Hall of Mirrors by Cameron Darrow

Author:Cameron Darrow [Darrow, Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-11T22:00:00+00:00

***

In a hall of light, the only sound was the shuffling of paper as the documents were laid out before the dignitaries, the sun reflecting onto them from the wall of mirrors as though they were being blessed by some higher power. Humanity had managed to haul itself back from the brink of complete destruction, and it seemed someone approved.

In such a solemn, historical moment, the entire room was a frozen tableau, as though Victoria was looking at a painting of the event, rather than standing in the room as it happened.

As relative nobodies, guests with no official role, the witches of EVE were stood at the very back of the crowd, unable to see much past the sea of black suits that stretched out before them. As the tallest, Katya may have had better luck, but she wasn't really looking, keeping her eyes on the floor. The others were much the same, though Svetlana would occasionally look up at something or other she had sensed in the crowd before looking down again.

Between the clothing and the atmosphere, it almost felt like a funeral.

As Victoria stood silently with her arms clasped in front of her, she realised that was, in fact, the appropriate word for what was happening right in front of her.

This was the death of the old world.

The world of kings and empires, of colonisation, of 'gentlemanly' warfare carried out by men in white gloves with sabres. Of isolation, of information travelling at the speed of horse or sail, of any semblance of security provided by living far from the front lines of conflict.

Starvation, rationing, disease, conscription, there was no escaping the tentacles of war anymore. Victoria's parents had been killed in their beds from a bomb that had been meant to kill her, hundreds of miles from the fighting. Going to work at the munitions factory had been liberating, a way for her to finally seize some semblance of control over her future, but in so doing she had unwittingly made herself a target.

'Crowns will roll in the gutter,' Friedrich Engels had predicted about what became the First World War, and it was true. The empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottomans, all gone.

Though Britain retained its monarch, it had lost its crown as the financial centre of the world, and in the course of prosecuting the war had passed it to New York.

The world Victoria and everyone else had awoken to on June 28th, 1914, was gone. Today, June 28th, 1919, was the first of the one that would replace it.

A low susurrus swept through the crowd as something Victoria couldn't see occurred, but drew her eye upward all the same.

Magic thrummed in Victoria's breast as a realisation washed over her along with the sound. It was such an obvious and stupid thing to even put into words, but it was exactly the thought she needed to have in that moment: funerals were for the survivors.

A new world.

As the sound dissipated, and Victoria allowed the

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