“I’m not sure,” she concedes. “But something is coming. That’s why the storms are brewing. She must have an anchor here that she’s been drawing from.”
She and Finnick begin to brainstorm, but I know exactly where it is. “I saw it when I came through,” I blurt out. I throw open the door and start running to the throne room I saw in the portal. Finnick is right on my heels.
When I find the room I’m looking for, I have to use my body weight to open the door. It’s been shut for so long that the hinges are rusted. I finally get through and come face-to-face with hundreds of mirrors.
And I start smashing every fucking one of them.
Chapter Eleven
Glass is falling everywhere, and I’m screaming. It’s cathartic, in a way, like a fancy royal rage room. I treat it as such. Finnick joins me, picking up anything we can find and absolutely destroying every mirror we can see. Screaming comes from somewhere in the depths of the room, but I’m too blood thirsty to stop.
It’s me screaming. Screaming because this is why I lost my parents. This is why Finnick lost his parents. This is why so many people no longer have families.
“All because of this bitch!” I’m screaming.
Finnick has stopped, and he’s staring wide-eyed at the only mirror we haven’t obliterated.
A slender woman with pale, smooth skin is staring back at him. Her hair is black as ink, her long, pointed ears are tipped with purple, and her eyes are blood red. She’s smiling at Finn, and it’s the kind of smile you get when your crush finally notices you.
“My Finnick,” she whispers. “Finally, you see me. I’ve been watching you, waiting for you to notice me. Waiting for you to rule with me.”
Finnick makes a disgusted face. “Watching me?”
The woman in the mirror nods and places her palm against the glass, her long, thin fingers causing a fog where she’s touching. “I’ve seen your every pain. Your longing. I could fix it all for you, Finnick. I’ve seen it all. I can love you the way you need to be loved. I can touch you the way you dream about being touched when you’re alone at night.”
Finnick doesn’t get the chance to respond. “The fuck you can,” I say, hitting the glass as hard as I can with a fireplace poker I found in the corner. “You will never fucking touch him.”
The room goes silent. The sound of rain pounding on the roof stops, and no thunder is heard for the first time in days.
Finnick and I are both breathing hard.
“I almost lost you because of a fucking mirror,” he says shakily.
I huff out a laugh. “You found me because of a fucking mirror.”
He looks down at us, both of us bleeding from glass splinters.
“Let’s go, Echo,” he says softly, and takes us back to our room.
We lay in bed after covering every reflective surface in the room, getting cleaned up, and meticulously picking glass out of each other’s skin. Brecht brought us healing salve, and we’ve spent the last hour going over every inch of each other’s naked bodies with it. I feel like I can’t get close enough to Finn, so I straddle his waist.
He raises a brow, and that smug look crosses his face. As I reach between us, take his length in my hand, and guide it to my entrance, he stops me. I’m confused for a moment, but then laugh when he places the crown we took from the mirror room onto my head.
“Will you stay?” He asks. “Please?”
I lower myself around him and gasp when I realize I was right: he’s huge.
“I was going to stay even before you put the crown on my head,” I manage to get out, letting myself adjust to him being inside of me for the first time.
His hands grip my waist and guide my hips to roll back and forth, stopping quickly to suck in air through his teeth. “Fuck,” he grunts. “Then let me serve my love, my queen,” he finally says after collecting himself. He closes his eyes, and his head pushes back into the pillow as I start moving on him, riding him desperately.
I look to the side of the room, to where the mirror is hanging above my fireplace. The mirror that made me realize what was happening.
“I love you, Claudia,” he groans, his come spilling into me, meeting my own orgasm.
“I fucking love you,” he repeats softly as my thighs shake around him, my pussy greedily taking every drop he has to offer.
“I love you too, Finn,” I whisper back, making direct eye contact with the red pupils staring at me from the small sliver of mirror that didn’t get covered. I adjust the crown on my head - her crown - and smile sweetly at them as I watch Finn moving under me and see myself falling apart on him again.