“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Have you forgotten? I’m not related to you by blood. We’re practically strangers. And I don’t need you to look out for me, ever.”
I pressed my hands over my ears, as if that would drown out Alex’s voice. “Take that back!”
“Nobody has ever wanted either of us,” Alex continued. “You want proof? I’ll show you.”
The images of Alex had vanished on the mirrors. Standing there instead was Ba’s doppelgänger in the New Order, Zhuang. He stared back at me with a harsh look on his face.
“B-Ba?”
“Faryn,” he said in a voice devoid of any warmth.
He remembered. My father remembered me. Did that mean I no longer had to restore his memory? “Ba—”
“Call me Liu Bo,” my father interrupted. “Don’t call me Ba. You don’t have a father. He abandoned you many years ago.”
“No,” I whispered, falling to my knees against the cold stone floor. “You—my father—never abandoned me. You … you left to find … Peng Lai Island.”
“Look how pathetic you are,” Ba sneered. “You couldn’t save your friend Moli, even though she laid down her life for you. You couldn’t convince your own brother, Alex, to stay on the side of humanity. Your uselessness caused the deaths of Jinyu and many other warriors across the nation.”
Each word was like a punch to the gut. I couldn’t breathe. “Ba—”
“That’s why you failed your mission to find me during the Lunar New Year. That’s why you will never find me, Faryn Liu. I don’t want to be found by you. You will never be good enough to be a warrior, much less my daughter.”
Then Ba vanished.
Alex popped up in his place. “See? That’s all the reason you need to turn back from this quest and join my side as we wipe out the rest of the warriors and humans. We were abandoned, Faryn. You heard it from our father’s own mouth. What more proof do you need? We’ve never belonged anywhere. The other warriors never wanted us. I’m the only one who really cares about you, Faryn. Why should we care what happens to the others?”
I fell forward. I clenched my fingers into fists, willing myself not to cry.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why are you saying such cruel things?”
“Abandoned.” Alex’s voice grew louder and colder, sucking out all the warmth from the air inside the Chamber of Mirrors.
Abandoned, abandoned, abandoned, abandoned …
“No,” I sobbed. “You’re wrong!”
I lashed out at one of the laughing, twisted faces of Alex with my sword. The mirror shattered into pieces, showering me with sharp, jagged shards. Without pausing or registering the pain, I slashed through the next sneering Alex, then the next one, then the next one, then the next.
“I will succeed on this quest,” I shouted. “And I will get you back on the right side—my side!”
When my brother’s laughter finally stopped, I swayed for a moment. My head spun. Only then did I realize how long I’d been without water. My arms and legs throbbed where I’d been cut by the shards of the mirror. I was vaguely aware of shouts, and arms reaching out to steady me, before my knees gave out. Then darkness.
CHAPTER
18
When I came to, it was to see a cluster of worried faces peering down at me. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. I’d developed a throbbing headache. To top it off, my body felt like it had been stabbed over and over by a million sharp things and then wrung through the dryer.
“Are you okay?” I registered Ren’s battered face. He stared down at me, wide-eyed with concern. “You kinda … went berserk on those mirrors.”
I blinked at my surroundings. Ren, Ashley, and Moli had pulled me away from the broken mirrors, which lay in pieces a few yards away from me. As I stared at the remnants, my memory returned.
Pain shot up and down my limbs when I tried to move.
“Yeah, you cut yourself up pretty badly,” Moli said in a monotone, as though delivering the day’s weather forecast. “Luckily, none of the cuts seems to be too deep.”
“Feel pretty deep.” I winced as my wounds throbbed.
Moli took me by surprise when her stoic expression morphed into something rare—one of concern. “Hey. You know whatever you saw in the mirror isn’t actually real, right?”
“I know,” I mumbled. My mind knew Moli was right, but my heart said something else entirely. Still, if a traitorous Alex was my deepest fear, and I’d just stood up to him, that had to count for something—right?
“Can you stand?” Ren asked. He extended a hand.
I took it gratefully. There wasn’t a moment to waste. We still had to find the Ruyi Jingu Bang, return it to Sun Wukong, and get him to join our side before the Hungry Ghost Festival was over. I needed to find my elixir as well.
Ashley was uncharacteristically quiet. Her face had drained of color, and her eyes were wide. She trembled but smacked away Jordan’s hand when he reached out to her. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d seen something horrendous in the Chamber of Mirrors.
At least I knew for sure that my mother was in Diyu somewhere. I had to find her and the rest of my relatives.
“Hey, guys!” shouted Jordan. “There’s an exit back here!” He had cleared a path through the shards of glass that led straight to a hole in the wall, about the size of an average man. “Excellent. As handsome as I am, I was getting a little sick of seeing my face everywhere.” He rushed forward into the dark.
“Can you walk on your own?” Ren asked gently.
I looked down at our hands, which I hadn’t realized until this moment were still intertwined. Blushing, I dropped his hand and put a couple of steps’ worth of distance between us.
Ashley gave us a strange look. Most of the color had returned to her cheeks. “C’mon, guys.”
“Wait. Maybe we shouldn’t go through that exit. I don’t remember it being here before,” Moli said, biting her nails.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t exactly been the most knowledgeable guide ever, so excuse me if I want to take the first exit outta this place,” Ashley retorted. She disappeared into the hole after her brother.
As far as I could see, broken mirrors surrounded us, and the entrance that we’d come through had disappeared. Shrugging at Moli, I headed after Ashley. Ren followed.
“Wait up, you idiots. You don’t know the first thing about the Underworld! You need me to guide you,” Moli protested.
“Yeah, right. We need you like we need those demons to attack us again,” Ashley yelled back.
“Rude.” Moli sniffed.
Back in the Chamber, the mirrors had given off a bit of their own light. Here, the only source was the digital watch on Jordan’s wrist.
When someone grabbed my arm from behind, I screamed.
Instantly, cries of “are you okay?” echoed throughout the tunnel.
“It’s just me.” Moli. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Okay. Tell me truthfully. What did you see when you looked into those mirrors?”
I’d been trying to forget all that I’d seen and heard. My mother, who was dead and still somewhere in Diyu. Ba, who had forgotten all about his family. And Alex, who’d changed so much from the brother I’d once known that he was unrecognizable.