Mira pivoted, putting her back to the trunk as she kneeled on the floor and removed her contact lenses to their case. The mirror in hand, she closed her eyes and took a steeling breath deep into her lungs.
She could do this.
She had to do this.
She brought the mirror up in front of her face, her eyelids still shuttering her talent. Her heart banged in her chest, so erratic and nervous, so loud in her ears, she half expected Kellan to wake from the sound of it. Her palms were damp, mouth dry as ash.
She had to try.
She had to know.
She lifted her lids and froze at the sight of her face staring back at her in the oval of polished glass. She looked so different without the purple lenses muting the crystalline intensity of her gaze. She hardly recognized herself like this - her features, of course, but lit with an icy fire that seemed ageless, not quite of this world.
Extraordinary, Kellan had said.
Startling, she thought. Unsettling. So unfamiliar, she couldn't . . .
The thought fell away as the clear pools of her irises began to ripple as she looked at them in the mirror, their surface wobbling as if a small pebble had been dropped into a serene lake.
Transfixed, astonished, she couldn't look away.
And then, within the fathomless, colorless depths, an image began to take shape. Several images, shadowed figures, a group seated at the front of a large, high-ceilinged room, a tall, raised bench in front of them, separating the group from the smaller figure that stood before them, awaiting their response.
Even before the images began to take clearer shape, Mira recognized the silhouette of the person standing before the court. She felt the person's trepidation, the bone-deep dread and uncertainty.
She knew, because that person was her.
In the vision, she tried not to tremble as she faced Lucan and the other members of the Global Nations Council seated in judgment on the bench, knowing that they held the power to either save her or destroy her with their decision. Their faces were impassive, without mercy.
She watched in anguished expectation as her vision-self pressed for leniency and got only stoic faces in reply. In the vision, she began to weep, her face dropping into her palms, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
The pain of that image skewered Mira's heart in real time, made her lips tremble in echoed reaction. She wanted to look away now, before she saw any more. But then all heads in the gallery turned to look behind them as the accused entered the chamber to hear the sentencing.
Kellan.
Oh, God. It was just as he'd said.
He strode forward, broad shoulders squared, head lifted, but she could see resignation in his handsome face as he looked at her. Mira could nearly feel his stoic acceptance as she watched the scene unfold in her reflected gaze.
Her vision-self whirled back around to face the ones who held Kellan's fate in their hands. She pleaded with them. Tried to draw some of the blame to her instead. To no avail. They announced their edict just as Kellan had told her they would. For the capital crimes Kellan stood accused of . . . death.
As the vision continued, Mira knew her anguish could not possibly be worse.
But she was wrong.
Because then the terrible vision Kellan had prepared her for began to fade into a misty darkness. Another image began to take shape in her reflected gaze. Something dreadful. Something far, far worse than the prospect of Kellan's execution.
His lifeless body, pale and unmoving, laid out before her.
No . . .
No! Her mind screamed in anguish. Or maybe she'd actually screamed her horror out loud. All she knew was the incredulity, the bone-deep grief, that overcame her as her vision-self collapsed atop his dead body and began to wail.
It couldn't be true.
It could not possibly end like that for them.
She could never bear that level of pain.
She would rather die along with -
The mirror flew out of her hands and crashed into the nearby wall, raining shards of broken glass.
She jumped at the shock of what just happened, the abrupt startlement yanking her out of the vision's unbreakable hold.
Kellan loomed over her, seething so fiercely he shook with the depth of his feelings. Heat rolled off his body in palpable waves. His eyes were throwing sparks, his lips peeled back from his fangs.
"What the hell were you doing?" His voice was pure thunder, more furious than she'd ever heard him. "Mira, goddamn it. Tell me you didn't try to - ah, Jesus."
He looked away from her now, turning his head away from her na**d eyes. Still shaken, still raw with the grief from the awful things she'd just witnessed, Mira scrambled to put her lenses in. By the time she had, Kellan had sunk down to his knees on the floor in front of her.
"Mouse, for f**k's sake. Why would you . . . What in God's name were you thinking?" He took her upper arms in a tight grasp, trembling. "Look at me, baby. I need to see you. I need to know you're okay."
She lifted her face to meet his blazing stare. His face blurred through the tears filling her eyes. "I'm . . . Oh, God, Kellan! You were right. The vision. The judgment. All of it."
"You saw," he murmured, and his grip went a bit slack then. "You used your vision on yourself. Mira . . . why?"
"I had to know. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't make myself believe it . . . until now." Her voice caught, scraping in her throat. "I saw everything, just like you described it. And there was something more. Oh, God. Kellan, they sentenced you to death and then I saw you. You were - " She couldn't speak the word. On a sob, she fell against him, exhausted and hurting. "I can't bear to lose you. Not again. Not like that."
He gathered her close, wrapping his muscled arms around her. "I don't want to face that reality either. If I could keep you with me, hold you forever, I would."