Page 189 of Heir of Broken Souls

“Peter,” I interject, wanting to strip him of his menacing title.

And by the coy smile gracing Delilah’s lips, she likes the sentiment.

“Peter,” Harlow repeats with a roll of her eyes. “He’s no fool, he won’t return to his true form knowing it’s the only way to kill him.”

“What if wedon’tkill him?”

Everyone stops to turn and gawk at me. Including Delilah.

“You cannot be serious,” Axel spits, his temper flaring.

“We have finally found something that he truly cares about—something that will strike his black heart. Why don’t we take it away and banish him to the prison world to live out his days in misery?”

After all, that’s what Delilah originally wanted. And by the flash of emotion in her gaze, she remembers the vow she made before we set off for the human lands all those months ago.

“And let him find a way to leave again?” Harlow tsks. “Not a chance.”

“He won’t transform into his true form, though, and this will just continue to go on. Day in and day out, people are suffering. We don’t have time,” Elysia argues, reminding us all of the great cost.

“We can talk about it all on the way home. We have the answers we were searching for, and now we know his face. The rest we can figure out,” I suggest.

Elysia turns behind her to the portal. “Perhaps we can use this to travel home?”

“I thought it was just a portal to the prison world,” Delilah muses, her head cocking to the side as she studies it.

Elysia shakes her head. “I don’t believe so. There is no such thing as creating a portal for just one world. This has just been spelled to show?—”

The moment her fingers graze the gold trim her body freezes.

Axel lunges, wrapping his hands around her waist to pull her back, but instead he’s flung across the room from the power.

Elysia’s eyes grow murky as she recites.

“One set was birthed the other forged, brought together their blood will pour.

But don’t be fooled, for the mirror majesties have a pull.

Join your steel and lunge with a roar, and weave your golden fate.

And so the scales shall devour their dark souls.”

Lenox gives Axel a helping hand as he rubs the back of his head with a grimace. All the while, Elysia recites the passage over and over and over.

“It’s the blades,” Delilah whispers.

The second the words leave her lips Elysia sags, heaving and panting from exertion as if she just ran a long distance. Axel is next to her in a heartbeat, his movements hesitant before he shakes his head and drops to his knees, rubbing her back soothingly.

Elysia’s mouth drops open to speak but gasps fill the large room instead as the mirror swirls with blue light, the image changing from the cobblestone driveway of the prison world with the castle going up in golden flames to?—

“It’s the griffins,” Lenox shouts in surprise, taking a step forward to peer through.

My gaze flicks back and forth, from the image of the cave-like island in the middle of the ocean in the mirror portal, along with the two griffins that fly above scouting the area, to the twin dragon pommel swords jutting out of the rock before the mirror. Delilah steps forward, our bond tugging relentlessly as emotions swirl through her heart. She must have sent something down the bond to Aurora because the griffin halts midair.

Gods, now I’ve gone and terrified her. She probably thinks something has happened, Delilah worries.

Don’t worry, we will be reunited with her shortly to ease her worries.

Narrowing my eyes on the mirror, I can’t help but ponder out loud. “I wonder if it’s sentient.”