty, which, of course, only made her more curious. Yesterday, when Evangeline had whispered something about him being a fairy, LaLa had dismissed her. Fairies were not real. Except Jacks and Chaos both seemed to think they were.

LaLa swayed closer to the tent. Unlike the rest of the tents whose vendors were showing off their wares, these tent flaps were closed, secured with a lock made of twisting tree branches. The only things on display were the two mirrors.

The one on the right LaLa recognized almost immediately. The Mirror of Infinite Endings. Her skin prickled the same way it had yesterday, a feeling she had not felt for a very long time.

As a magic thing, LaLa often found herself drawn to other magic things, but the magic of this mirror was different.

She drew a few steps closer, unable to resist, desperate to see if the glass would show the same image it had shown her yesterday.

But the mirror merely showed the night and the lanterns and LaLa’s Hollowfest dress, with its bodice of golden feathers that turned into layers of shimmering champagne tulle.

“You’re back.” The young man swaggered out from behind one of the mirrors—because of course he would be a swaggerer.

“Oh, I was just admiring myself.” LaLa waved a casual hand toward her image in the mirror, trying to hide her disappointment.

She told herself to leave. She had wanted to take one more peek, and that was done. She didn’t need to see more. LaLa knew enough about magic to have a healthy mistrust of others’ enchantments. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I think your mirror is broken.”

“Why would you say that?” The young man leaned his shoulder against

it.

“It’s just showing me.”

His mouth formed a mocking smile. “That is what mirrors generally do.”

“Yes, but yesterday it showed a different me,” LaLa said tartly. And all of a sudden, the mirror began to shift. Instead of wearing the dress made of

gold and tulle, LaLa was wearing a green velvet cloak.

She recognized it immediately as her favorite cloak from when she was still a human girl. She watched herself lift the white fur-lined hood and then sneak out a window.

Like yesterday, this mirror showed something that had never happened, but it wasn’t the same something. She watched herself, waiting and hoping for it to turn back to what she’d seen before. But the only change that occurred was the words that moved across the glass.

Congratulations! You have found the mythic Mirror of Infinite Endings.

One at a time, the lines of silver script appeared on the mirror.

Have you ever wondered what else could have been?

Have you ever asked yourself if there are other paths your life could have taken? Other ways your story might end?

Frustrated, LaLa turned back to the young man as more words appeared on the glass. “This is still wrong—this isn’t what I saw yesterday.”

“It’s not wrong. This is the Mirror of Infinite Endings, which means that every time you look in it, it will show you a slightly different version of your life, where a different ending is possible.”

LaLa looked back through the mirror, where the other version of herself was sitting on a roof beneath a blanket of stars. Alone.

Yesterday, the mirror had shown her with her brother, Lyric, laughing on a rooftop in the Hollow. She hadn’t understood it then, so she hadn’t wanted to step inside the glass; she hadn’t wanted to risk getting stuck, but now she wished that she had.

She wasn’t willing to take the risk for a night on a roof with some stars.

But she would have done it to see her brother once more.

“If you’re not interested in alternate realities, you could also look into this mirror.” The young man shoved off the Mirror of Infinite Endings and strode toward the mirror on the left, which was covered in a garden of blooming flowers—pink foxglove, blue hydrangeas, white lilies, great yellow sunflowers, sweet little buttercups. They lined the entire frame and draped over the mercury glass, a riot of color and life. And in the center of it, LaLa saw herself as she was. Hand on her hip, head cocked to the side, waiting … waiting …

Petals started to fall from the flowers, and the image in the center shifted. First it changed from night to day, and then it showed a different image of her younger, human self. Her hand was still on her hip, but instead of glaring at a mirror she was glaring at a young man. Chaos. Only he wasn’t Chaos yet. In the mirror he was still Castor Valor, young and princely and staggeringly human.

Everyone always talked about how extraordinarily beautiful vampires were. But LaLa preferred the imperfect humanness of Castor Valor. Her heart actually pitter-pattered as she looked at him. It was a very old memory, fuzzier than most of her human memories, and from the way they were both glowering at each other, it seemed that she was looking at the first time they had met.

Except no, this was wrong. This should have been the first time she’d

met Dane. Not Castor.

“What is this mirror?” she breathed.

“The Mirror of Second Chances.”

Unlike in the Mirror of Infinite Endings, LaLa’s reflection here was static, unmoving. The only things that shifted were the flowers around the frame. Moments ago they had been in full bloom, but now they appeared to be dying. Leaves were wilting; petals were browning. “What does that mean?” she asked. “How is this different from the other mirror?”

“This mirror gives you a second chance at the life that you have already lived,” the young man explained. “It places you back in time in an earlier moment of your life, exactly as it was, and then you get the chance to do things differently.”

LaLa was about to argue that he was wrong. This image in the mirror wasn’t what she remembered. But the longer she looked at it, the more the memory started coming back to her. It was Castor she had met that day, not Dane. She remembered him now—all self-righteous and self-absorbed— and she remembered her human self as well. Even though she was scowling in the mirror, she had been so full of hope and life and love. And then her world had shattered into fire and death and Fates and vampires.

How many times had LaLa thought about everything she would have done differently? Or even just one or two things that could have changed

the course of not just her life, but everyone’s?

“What’s the cost?”

He answered with a bewitching grin that she knew better than to trust.

“Can you really put a price on a second chance?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Of course it is. I’m telling you that you won’t like the cost, but it’s absolutely worth it.”

LaLa was nearly fed up with him. “How about you just tell me, and I can decide for myself?”

A wind swept by and blew one of the torches out, casting half the young man’s handsome face in shadow. “It’s everything.”

“What do you mean by everything?” she demanded.

“Your life as you know it, your memories of the past, everything disappears when you step into the mirror. If you go in, you get a second chance, but the cost is that you can never come back to this life.”

The second torch blew out, leaving both of them in shadow. The only thing that glowed was the Mirror of Second Chances.

It was so tempting. But … if she couldn’t bring her memories with her, how would she know to do things differently? It might end up all the same, and she would just have to relive all that pain—her parents dying, her brother dying, all the Merrywood on fire. Everyone and everything that had been wonderful turning to dust and ash and death. “Thank you. I think I’m good.”

She turned to walk away. But out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed lines of writing appear.

Congratulations! You have found the mythic Mirror of Second Chances.

Just as with the Mirror of Infinite Endings, silver script appeared across the mercury glass.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you had made different choices?

Have you ever wanted to go back and try to do things better? Or differently?

Well then, my new friend, this mirror is for you …

Simply touch the tips of your fingers to the glass, say, “I’d like to try again,” and you will get the rare opportunity to start your life over.

As the last line of script appeared, the last of the decaying flowers fell from the frame of the mirror and new buds began to take their place.

Don’t be tempted.

Don’t be tempted.

Don’t be tempted.

But LaLa was not very good at resisting temptation. She tended to accept everything she wanted, from marriage proposals that she knew would end in tears to slices of cake when she was already full.

But this wasn’t a slice of cake or a marriage proposal. This was everything. She knew the cost was everything as well, but what if it was worth it? A chance to do it all over again, to start afresh like the eager buds growing along the frame of the mirror. What if she could save her parents and her brother and the Merrywood, and maybe even Castor Valor?

LaLa touched her fingers to the glass and …

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