It was practically doomsday in the palace.

Each body was swaying with violent tremors and the distressed sounds of pigs snorting from the stables behind.

The queen stormed in.

Zailah’s heart thundered violently in her heart, puffs of anxiety swirling around her in poisonous shades of green.

Her wide and furious blue eyes landed on a large mirror hanging from the wall and she ran towards it like a woman who’d lost her mind.

Her people watched, terrified and dumbfounded as their queen stared frantically into the mirror at her face, looking for something that wasn’t there, but everything was there.

It was her.

Mortal.Imperfect.

She screamed.

A sound so inhumanly shrill that if Zailah truly was an immortal, it would’ve shattered the palace walls.

In a matter of minutes her hands had found the sides of the mirror as she yanked it off the wall and smashed it on the marble floor.

The sound of the mirror shattering filled the room as Zailah screamed in frustration and despair.

“Where is my mirror, you foul, wretched, miserable peasants!” she stomped her feet on the shards of glass littering the floor like a misbehaved child.

The next hour or two consisted of the same painful cycle as Zailah hovered around yelling in people’s faces and murmuring to people who weren’t there about her lost mirror as if she needed it to breathe.

The whole of the throne room was covered in shards of glass now because the queen, in her flurry of panic, had shattered about 15 mirrors.

She was going mad.

All because she was so used to seeing that perfect inhuman image of herself, she couldn’t stand the mortality of her face anymore. She could no longer remember what she truly looked like. And now, anything short of perfection was hideous.

Her knights had put out notices that whoever can find the enchanted mirror the queen was gifted will earn a great sum of gold as a reward.

Zailah felt as if her head might erupt. Emotions of anger, desperation and crippling fear wrapped around her throat and squeezed until she couldn’t distinguish reality from delusion.

It felt as if the gods themselves were leaning forward, clutching the armrests of their thrones in sick anticipation to see how this tragic mortal story ends.

Her hands went into her hair, pulling at the uneven strands and willing them to turn straight like she had been seeing in the mirror.

That is what she wanted. That is what she needed. If she didn’t get it she’d-

Her frantic train of thoughts halted abruptly and her heart jumped in her chest as a man walked into the throne room.

Zailah could swear this man worked for her but she didn’t pay enough attention to the lowlifes who worked for her to know who he was.

Although, across the room, among the many maids standing with their heads down, one looked up.

There was a sudden widening of Callista’s blue-green eyes as they found the silhouette of the man confidently walking in.

Her heart thundered and blood rushed inside her ears at the same time as it felt like the ground had been pulled from underneath her feet.

It was unmistakable.

Dark hair fell in waves and framed his hazel eyes.

Theron.

Callista’s heart beat ferociously and she wanted to rip the organ out for being so blinded with one sided love she never noticed the look in Theron’s eyes until today.

Greed, utter and disgusting greed.

“Speak your name and purpose” Zailah commanded, her words cold as ice and voice as thin as her patience.

“Highness” , Theron bowed lightly, a picture perfect gentleman about to destroy a young woman’s life..

“My name is Theron and I have come to share the name of the traitor who stole your mirror but also return it to you.”

Zailah’s eyes flashed and within the span of a few unforgiving seconds, she was in front of Theron, eyes filled with crazed desperation as her heart beat like a wild animal in her rib cage.

“I will give you more gold than you have ever seen in your life Theron, speak the name” She coaxed, her voice was commanding yet shaded in that undertone of disgusting desperation.

Theron’s eyes lifted, meeting Callista’s as she shook her head wildly, begging him to not do what she knew he was about to do for if he did it would damn her to a most painful punishment.

Theron sighed, the sound saturated in mock regret and pity. “With regret, Your Highness — it was your head chambermaid. I caught her this morning. She begged me to sell the mirror, swore she’d split the coin. But I knew you deserved better. So here I am. Loyal. Honest.”

Zailah’s head snapped to the side towards Callista with all the speed of a lightning bolt as her furious gaze met Callista’s pleading ones.

“No Highness!- You ought not to believe him-” Callista began her plea for mercy but Theron cut her off.

“My gold? Highness, and would you like your mirror back?” He asked, the voice of a betraying monster veiled in the perfect gentlemanly behaviour as his eyes slid back towards the queen.

“Yes, yes of course” Zailah murmured and nodded to her men, who handed Theron a heavy chest. Her drunken eyes stayed fixed on Theron’s hand as he pulled out the mirror—then she pounced, clutching it like her lifeline.

She lifted it to her face and looked into it.

The goddess in the mirror looked back.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

Ravishing.

But in the corner of the throne which felt like a whole other universe of pain and misery Callista begged Theron slightly with tear filled eyes and breath fogged with crippling anxiety.

Theron bowed his head again, the faintest of smirks curling at his lips before he walked out with his money. His love. His freedom. Not hers.

A feral laugh of ecstasy left Zailah’s lips as she clutched the mirror tighter in her trembling hands.

Her face was glowing.

A tremor shook her hands.

Her eyes looked like diamonds.

Her hands got sweatier as the handle of the mirror slipped a little.

Her lips looked flushed and full.

Her hands shook and the mirror slipped some more.

The gorgeous woman in the mirror blinked even though Zailah hadn’t and in a cruel unfolding of fate the mirror slipped from her shaking hands and hit the floor.

The room went silent as a deafening crack echoed, the mirror hit the floor and the crystal blue shards flew everywhere.

Zailah screamed. The sound was anguish incarnate. It wasn’t long before the queen was on the floor, scrambling to put the pieces of the mirror back together but it didn’t work.

And as soon as her eyes met the mirror’s broken shards all hell broke loose in her head.

The mirror’s magic had been reversed.

This wasn’t what it used to show her.

This was not an inhumanly gorgeous deity.

A child of aphrodite.

This was…a woman with sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes, frowning lips and a universe of wrinkles.

Zailah screamed louder, as her head snapped toward Callista, bloodshot eyes meeting Callista’s terrified ones.

“You witch!” Zailah shrieked “This is all because of you” she yelled before turning to her magician who stood in the corner, sweat on his brow and hands shaking.

“Punish her!” Zailah commanded. “Punish her so terribly that no man ever wants her again, that she can never look in the mirror without screaming in disgust again!”

Callista’s entire being shook with terror and betrayal as she fell to her knees and her pleas for mercy echoed through the marble halls but as the magician twisted his hands and a plume of dark gray magic rushed towards Callista, it felt as if hope had been chained in an impenetrable jar.

The smoke twisted around her until Callista was no longer a beautiful young woman. Her eyes had been replaced with hollow, bottomless white sockets and her skin had dulled to an eerie gray, sunken cheeks and blue green veins crawling up her neck to her temple.

A truly haunting beast.

The creature wailed in distress, echoing Zailah’s scream as she stared at what the horrifying woman the mirror showed her. She didn’t look like that in real life but she believed what she saw in the mirror and it wasn’t long before her hands found her face, nails clawing at her own skin out of such potent insecurity and self loathing no one could stop her until she was a mass of torn flesh and blood with no heartbeat under the starless sky inside her throne room.

She lost her perfection and thus to her, she lost herself, her beauty, her identity.

Perfection is fragile.

And when it shattered, so did she.

(Author’s note: Hii there! 😀 

If you have finished this story then I hope you loved it and first of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH, for all the support you as an individual gave me by reading this and encouraging my passion for writing! T-T <3 

You can’t see me but I’m probably screaming into the void from happines right now.Now- go ahead and write a little comment and tell me: Would YOU have become as addicted to the mirror as Zailah?? Be honest! 

Let’s connect and if you want to see more from me then stick around because I have a lot more in store for you!! 😀

I have also posted some parts from the Villain’s POV (Theron)  if you’re interested in that- would love support!)