Page 8 of The Bound Blood
But nothing isright.
The ceiling breathes. The walls ripple when I stare too long. The torches burn upside-down, casting shadows that move in the wrong direction. My reflection doesn’t follow me in the glass of the windows—it lingers behind, slow and flickering, like it’s waiting for me to turn around.
I don’t. I keep walking. My footsteps echo too loudly, as if the sound is trying to escape faster than I can.
A voice drifts from somewhere far off.
“Linds…?”
It’s soft. Familiar.Tamsin.
I turn toward it, but the hallway shifts. The walls stretch, and the floor tilts until the direction is gone, replaced by endless corridors and stairwells that loop back on themselves. I press myhand to one of the walls. It’s warm. Too warm. It pulses beneath my palm like a heartbeat.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Not real. This isn’t real.”
But itfeelsreal.
The air tastes like copper and ash. My skin hums with energy—burned magic still crackling beneath the surface. My chest aches, and somewhere beneath that ache is something else.Someoneelse. I take another step, and the hallway opens suddenly into the main atrium.
But it’swrong, like the rest of this place.
It’s flooded with light, as if someone shattered the moon and spilled it all over the stone. Floating up near the ceiling is a mirror. A massive one, reflecting the scene below—but a warped version.
In the mirror, I’m not alone. Three figures stand around me. Kael. Nolan. Raiden. But they’remirroredversions—slightly wrong. Their faces are shadowed. Their eyes glow with strange light. They don’t speak. Theywatch.
I take a step forward, and all three tilt their heads in unison.
“Okay,” I breathe, chest tightening. “Definitely not real.”
But the bond between us? I can feel it—even here. A tug from each of them, threads of gold, silver, and shadow trailing off of them like someone strung invisible wire between our ribs.
Kael’s burns cold.
Raiden’s thrums low and steady.
And Nolan’s—faint, flickering, like he’s trying to reach me but can’t quite break through.
When I step toward them, they move back, just out of reach.
“Stop,” I say, shaking my head. Kael’s lips curve up, and he turns away, Nolan and Raiden following. “Wait.”
The mirror above flickers. The three boys vanish like smoke.
“Nolan, Raiden, Kael, Tamsin?” I call out again. “Anyone?”
The only answer is the sound of distant water. Or maybe footsteps. Or maybe both. I turn in a slow circle, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from.
The air shifts again—warps—and then Ihear her.
Tamsin.
Her voice cuts through the space.
“Look, if you’re going to keep floating in dreamland, the least you could do is process your mess of a love life while you’re in there.”
I freeze.
“What—?” I whisper.
