Mirror Queen
The Heart was no longer still. Its pulse shuddered through the ground, through the marble of the temple floors, through the veins of everyone attuned to its rhythm. Kimberly felt it every time she breathed—like her own heartbeat was trying to sync with something that wanted her gone.
By dawn, he sky had turned the color of bruised gold. The moon hung heavy and fractured, faint cracks of black running through its surface like veins. The city was quiet, unnaturally so, as if every soul felt the pause before something inevitable.
She stood at the edge of the courtyard when the air split.
A shimmer spread across the horizon—like the world itself was reflected in a sheet of water that someone had just disturbed. Then, from the center of that shimmer, a shape stepped forward.
