by Evelyn Avery
“You’d think this Erlking dude would be all up your ass at this point,” Chloe commented, huddling close against my back as we walked down the narrow hallway. “Showing up to mock you or torment you, especially while you were jerking off to a book all about him.”
“Let’s not make things worse, shall we.” The last thing I wanted was for him to make an appearance right now. I hadn’t seen him since I first entered the Underground and I’d hoped to keep it that way until we reached the castle and I was forced to face him. His presence definitely wouldn’t make anything better at this point, and I was happy the reprieve had already lasted this long. “We need to get this done.”
I deliberately hadn’t paid much attention to the lariat around my neck, but a quick glance supported my instinct that time was quickly ticking away. Nine of the stones had already turned to colors brighter than the rainbow, leaving only four that were still transparent.
We were very quickly running out of time.
The hallway narrowed into another dead end corner with a handful of mirrors angled so that I faced my own reflection half a dozen times. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that this would be the last memory that I had to confront before we were able to get out of here.
Not that it meant I was looking forward to it.
Although, it was difficult to guess what the mirror maze could show me that would be worse than me fingering myself to a story about the Erlking.
When I touched the next mirror, I realized that things absolutely could get worse.
A familiar house appeared beyond my own reflection, and I snatched my hand away. “Nope. No way. We are so not doing this.”
“I’m right here with you.” Chloe stepped up behind me and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently. “We have to get through this stupid funhouse if we want to make it out of here before time runs out. Think about Vaughn, God only knows what he’s going through right now.”
And I couldn’t exactly say no to that. With a sigh, I pressed my palm against the mirror one more time.
The house reappeared, one I only remembered because before and after shots had been in news articles about the fire. All of my memories before the age of about five were completely lost to me, but I had a yellowed news clipping tucked between the pages of one of the books on the shelf in my room. Even Greta had no idea that I’d found it in a library archive a few years ago and taken it home with me.
Two figures moved past the brightly lit windows, but they were too far away to make out clearly. I could only discern their distant shapes, but I knew they had to be my parents. The distant cry of a wailing baby sent a strange sensation through my chest.
I didn’t want to remember this, didn’t want to remember them. It wouldn’t make it any easier to deal with their deaths if their faces were clearly outlined in my mind. The lack of memory put some distance between them and me, and I couldn’t mourn the loss of something that I never remembered having in the first place.
“Oh God,” Chloe murmured, gripping my shoulder hard enough to bruise.
My attention returned to the house, watching as a fire started near the side and crept upwards. It built quickly, and after only a minute, more than half the structure was overtaken by the inferno. The screaming of a crying baby was now bolstered by adult shouts, the sound piercing through my very soul.
But something didn’t look right.
“The fire started inside of the house,” I said, my creeping sadness momentarily overcome by confusion. “Greta read the police report years ago, and she told me the fire started with faulty wiring in the bedroom. That was why it spread so quickly, and everything was destroyed.”
“That’s not what it looks like here, but you shouldn’t assume any of this is more than just the Erlking screwing with your head.” Chloe sounded considerably more assured than I felt at the moment. “Just let the memory spin itself out so we can get out of here. You don’t even have to watch.”
But I knew that I did, another of those unspoken rules that underlined the very nature of this place. These memories were something that I had to experience if I wanted to continue forward, I knew that as certainly as I knew my own name.
This was something the mirror maze wanted me to see. This was what the Erlking wanted me to see.
The house quickly became consumed by flame, I could practically feel the heat of it through the mirror. A single slight form escaped from the house in the moments before it collapsed, carrying a blanket-wrapped baby in their arms before disappearing in the night.
A person that couldn’t be either of my parents because they both perished in the blaze.
As soon as I leaned closer to get a better look, the image disappeared. Then I fell forward and had to catch myself on the walls when the mirror vanished and opened up into another hallway. “Wait, that’s it?”
“Let’s go,” Chloe said, helping me back onto my feet. “None of this matters as long as we make it through to the end.”
“But someone carried me out of the house. There was nothing about that in any of the news stories. By the time the firemen arrived, the house was already completely destroyed, and they found me in a bush outside my parents’ bedroom window. They assumed I’d been dropped there when my parents realized they wouldn’t be able to get out. There was nothing about anyone running in to rescue me.”
“That’s probably because it never happened,” Chloe said with a wave of her hand as she pulled me down the hallway. “This place is just here to trick you. Don’t trust anything.”
But that memory had felt as real as anything else, even though I had been too young to recall it. My parents’ deaths had never made any sense to me. How had an infant escaped with her life when neither of them had? It never made any sense.
But who would have carried me out, but then left my parents to burn without alerting the authorities? And why?
Something niggled in the corners of my mind, an awareness that bordered on true knowledge but remained just out of reach. I didn’t need to be told that what we just saw was real, even as my mind railed against it. The Erlking’s intentions were never clear, but this was more than a simple trick. There was something here I was supposed to understand.
Before I could think any more on it, Chloe had already pulled me down the hallway into another room full of mirrors. Distantly, I wondered how many more of these I could take before it was just too much. These memories had been forgotten for a reason, I didn’t want to remember this shit.
“I think we might be close to the end,” she said, hurrying me along as my gaze was caught by every reflection of myself rushing past in the mirrors. “Look, here’s another dead-end. Put your hand on the mirror here.”
She seemed a little too eager to watch me relive my past, and I couldn’t fight a flash of annoyance. The mirrors didn’t seem all that interested in showing me anything pleasant and I had no reason to expect that would change with the next one. “I hope with the next challenge, it’s your turn to be tortured.”
Chloe only shrugged, gesturing toward the mirror. “That’s fair. Now, move your ass.”
With a sigh, I touched the mirror in front of me with hesitant fingers, but I nearly stepped back in surprise when all of the mirrors around me clouded at once. It was only Chloe’s presence at my back that kept me from running in the opposite direction.
There were already multiple versions of me reflected in the mirrored surfaces, each one of them staring at us with identically wide-eyed expressions, filled with both fear and anticipation.
The mirrors continued to cloud until even my own reflection was obscured. When they cleared, I watched a half-dozen near-identical scenes, each achingly familiar but also entirely foreign. I looked the same age as I was now, but in every single one, I danced in the arms of the Erlking.
In one, he wore a mask fashioned from the skull of a ram as he spun me around a dance floor made of shimmering light. In another, we were alone in darkness, and my body wrapped around his in a
way that would have been obscene if we weren’t clothed. And in the one that made me draw a sharp breath, I knelt naked at the Erlking’s feet with the same dress I currently wore spread around me like a blanket on the floor.
For a moment, I desperately wanted to know what it would be like to submit to him.
My fingers moved over the perfect image of the Erlking’s face because of some unknown impulse that was impossible to ignore. Even though there was only mirrored glass under my fingers, I couldn’t help but imagine that it was real flesh I touched. With an effort, I forced my fingers to shift away.
These couldn’t be memories because none of this had ever happened. It couldn’t have. And yet, I felt a pull in my soul in the same way that I did when I watched my childhood home burn to the ground. How was it possible for something to feel like a memory when it never happened?
“Have you been here before?” Chloe whispered behind me, her voice unnaturally hushed. It was as if she also realized we were watching something of great significance.
“Of course not,” I insisted, even as doubts crept through my mind. “You’ve known me for almost three years. If I’d snuck off to a magical world at some point, don’t you think you would have noticed?”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense that the maze would show you this when everything else was real memories. That was definitely you.”
“Nothing about this place makes sense,” I snapped, even though I knew I had no reason to be angry with her. The lack of answers to the questions of this place had never felt as terrifying as it did in this moment. “That’s just how magic works. The moment things start to make sense, you stop calling it magic.”
“If you say so—oh, shit!”
The mirrors darkened again, even though I hadn’t taken my hand away. All the other versions of me had disappeared, but an image of the Erlking remained.
And then it began walking toward us.
I scrambled back from the mirror, breaking the contact my hand had made with its surface. At every other point, that would have caused the image to disappear. But not this time. The Erlking remained, approaching the mirror from the other side with long-legged strides. We watched in horror as the image of him stopped inches from the mirror and then stepped through it.
The two-dimensional reflection morphed into living form, and a very real Erlking stood before us.
“Is this the asshole who dragged us here?” Chloe asked snidely from over my shoulder, even as fear put a quaver in her voice. “He doesn’t look all that scary to—”
With a smirk, the Erlking gestured with one hand. I felt a rush of cold air blow past me, and then Chloe was immediately silenced. When I turned back, a pane of clear glass had appeared between us. She banged on it with both hands and shouted something, her mouth making the shape of words along the lines of you fucker, but I couldn’t hear a thing.
My back pressed against the glass as I tried and failed to put more distance between him and me, my heart racing. But I was proud of the note of steel in my voice when I spoke. “What are you doing here?”
“I hope you’re enjoying the trip down memory lane,” he replied, instead of answering. “I wouldn’t have thought your memory palace would take the shape of a funhouse attraction. But you never fail to surprise me.”
“Stop trying to trick me.” I gestured to the wall of mirrors behind him, where versions of us had embraced. “Those weren’t memories. None of that ever happened.”
He raised a winged eyebrow, the same pale blond of his hair. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure you can stick your tricks up your ass and clench down hard.” I flinched after the words flew from my mouth, waiting for his inevitable ire at my talking back.
The Erlking only smiled.
Changing tactics, I raised my chin and looked him in the eye. “You aren’t supposed to interfere. That’s one of the rules.”
“Is it?” He took a measured step forward, closing the small distance that separated us. “Tell me what else you remember about this world.”
Chloe banged her hands on the glass behind me, sending silent reverberations through my back. I didn’t need any skill in lip-reading to know that she was shouting something profanity-laden at the man in front of me.
“I don’t remember anything because there isn’t anything to remember,” I said through gritted teeth. “I see what you’re trying to do. You can have this place show me whatever you want, but I’m not going to fall for your tricks.”
The Erlking spread his arms wide, expression sardonic. “I have no control over what you see here. The mirrors reflect only the questions from your past that you desperately want answered. I have nothing to do with it.”
Like I believed that. “Then what the hell are you doing here?’
“You called for me with your yearning.” His sensual smirk was enough to set a fire burning in my belly. “Your desire. Why don’t you tell me which memories summoned me to you?”
I definitely didn’t want to admit that I’d just been imagining myself at his feet, even as my knees weakened and I resisted the desperate urge to sink to the ground. My attraction to him was simply a function of his ability to entice. Whatever I felt for him was part of the magic of this place, it wasn’t real.
“Let us pass,” I demanded. My hand twisted in the lariat as I held it out for him. “Stop wasting my time.”
“Is it a waste of time?” He finally closed the distance between us completely, just as I feared he would. His hand lifted to stroke my cheek, stopping less than an inch away from the skin. “Look me in the eye. Tell me truly that you felt nothing while you watched us together in the mirrors, and I will let you continue your journey without interference.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I had to make several attempts to speak. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“I see you prefer prevarication to a lie, which makes you more like me than you’d care to admit, I’m sure. If you twist the truth far enough, then it becomes so much like a lie, if by another name.” His gaze bored into mine, hypnotizing me even as I tried my best to resist. “I would offer you the truth now, in exchange for something of equal value.”
I didn’t have to ask him what he considered to be a thing of value. Me. Or, at least, a piece of me that he wasn’t allowed to take if I didn’t offer it first. “Tell me.”
“This is a memory palace. I had a hand in creating it, but no say in the form it chooses to take. After all, it’s here for you. This place shows you what has been and perhaps . . .” He hesitated, gaze boring into mine as if urging me to understand something that remained outside of my comprehension. “Perhaps what will be. Tell me what you saw, and I might aid you in understanding the difference.”
“No fucking way.” I exhaled on a hitched breath. “If you don’t know what I saw, then I’m not going to tell you.”
Genuine humor briefly touched his smile before it faded to his usual smirk. “As you wish. But you still must pay a forfeit.”
His finger touched my cheek, sending a bolt of electricity shooting across my skin. As much as I wanted to pull away, some unseen force compelled me not to resist. I tried not to think about the fact that there was nowhere for me to go.
He stroked the curve of my jaw in almost exactly the same way that my fingers had lingered on the reflection of his face. It took everything in me to fight the seduction of his touch on my skin. I waited a beat for my breathing to slow and my heart rate to decrease, so it didn’t feel like it was about to burst from my chest.
“Let me pass.”
But instead of letting me go, he simply smiled. “We could end all of this now, you know. There are so many things that I would show you, gifts that I would shower upon you. All that I ask is that you submit, and I will give you your dreams.”
It was so much more tempting than it should have been. Then I felt the thump of Chloe throwing herself against the glass behind me, which was just enough to bring me back to myself. Taking a deep breath,
I forced myself to deny what every cell of my body screamed that I desperately wanted. “Get out of my way, or our deal is forfeit.”
“But I requested a thing of value, and I haven’t yet collected my due.”
His hand slid down my cheek, touch so light that it was possible to think I imagined it. The touch drifted along my collarbone and down, teasing at the fabric of my bodice where it met sensitive skin. I shivered in awareness, wondering if the glass wall at my back kept me from shifting away or if it only served as a convenient excuse to stay in place.
When he dipped his fingers underneath my neckline, I let out an involuntary gasp. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been touched this way—if I ever had. His hands shifted over my body with deliberate intent, even as they moved with excruciating slowness. I had plenty of time to run or shove him away before he took further liberties, but I didn’t do either of those things.
My voice slipped from my lips in a soft gasp. “Please . . .”
“Tell me what you desire. I would give you worlds as baubles to drape around your neck like precious gems. I would worship at the altar of your body and make you my queen.”
I knew that it had to be a trick, nothing he offered me came without a heavy price, one that I definitely wouldn’t be willing to pay. “I just want to go home.”
“Do you really? Have you ever actually felt that you belonged there?” His face leaned into mine, blotting out my view until my vision filled with the icy silver of his eyes. “You’ve always known that the human world wasn’t truly meant for you. Why would you ever want to go back?”
He gently touched my bare stomach through the cutout in the dress, sending a shot of heat through my belly. I knew that Chloe stood less than a foot behind me, a few inches of glass separating us, able to see all of this. But that awareness did nothing to make it easier to fight the Erlking’s seduction. If anything, her presence only heightened the illicit quality of all of this, stoking the fire that burned within me.
I knew that his next step would be to shove his hands under my skirt and grip my thighs. With only the slightest pressure, I would wrap my legs around his waist and let him fuck me against the glass wall at my back while Chloe watched it all.