notfaking_it | (no subject)

The gala had been a bit of a bore.

Lily was used to it, mingling with investors, the people who essentially paid for her to be a dancer, and she was usually good at it. Even tonight, she doubted anyone noticed that she was bored, but it had gone on long and all the champagne in the world couldn't make it end any quicker. She passed by Nina several times, pausing long enough to talk to her, to laugh about something that had been said, but she knew it was encouraged for them to be as social as possible and so she moved on after a few minutes.

It was something she was good at, even at her worst, and Lily smiled and laughed as she knew she was supposed to.

Between conversations, she set down her champagne flute and slipped toward the bathroom, her purse in hand. Raising her hand as she passed Nina, she grinned, then slipped through the bathroom door, glancing down into her purse for her compact as she crossed toward the mirror. Her heels clicked against the tile floor and when she glanced up, at first it seemed that nothing was wrong.

But the bathroom was gone.

Beyond the mirror she had glanced into stretched a long, golden hall and Lily shifted, moving away from the mirror to stare at what had appeared. She blinked, then turned back toward the bathroom door only to find it gone, replaced with a beautiful hall, the walls adorned with art she'd never seen before, rich looking and lush.

"What the hell?" she murmured.

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"Me too. I stepped through a door, and..." she trailed off, fighting off the urge to reach out and take Lily's hand, just to prove to herself that she was real.

"You don't think we've left the city for good, do you?" she asked, because she couldn't ignore the similarities between this and that first day in Darrow, when she'd exchanged one street for another, in the blink of an eye.

"I don't know," Lily answered, because it seemed very similar, a familiar shift, but she'd also heard more than a few stories of people leaving Darrow only temporarily. She had no idea which applied to them here.

"Excuse me," she called when she spotted someone approaching. "Can you tell us where we are?"

The man looked at Lily first, then at Nina before he smiled. "How can you not know where you are?"

Arms wrapped tight around her middle, her eyes slid sideways to try and search Lily's face, wondering if she felt the same rising panic that threatened to overwhelm Nina entirely.

"We're fine, we're just... a little lost," she said, afraid to tell him too much. They had absolutely no reason to trust this guy, and the more vulnerable they seemed, the more likely they were to be taken advantage of.

"Took a wrong turn by the golden mirror," Lily agreed, stepping forward, putting herself between the man and Nina, although she wasn't sure why. There was something about the way he was looking at Nina that she didn't like, something more than just looking at her because she was beautiful.

"You're in Atlantis," he told them. "You know that, right?"

"Of course," she said, nervousness clutching at her throat, her fingers curling convulsively at her sides.

"We'll just be... going," she said, resting a hand on Lily's shoulder and trying to steer her away... somewhere. Anywhere without this guy leering at them both.

Lily could feel his eyes on them as they walked away and she glanced back once to find him still watching them as they left. "Fucking creep," she muttered, though she wasn't sure if it was the man or this entire place leaving her feeling unsettled. There was nothing here, nothing to guide them, no one to greet them and tell them where to go.

"This isn't like the island," she said. "And it isn't like Darrow."