"You're real." His deep voice sent goose bumps through me. If his voice and a mere touch had the power to drive me crazy, what would happen if I sneaked into his world to be with him?
He came back closer to the mirror and touched it again with his palm, right over my palm. His touch was sweet and warm—how were we able to communicate without any barrier of time between us? It felt like I was meant for him and he was meant for me. I knew right that moment that he wasn't King David. David was in love with Jasmine, but this man craved love. No one had touched him before. I was the first woman in his life, and that idea evoked more desires in me. But still, I wasn't sure if he was truly Edward, as his face was just like David.
He rubbed his hand gently on the mirror, as if trying to feel my skin. I followed his motion.
"All my life you came into my dreams to haunt and kill me." The motion of his hand was slow but loaded with passion. "But now when I can feel you through Satan's mirror, you're not here to kill me." He was undoing me with his words. He smiled and looked at me with hope. "Can you see me?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered. He took a breath. I knew he heard me. His chest was still covered with wounds, heaving and falling. I wanted to heal him.
"Yes what?" I heard Steve's voice. "Myra, are you talking to him?" I didn't bother answering him. Right now this was my world.
"Do you know what I look like?" he asked me, and I felt compassion and a need to soothe him.
"Yes, I can see you, King David." I whispered.
"Myra? Who are you talking to?" I could hear fear in Steve's voice, behind me.
"I'm Edward. Don't you know?" He was hurt by my mistaken identification.
I jerked back. "Edward..." I called out his name and grabbed Steve's hand. “He is Edward.”
“You can see him.” Steve looked worried. “And talk to him.” He looked at Julia, who was apparently in the same shocked state as the other two.
“I felt his touch, Steve.” I looked at my palm. “I was able to feel him—”
“All right, dude!” Tyler interrupted. “I’m getting out of here.” We all looked at him. “Call me chicken or whatever…I don’t give a shit because I’m leaving.” And just like that, he walked out.
Julia sighed. “He’s right, Steve. We should go back to the cars now.”
“I want to stay.” I pulled away from Steve, who was holding me firmly. “I want to talk to Edward.”
“It’s not safe, Myra. It’s getting creepier now,” Julia answered.
“What creepy? I’m not scared of him.”
“He could be the ghost of Edward. Why can’t you realize that?”
“No, Julia. He wasn’t a ghost. I felt his warmth on my hand. I felt his breath on my skin. He had cuts and wounds on his chest. He can’t be a ghost because he was bleeding,” I argued.
Steve watched me for a second, then placed a hand on my cheek. “How about we come tomorrow and peel off this screen? It would be easier for you.”
“But I don’t know if he’d come back again. Every time I see into that mirror, it shows me something different.”
“Let’s go, dear.” He grabbed my hand.
“At least let me say goodbye to him. He must be waiting for me.” I pulled my hand away.
“Myra, you’re talking about a person who’s been dead for six hundred years,” Julia argued.
“I don’t care. Okay? I really don’t care. All I know is that the man behind this mirror is Edward Hue who has the same eyes as mine but he’s deeply wounded. He’s in pain and he needs me. He needs me to fix him. He says I’ve been coming into his dreams for a long time. He knows me already. How can I just walk away now?” Steve was listening. “Maybe you’re right, Steve. Maybe this is not just a coincidence that I met you and you brought me here. Maybe it was written in my fate to meet him.” I was lost in my own fairy tale. “I just need to tell him that I will come again tomorrow.”
Neither of them said anything. I wondered what Tyler was doing outside. I had lost track of time, but I could still see daylight. My heart started racing faster, eager to see him again. If watching him was giving me an adrenaline rush, I didn’t know how my body would react if he actually touched me. His chest was covered with wounds, but God I had never seen a sexier man than him. I had a longing to meet a prince or a king from medieval times and now that God had given me this opportunity, I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I walked to the mirror and closed out the outside world to concentrate on him. There was no one there. Just the empty chapel.
“Edward?” I called out his name. No one answered. He was gone. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of me calling him King David. I pulled back sadly and looked at Julia. “He’s gone.” I glanced back at the mirror. “He should have waited.” I was disappointed, though I probably shouldn’t have been. Maybe Julia was right—he could be Edward’s ghost wandering in his chapel. How else was it possible for a man to talk to me who was already part of history?
I stepped silently down from the altar. “Don’t worry, Myra.” Steve patted my shoulder. “We will come again tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if he’ll come back. I don’t know if he was real.” A tear dropped from my eye. Steve noticed it.
“Hey…” He rubbed my arm. “I promise we will come back. Let’s go back and have something to eat. It’s pretty late now. I’m starving.” He smiled at me. I knew he was trying to cheer me up.
An idea came into my mind. I stopped in the middle of the chapel. “I have to take a picture.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and took some pictures. I could see the image on the screen before clicking, but I was not able to save it—after I clicked the button there was just a black screen.
“I told you it wouldn’t come out,” Steve commented.
“Could it be a part of the curse?” I inquired of Julia. “So that no one is able to capture images of anything inside the castle?”
She nodded—agreeing with me. “That is a possibility.” We walked outside quietly, where we found Tyler busy on his phone. He looked up at me, questions gathering in his eyes.
“What’s the plan?” He looked at Steve.
“We’re leaving. We’re done for today,” Steve replied.
On our way out of castle, we remained quiet.
“According to history, Edward disappeared one day without informing anyone. He never came back. He never became king, and that's how the Hue reign ended.” Tyler was reading from his phone. “The Hue men were all cruel and heartless. They killed and tortured people for pleasure.”
No! Edward would not do that. I had seen passion in his eyes—the need for me to touch him. He was not heartless, because I’d heard his heart beating.
After we’d walked a little way, Steve sighed. “It was a big day,” he said. “When we came here this morning, I didn’t know what we would find.”
“We still haven’t found anything, except how creepy this place is,” Tyler argued.
Steve shook his head and looked at me with pride. “I didn’t know what you were capable of.” He pulled me into his arms. “Let’s take a selfie. It will remind us of our first meeting.” He smiled me at and took his phone out of his pocket. Our backs were toward the castle and we were facing the main entry gate. He asked me to look into the phone.
“What’s the point, dude? It ain’t gonna come out inside the boundary.” We both heard Tyler, who was standing at a distance from us. Ignoring him, Steve snapped one picture to see if it would actually come out. To our surprise, it came out with a little of the background.
“What the hell is that?” Steve showed me the picture. I was shocked to see it. Behind us was the image of half the castle, which was in brown stone, and a lush green garden covering the entire yard between us and the building.
Steve instantly took another picture of the castle and the courtyard, but it came out as a black screen.
“How is that possible? It just came out so colorful.” I saw confusion and fear in his eyes.
“I�
��m leaving, dude. This is creepier than ever.” Tyler looked at Julia. “Please open the gate.”
Julia watched us with horror, unable to move at all. I knew she was in shock too, after looking at the picture Steve just took.
She walked closer to me and looked at me for a second. Then she looked at Steve. “Take another picture with her in it,” she suggested.
Without saying anything, I stood in front of Steve...castle and barren yard behind me. Steve took a picture with his phone. After the click, he took a deep breath—and the look on his face showed that he saw something. We all rushed instantly to look into the phone screen. It was unbelievable. There was a lush green lawn behind me, with flowers growing in every nook and corner. Thousands of tulips bloomed as if I were standing in a tulip garden in Holland. And behind the garden was the grand castle, which stood tall and proud in its original magnificence.
“The picture with Myra shows the actual colors of the castle—the way it was built—before any spell was cast,” Julia commented. The rest of us were shocked into silence. She looked up at me. “Who are you?”
I held my breath tightly. They were all looking at me suspiciously, with questions in their eyes. I was not expecting her to ask me this question.
“I’m not a witch.” I shook my head and backed up a bit. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” They were still mute, as if they had turned into statues.
I turned my back on them and walked on toward the gate, not wanting to see the way they looked at me. The others followed me.
We walked silently to the castle boundary. When we arrived at the gate, Julia quietly took the key from her bag and opened the gate wide. She waited for us to go through, and then closed the gates behind us. We reached our car. No one was willing to speak. No one had anything to say. Steve was still looking at his phone. When we reached the car, I turned around and looked at Julia to say goodbye to her. Surprisingly, she spoke first.
“When were you born?” Her question astonished me. I looked at everyone in confusion. “1993. Why?” I had a feeling she had something more to say.
“Hmm.” She paused, and thought for a moment. “And which hospital?”
I remained quiet. I didn’t know which hospital I was born in. I had never asked my mom about it, and never bothered to look at my birth certificate.
“I don’t know,” I said nervously. “I never asked my mother.”
Julia took a deep breath. “Go home and ask your mother about your birth certificate.” She studied me.
“But why?”
“Because I want to know who are you, Miss Farrow!” she almost yelled. She hadn’t used a tone like this the entire morning. What had just happened to her? She looked at Steve, who was still in shock. “Take her home and find out where she was born. We cannot head back into the castle unless we know her background.”
“What’s the matter, Miss Watson? Why are you saying this?” I was yelling too. My eyes were getting blurred with tears of hurt. I didn’t know what she was trying to get at here. That I was not Myra? Then who was I?
“Because after casting a spell on the Hue family, Jasmine disappeared with her baby and never returned. No one knows where she and her daughter went,” she replied.
“What are you trying to prove here?” Steve interrupted.
“I’m not trying to prove anything. I just want to know who she is. If she is capable of looking past the haunted mirror, then she might be able to see something in the book too.”
“The book of cults?” Tyler gaped.
Julia nodded.
Steve and Tyler both looked at me in horror.
“What?” I looked back at them in anger. “Don’t give me those looks. Are you guys trying to prove I belong to some cult? I didn’t even know anything about this castle till this morning, except what anybody can find out. You guys brought me here,” I argued.
“I’ll be leaving now,” Julia said, and looked at Steve. “I will call you later if we are able to come again tomorrow.” She looked at me. “Just try to find out in which hospital you were born.” She hit my sensitive nerve again. “I will see you guys tomorrow.” She forced a smile, got in her car and drove away.
After she left, there was an awkward silence between the rest of us. I had the feeling they were afraid of me now. But they didn’t say anything. Steve and Tyler sat in the front seats of the car and I took the rear one. We drove silently. I knew Steve was watching me in his rear-view mirror, but he still didn’t say anything. Our relationship had started with a close friendship, but now it was stilted. Maybe he, too, was trying to work out what to say. It was a question of my existence. With one phrase, Julia had turned my world upside down.
My thoughts turned again to Edward. I had never seen a man like him. I didn’t know if the first man I had seen was King David or Edward, but the way he looked at his bride—I wanted him to see me like that. The mere idea that maybe it was a glimpse of our future, and not David and Jasmine in the past, enthralled me. I was hoping to have a future with a past gone and disappeared long ago. I knew it was a stupid idea to even desire such a thing, but the jolt I’d felt from Edward’s touch when he was wounded, the way he looked into my eyes and asked me if I was real—it meant the world to me. I had come into his dreams for so long—in that time six hundred years ago when I didn’t even exist.
What dreams of me did he have?
Why and how did he feel my touch?
If Julia was right, did I belong to some different era?
Didn’t I belong to this era?
Was I not the daughter of Paula Farrow?
Wasn’t I Myra?
The unanswered questions kept swirling in my mind, haunting me with the question: was I strong enough to know the truth?
With those thoughts, I fell into sleep.
“The most powerful weapon on earth
is the human soul on fire.”
Ferdinand Foch
CHAPTER 8
EDWARD
APRIL 1415
You killed your sister.
Today was the day my twin sister Veronica died. She left this world, left me feeling empty, hollow and soulless. I didn’t wait for the night to engulf me—instead I came to the chapel right after she was killed.
You killed your sister.
I stared at the mirror with deep-seated animosity. I wanted to confront the mirror to see if the hideous black beast bled or not. It didn’t. It was as vicious as it had been earlier—the difference was...I was able to recognize it more clearly. I was getting fond of this beast because that’s what I was—a monster I accepted wholeheartedly. A monster that had annihilated his only light, and had chosen to stay in the darkness forever.
You killed your sister.
The hideous beast looked back at with me equal disgust—reminding me of the lowest sin I had committed. I had no other choice but to torture my body in the worst possible way, but I didn’t seek forgiveness from Him. The sin was tied to my soul now. I had no right to expiate it. I would live with this pain forever.
You killed your sister.
Yes, I killed my own sister. She had promised me she’d make it easy for me. When Stefan dragged her into the tower, she stabbed herself without giving me any chance to begin her torture. Not a moment was given to me so I could stop and freeze time to save my sister. At that point, God turned the page and gave me a new existence. I became a beast. I came to know how you would breathe without a soul, how you would hurt yourself without feeling anything, how you would listen to any order without it touching your heart. Yes, I became a lifeless man devoid of soul or any feelings. The beast in the mirror depicted my true existence.
You killed your sister.
I stood in front of Satan’s mirror to see if King Stefan was right or not. He told me the curse might be lifted if Veronica left this world. That life would begin a new chapter tonight.
You killed your sister.
I moved close to the mirror and studied the beast. His eyes were made of stee
l and death resided in those eyes. I placed my forehead on the mirror to look closely into the beast’s eyes but I didn’t see its eyes in the reflection.
There were beautiful grey eyes watching me with love and warmth. Her long lashes blinked, and I saw tenderness in her gaze. I saw her in the mirror—the woman who had been haunting me in my dreams for years and making me crave her more and more. My heart leapt during that moment, and I realized it still existed. I thought I lost it and buried it with my sister that afternoon, but there she was—carrying my heart in her eyes. I wanted to break the mirror and take her out of it, so I asked her.
“Come out and talk to me,” I whispered, hoping she’d say something.
She disappeared from the mirror like a wisp. I stayed there, glued to the mirror. Please talk to me. She came back again. I could see her standing in the same chapel I was, but it was empty. Why was it empty? Where did the pews go?
I raised my hand and placed my palm on the mirror—a desire to touch her invigorated me with hope. Her warm touch in return filled my heart with unspoken and unsettled craving.
I jerked back and looked at the mirror in a daze.
“You’re real,” I said to the mirror, although all I could see now was the black hideous beast. It took a moment to get my bearings, but I walked to the mirror again and placed my forehead on it. The eyes of a beast turned into beautiful grey eyes as soon as my skin touched the mirror. I was able to see her again. She was waiting for me.
I had not felt this before...ever. I had never touched a woman like this before. I could feel her breath on my skin, drowning me in an ocean of lust. I was completely enamored with her touch and wanted desperately to pull her out of the mirror.
Once Upon A [Stolen] Time (Stolen Series Book 1) Page 12