A RIVER of blood spewed down Belikon’s chin. It flowed from the gaping hole in his stomach, too, thick and steaming hot in the cold night air. Malcolm’s eyes narrowed to vertical slits, black veins creeping down his cheeks.
“That was ill-advised.” The vampire lunged, launching at Fisher, but sharp silver slashed through the air, bringing him up short. Avisiéth nicked his neck, the very end of Lorreth’s sword barely kissing the vampire’s skin, but it was enough to make the bastard screech. Black smoke hissed from the tiny wound.
“RUN!” Fisher bellowed.
Chaos exploded on the amphitheater floor.
Harron darted for me. The guards restraining me, idiots that they were, let me go as the silver-eyed monster flew in our direction. With my hands free, I palmed the daggers strapped to my thighs and moved.
Harron’s run-in with the quicksilver had definitely taken its toll. The captain still moved with lethal determination, but he was nowhere near as fast as he had been. And my hands weren’t tied behind my back this time. Adopting an offensive stance, I sprung into his guard, surprising him. He must have thought I would do nothing but defend, but the dagger I thrust up into his gut non-too-politely notified him otherwise.
“Bitch!” he roared. Retreating, he stared down at the dagger protruding from his body, then ripped it out. The metal clattered to the stone.
Five feet away, Carrion wielded Simon like he’d been training with the weapon for years. He cut through three feeders, slicing their heads from
their shoulders in quick order.
“MOVE!” Fisher boomed. “TO THE LABYRINTH!”
“So eager to run back into your cage, pet?” Malcolm called to him. With his head dipped and his shoulders tensed up around his ears, he looked like a dune viper, coiling back, preparing to strike. He knocked aside Madra’s guards in their shining golden armor as he prowled not for Fisher, but for Lorreth.
The warrior dropped low, Avisiéth raised again, ready to take on the vampire, but Fisher’s voice cut across the melee. “Lorreth, no! Don’t engage! I mean it! Get into the labyrinth!”
“That’ll cost you,” Harron said. And he smashed the hilt of his dagger into my nose. I’d let myself lose focus, and it had cost me. Blood exploded out of my nose, spraying Harron’s gaunt face, but…the pain I braced for didn’t come.
The Widow’s Bane. Thank fuck for the Widow Bane.
Belikon was on his knees, teetering like he was about to topple over, but he wasn’t dead. I heard the scrape Solace made when Fisher dragged it free
—metal on bone—but I didn’t make the same mistake twice. I tore my gaze away from Fisher and gave every bit of my attention to Harron. “You’re in way over your head, Rat,” the captain hissed. “The pieces of this game have been in play for millennia. You can’t begin to comprehend—”
I advanced, my remaining dagger gripped loosely in my hand. Inside Harron’s guard again, I slashed his shoulder and drew blood. He was wrong. Yes, the players in this game had been making moves for centuries. But that didn’t change the nature of the game. It was kill or be killed, and I knew what I had to do to win.
“For pity’s sake, end her!” Madra commanded. The queen hadn’t entered the fight. She watched from the sidelines, mad with rage, the front of her beautiful dress sprayed with ichor.
“How many centuries has she been using you to do her dirty work, Harron?” I panted. Darting back, away from his dagger, I moved out of his reach. “Shouldn’t you have been in the ground a long time ago?”
“Madra gifted me with eternity—”
“So that you could serve her. So that you could be her fucking slave. Most prisoners’ sentences end. They’re released, or they”—I dodged a cutting upward sweep of his dagger—“walk through that black door you spoke of. But you just keep on suffering, don’t you.”
“Death has forgotten me, bitch. My name is nowhere on his register.”
I felt the cold smile unfurling across my face. I’d been haunted by the idea of this moment. Harron had owned me the last time we’d face each other. I should have died at his hand, and that knowledge had made me fear facing him again. But now that the moment had come…I realized that I was better than him.
I paused, making my delay look like hesitation, and the captain fell for the bait. He charged, dagger swinging right for my throat, but I dropped to the ground and swept out his legs from underneath him. It was straightforward from there. I twisted and fell on top of him. Wrapped my legs around his throat, and squeezed.
“Get up! Stop toying with her!”
Madra’s petulant cry sounded far away. My ears were full of Harron’s labored wheezing. He tried to stab backward and plunge his dagger into my thigh, but I batted away his arm and wrenched his wrist into an unnatural angle. Harron dropped the dagger.
Feigning shock, I said, “Wait a minute. I think Death just remembered your name, Harron.” And then I snapped his neck.
“SAERIS! NOW!” The cry came from Lorreth. Malcolm was on his back at the top of the stairs that led down into the labyrinth. I hadn’t seen how he’d gotten there, but he looked like he was rousing himself and seconds from getting up.
To my left, Fisher shoved Carrion with one hand, holding back six feeders with the other. Carrion stumbled and fell down the stairs. Fisher speared one of the feeders through the stomach, then landed a blow to its neck with the flat of Solace’s blade so powerful that it knocked the monster’s head off rather than severed it. Eyes wild, he swung his gaze across the platform until he found me.
Go! Now! he commanded. I’m right behind you.
“Harron!” Madra shook with grief. She broke into a run, heading straight for me. I didn’t wait to find out what she would do when she got to me. I snatched the dagger Harron had pulled from his stomach and sprinted toward the stairs. My feet barely touched the ground as I raced down them and reached Lorreth and Carrion. Both had their swords in hand, ready.
Relief hit me square in my solar plexus when I felt Fisher’s hand on my back. He hadn’t wasted any time catching up. “Move, move, move!” he shouted.
Together, the four of us ran.
The opening of the labyrinth loomed ahead, foreboding and dark. As I raced into its yawning mouth, I realized that its slick back walls were made of obsidian. And they were razor sharp.
“Run all you like!” Malcolm shouted after us. “The labyrinth is my domain. It’s going to eat you alive!”
 |
Fisher grabbed my hand as we ran. He didn’t let go. “Where the hell are we going?” Lorreth panted.
Fisher pulled me to the left, down a corridor of obsidian that looked like a dead end. But it wasn’t. A narrow opening, barely wide enough to accommodate a body, opened up to the right, and he ushered us through. “The first ten moves to the labyrinth are always the same. That’s where you face the first obstacle. Then the route to the center changes.”
“What do you mean, the route changes?” Carrion demanded. “I mean it fucking changes. The walls move. Go!”
Carrion blanched, but he ran. I wasn’t so worried about the walls moving part. I was more concerned about the word ‘obstacle.’ And the fact that Fisher had been stuck in here for over a hundred years. He wouldn’t have told us to come in here if he didn’t think it was our safest option, though.
He guided us right again. Lorreth skidded as he rushed through the corner, his feet going out underneath him. He crashed into the wall ahead but scrambled up and kept running. Awesome. It wasn’t just the walls that were slick obsidian; the ground was, too.
“Left! Go left!” Fisher cried.
Tell me you have a plan. It was a hell of a lot easier speaking into someone’s mind when you were sprinting for your life.
Fisher replied, “Yes, I have one.”
“Great. What is it?”
His answered right away. “You.”
“What do you mean, me?” He was joking. If he was, then his sense of humor was almost as bad as Carrion’s.
“In a minute,” he said.
I was about to say, no, now, but then we emerged into an opening, and my stomach bottomed out. There, in the center of the opening, was the kind of monster that I thought only existed in nightmares. Zilvaren had plenty of spiders. Sand trap spiders the size of dinner plates that would numb your skin with their saliva while you were sleeping and eat your fingers. But this…this was…
“Holy fuck!” Carrion skidded and slipped onto his ass, nearly colliding with the thing. It was three times the height of a fully-grown man, with more legs than I could count. Its hind abdomen was a fleshy bulb, mottled red and black and covered in coarse long hairs. But then…my insides twisted as I took in the rest of it. Its front half was part Fae. A male torso with a distended, bloated stomach. Thin, emaciated arms. Wisps of greasy black hair stuck to its otherwise bald head. It had no ears. No eyes or nose, either. Its face comprised nothing but a massive circular mouth, with concentric row after row of jagged teeth.
It let out a high-pitched whine, its head whipping toward Carrion, and Fisher spat out a curse. “Don’t move, Swift.”
“What the hell are you talking about!” Carrion called back. “I’m one hundred percent going to move.”
“Stay the fuck where you are,” Fisher growled. “It can’t see or hear you.
It tracks movement.” “But—”
“You move, you die,” Fisher barked. “Okaaaayyyy.”
Lorreth pressed his back to the wall, clutching Avisiéth to his chest. “I fucking hate spiders,” he said.
“That’s not a spider. That’s Morthil. It’s a demon. And it’ll stun you with its stinger and eat you alive if it catches you. Slowly. Over a period of days
—”
“Please stop talking and tell me how I’m not getting eaten,” Carrion whimpered.
Fisher hooked his pinkie finger around mine and blew out a shaky breath. “We’ve got one chance at this,” he said. “There are three exits to this enclosure. Two of them lead to other enclosures, and we do not want to go to those. Trust me.”
Lorreth hadn’t blinked since he’d laid eyes on the demon. “But you said the walls move. How the hell are we supposed to pick the right one?”
Fisher moved his head a fraction, very slowly, and looked to me out of the corner of his eye. “There’s a quicksilver pool at the center of this labyrinth, Saeris. You need to find it.”
“What?”
The spider demon snapped its head in my direction, leaning forward. It took a step, its long, spindly legs working in concert, and Carrion moaned. Its front right leg was raised, hovering in the air, right over him. If it brought it down, it would land right on his head.
“No rush or anything, Fane, but if you could sniff out that quicksilver pretty quickly, I’d sure appreciate it,” he said, his voice three octaves higher than usual.
My initial surprise over what Fisher wanted me to do dissipated. Now, I had a job to do. One I felt fairly confident I could accomplish. “A whole pool of it?” I asked.
Fisher squeezed my hand. “A big one.” I closed my eyes and concentrated.
It didn’t take long to feel the quicksilver. It was there, chanting along with the tortured souls of Gillethrye.
Annorath mor! Annorath mor!
I opened my eyes and looked in the direction we had to go. “There,” I said. “That way.”
“Which way?” Carrion called nervously. “The path on the far left,” Fisher called.
“The one right behind the fucking demon?”
“Just stay still and wait until I tell you to move,” Fisher said.
Lorreth adjusted his grip on Avisiéth, scanning all four corners of the enclosure. “How are we doing this?”
“Feed. I feed.” The demon didn’t move its bristling mouth. The raspy words came from its throat somehow. It extended its front legs, prodding the air, looking for its prey.
Lorreth pulled a horrified face. “Urgh! Not on us, you’re not!”
If we ever made it out of this, I was going to be traumatized for the rest of my life. Fisher had encountered this thing more than once. He’d faced it without knowing which path to take. Had it caught him? Had it…
No. Don’t think about that. Not now.
I exhaled, pulling myself together.
“Throw a rock and distract it or something,” Carrion said.
“That won’t work. It’s smarter than it looks. It can gauge the size of objects in motion. It can’t differentiate between large objects that are close together, though. If we press back against the wall and move slowly, we can skirt around the perimeter of the enclosure and then make a run for it.”
“And where does that leave me?” Carrion asked.
“That leaves you sliding along the floor very slowly,” Fisher said. “Try not to lift your arms or legs too far from the ground. Get moving.”
Lorreth went first, creeping along the wall, his throat bobbing every other second. The demon cocked its head in twitchy movements, searching this way and that, trying to detect us, but Fisher was right—it didn’t seem to be able to differentiate us from the walls of the labyrinth. Carrion swung his arms out from his body, pressing his palms into the ground, and managed to shunt himself forward. He didn’t make much progress with each push, but it was better than nothing.
Lorreth reached the exit behind the demon first. From my position, flat against the wall, I watched him slump behind the wall, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Come on.” He motioned with his hands. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I reached him next.
Fisher was only two feet from us, when the wall Lorreth and I were leaning against groaned, shuddered, and began to move. “Shit.” Fisher made eye contact with me and then swung around to look at Morthil. The spider demon slowly turned its head toward us, an eerie clicking sound coming from its hideous mouth. And Fisher whispered, “Move!”
The demon exploded into action. Its legs splayed, skittering on the obsidian as it charged across the enclosure. Fisher lunged for Carrion and grabbed him by the wrist, dragging him toward the exit. Lorreth was there in an instant. He fisted the front of Carrion’s shirt and pulled him to his feet. But Morthil was already on us.
Fisher angled Solace and batted away one of the demon’s legs. The blade cut clean through it and sent it sailing through the air. Morthil screamed—pain and fury blending together in an ear-splitting cry.
Carrion brought up Simon and parried forward, stabbing the demon in its swollen belly, which only enraged it further. It reared back and climbed
the wall beside us, frantically thrusting with its curved stinger, seeking flesh. It found polished obsidian instead. Its stinger smashed into the wall with force, punching giant holes into the rock.
“Go!” Fisher yelled. “Go!”
We ran.
All four of us made it out of the enclosure, but Morthil followed us, scaling the walls, skittering behind us until it caught up.
“It isn’t supposed to leave the enclosure!” Fisher shouted. The demon clambered up, using both walls on either side of us, and sprung forward so that its body was right over us.
“I FEED!” it roared. Its abdomen flexed and thrust down into the path between the walls, its stinger driving through the gap. I reacted on instinct, first darting back against the wall and then spinning my dagger over and plunging it down into the demon’s abdomen. I had been aiming for its stinger, but the hit I landed was still decent. Fisher took advantage of the demon’s howl of shock and lobbed off another of its legs.
Losing its traction on the right wall, Morthil fell back down into the narrow passageway and hit the ground with a thump, nearly crushing Lorreth beneath it. The warrior jumped back, raised Avisiéth, and drove the sword into the beast’s grotesque mouth. He grunted, shoving his weight against the weapon’s hilt, and the tip of the blade pushed out of the back of the demon’s skull.
“Yes!” Carrion cried. “Is it dead?”
“Temporarily. It’ll respawn soon. It’ll come back smaller but also faster,” Fisher said.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here before that happens.”
Fisher’s hand in mine was reassuring, but he was no longer in the lead. I was. I could feel the quicksilver getting closer as we ran, but we had a problem.
“Why have we stopped?” Carrion shrieked.
“The walls keep shifting,” I bit out. “Which means the path keeps changing. I need to make sure we’re going the right way, but if you want to take the lead, then be my guest.”
The thief held up his hands. “You’re right. I apologize. I’m just a little on edge right now. I’m not my best self.”
I shut him out, trying to make the decision. It was a simple choice: left, right, or straight. The passageways seemed to stretch forever into the
distance, and my nerves got the better of me.
What happens if we stumble into one of those other enclosures? I asked Fisher in private.
Very bad things, he replied. But don’t overthink it, Saeris. You can do this. Just focus on getting us to the center of the labyrinth. If we run into any other problems on the way, we’ll handle it.
‘Very bad things’ wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear, but I took a deep breath and plunged forward. “It’s this way.” We went right. Four seconds later, the walls started moving, the obsidian scraping as it cut off the passage ahead of us.
“Damn it.” I took the next left, following the tugging in the pit of my stomach, and no sooner had we done that, the walls changed again, faster this time, sliding across the path in front of us like a doorway being closed.
“It’s never done that before,” Fisher said. “Malcolm’s trying to block our way, which means we’re on the right path. Keep going, Saeris.”
And as we picked up speed, so did the moving walls. They started slamming in front of us, barring our way, but it was as if there was a thread, connecting me to the quicksilver, drawing me toward it, and every time the thread was cut, a new one formed, showing me a different way. My heart was a hammer, pounding against my ribs. It quit beating when Fisher caught me by the shirt collar, pulling me back just in time to prevent me from being crushed by a huge slab of obsidian, but there was no time to stop and let the adrenalin pass.
“We’re getting close,” Fisher said, gulping down a breath. “I can tell by the collapsed…stand there.” He pointed up into the walls of the amphitheater, which were still visible over the tops of the labyrinth walls. Where he pointed, one of the sections of the stands had, indeed, collapsed. “It isn’t much…further.”
The quicksilver was louder in my head, too. Every time we hurled ourselves around a corner and sprinted for the next, I felt the thread connecting me to it strengthening. It wouldn’t be much further now. Only a couple more turns.
“Left! No, right!”
All four of us pushed harder. The quicksilver wasn’t chanting along with the crowd anymore. It was whispering, its interest piqued. She comes. She comes. This way, Alchemist. Come and find us.
“Right!”
Glittering black obsidian blocked our way. “Right again!”
We barreled around another corner, my feet slipping on the slick floor, and then…
“Ooof!” I hit the ground hard. Ground that was no longer black glass but something silver and cold. I cried out a second time as a heavy weight crashed down on me, and then Carrion landed next to me.
“Sorry,” he groaned.
My ribs were already broken, I was sure of that. I’d hit that water so hard that it was a miracle the impact hadn’t liquified my insides. I should have been screaming in agony, but the Widow’s Bane was still in effect and cycling through my system, thank the gods.
Fisher’s justice rune filled my vision. I took the hand he offered me and let him help me up. I didn’t notice his grim expression right away. I was too shocked by the mountain of coins that loomed before us. Because that’s what we had landed on. Coins.
They were tiny, the size of my thumbnail. Brilliant silver, they flashed like fish scales. In steep hills that resembled sand dunes, they filled the center of the labyrinth. There must have been millions of them.
This was the hell that Fisher had faced when he’d finally reached the center of the labyrinth. For eight years, he’d existed here, trying to find the specific coin that Belikon had flipped in their bet. It was no wonder he hadn’t found it. His dark hair blew on a cold wind as he surveyed the place, his expression complicated.
“So many years, trapped here, Brother. Where did you sleep?” Lorreth whispered. “What did you eat? How did you survive?”
Fisher hung his head. Now that he could talk about this place and everything that had happened here, he didn’t seem to know how to. He opened his mouth and took a deep, grounding breath. “I—”
“He didn’t, did you, my love?” The voice bounced off the walls, come from every direction. A section of one of the closest dunes started to slide, coins rattling and crashing as they tumbled down to the ground. Malcolm’s head appeared over the top of the pile first, then his shoulders, and then the rest of him as he summited the stack. He smiled benevolently down at us like a father, proud of his children’s accomplishments.
“I may be a vampire, but I was once Fae. The magic I was born with still sings a dark chorus in my veins. I used it to craft this place especially
for our Kingfisher so that he wouldn’t be plagued with such tiresome requirements as rest and sustenance. So long as he remained within the bounds of my playground, he needed neither. Thoughtful of me, no?”
“More than a century, enduring this shithole without even the escape of sleep as a reprieve? Yeah, very thoughtful,” Lorreth snapped.
Malcolm chuckled humorlessly under his breath. “Oh, but I could have made it so much worse. You have no idea, Lorreth of the Broken Spire. Even now, I could have made your journey here infinitely more horrific. I actually thought Morthil had your little group for a second there. I’m pleased that you made it, though. We were getting a little bored.”
“Motherfucker,” Carrion hissed under his breath.
Behind Malcolm, golden hair rose into view, and then Madra appeared, dressed in the female version of the golden-plated armor that Zilvaren’s city guard wore. Fisher stiffened, his hand closing tight around Solace as Belikon followed after her. The Yvelian king no longer had a hole in his stomach. In fact, he looked hale and hearty, dressed in a winter green tunic and black pants. The king’s lip curled in disgust. Pointing a furious finger at Fisher, he snarled, “You really think you can kill me with a powerless sword? You can’t kill any of us with a mere blade. We are the Triumvirate, Dog. Three crowns sharing one source. To kill one of us, you must kill us all, and that is no easy task.”
“I’m willing to give it a shot,” Fisher fired back.
“You’ve never known when to admit that you’re beaten, boy. That’s always been your problem.”
“I won’t be beaten until I’m dead,”
“Oh, that moment can’t come soon enough for me. I’ve wanted to put you in the ground from the moment your mother whelped you. But you’ll be dead soon enough, and I’ll have your father’s sword to mount on my wall right beside your skull. I’ll also have the Alchemist to forge all of the relics I need. Between the three of us, we’ll bring the old gods to their knees and claim every realm we desire while we’re at it. Now, will you die on your knees or face-down in the dirt? The choice is yours.”
I had no idea what Fisher was planning next, but Belikon, Madra, and Malcolm all stood between us and the quicksilver. I couldn’t see it, but I felt the pool pulsing on the other side of the mountain of coins they stood on. We had no magic in this place. Our enemy had plenty of death magic to draw from, and they had the high ground. If we went back, we’d be faced
with the other horrors that lived in the labyrinth, and there was no way out. No quicksilver to call to me beyond the walls of the amphitheater. The only way to reach safety was through that pool, which meant we had to go through the Triumvirate, as Belikon had called them.
Amazingly, it was Carrion who stepped forward first, Simon held aloft. “We might think Fisher’s an arrogan ass, but we’re not just going to let you kill him.” His tone was confident and devil-may-care, but I saw the way his hand shook as he pointed the tip of his sword at Belikon’s head. “We especially aren’t going to let him be killed by a bastard who’d hand over his own daughter to be tortured and enthralled by a fucking vampire.”
What’s he doing? Fisher said into my mind. He’s going to get himself killed.
I don’t have a clue. But he should definitely stop.
Belikon sucked his teeth, his cloudy eyes full of disregard. “Every trap needs a lure,” he said. “And anyway, Everlayne was born to serve my crown. If I deem it appropriate that she die to aid my cause, then she will fucking die.”
“She won’t die. Malcolm’s venom is being drained from her as we speak. Soon, the vampire taint will be lifted from her blood, and he will no longer have any control over her.”
“Carrion, stop!” I hissed. That blow Harron dealt to the back of his head must have done some serious damage. From where I was standing, it seemed likely that he’d lost his fucking mind.
“Yes, Carrion. Stop,” Malcolm said. “You know not who you insult.” The playful light in his eyes had blinked out. He stepped off the mound of coins and floated down from it, as if carried on some kind of invisible wind. I’d never seen anything like it. We were all so fucked.
“Saeris? Listen to me. These coins are fake, Fisher said. They have to be. The original coin that Belikon struck our deal with was made of silver. It burned Malcolm’s hand when he caught it. He wouldn’t even be able to stand on so many silver coins without them affecting him.”
I watched Malcolm’s boots make contact with the carpet of coins. He sauntered toward Carrion with a self-satisfied smirk on his face; he definitely wasn’t in any pain. In fact, he only seemed to flinch a little when he drew closer to Carrion’s sword. “Okay. So what does that mean?”
“The original coin would have had traces of quicksilver in it, too. The people of this city believed it was good luck. They thought it would bring
them good fortune and connect them to the gods. Do any of these coins contain quicksilver?
I stiffened, realization slowly dawning on me. I was beginning to understand what he was saying to me. “No. They don’t,” I told him. I don’t even think they’re made of metal. They’re…an illusion, perhaps? Magic?
Okay. Then do you understand what you need to do?
Malcolm hissed, snake-like, as he pushed Carrion’s sword away. He leaned into the thief, baring his fangs. “What are you going to do to stop us? We are immortal. We are gods. You are just a human with shaky hands and a pig sticker. What would stop me from ripping your throat out right here, where we stand?”
“Saeris!” There was an urgent hitch in Fisher’s voice.
“Yes,” I told him. “I know what I have to do.”
Carrion’s eyes flitted to mine for a second. They held all manner of unspoken words. Then, he lowered Simon, gave Malcolm his full attention, and said, “Nothing’s stopping you. Go ahead, Leech. Bite me and see where it gets you.”
“Carrion, no!” My shock registered like a slap across the face.
Malcolm swept around Carrion, face hideous with his hunger. His lips peeled back to reveal narrow, elongated fangs. Not just his canines. All of his teeth were sharpened to vicious points. Carrion didn’t even raise his hand to stop Malcolm. Head tipped back, he stared at the vampire defiantly as Malcolm snapped his head forward and sank his teeth into his throat.
“Gods! We’ve got—got to do something!” I shrieked.
Fisher’s hands closed around my arms. Lorreth’s too. The males held me tight, their expressions hard. And all the while, the king of the vampires drank.
This wasn’t happening. Carrion was being drained right before our eyes and we were doing nothing. Nothing!
“There’s nothing we can do.” Fisher’s voice was so quiet compared to the ringing in my head. “We’ll all die if we try to pull him off him.”
“Let me go! I have to try!”
Malcolm snarled, sinking his teeth deeper into Carrion’s neck. He was losing control. Losing himself to his own blood lust. His throat worked as he took down Carrion’s blood in great swallows. Frenzied, he withdrew his fangs—he was going to search for a better hold or a better vein?—but then a look of surprise chased over his features. Malcolm rocked back on his
heels, lips stained red, his chin crinkling in an odd way as he frowned down at Carrion.
“You…” he said.
Carrion was deathly pale, but he grinned up at Malcolm like a lunatic. “You really should have let me finish introducing myself earlier. It’s rude to interrupt people.”
Malcolm let go of him, shoving him away. Miraculously, Carrion managed to stay on his feet. “My name is Carrion Swift. But there was a time when I was known as Carrion Daianthus. First born son to Rurik and Amelia Daianthus.”
Malcolm began to shake. A violent convulsion wracked through him, and a thick stream of blood jetted from his mouth. It spattered over the coins at his feet. “You tricked me?” He choked, vomiting up another gush of blood. “You tricked me into drinking Daianthus blood?”
“Holy…fucking…gods.” Fisher and Lorreth muttered the curse in unison.
“What the hell is happening?” Dianthus? I’d heard the name, but I couldn’t remember when.
As if struck with a sudden sense of urgency, Fisher spun and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Can you sense it?” he demanded. “Can you feel where it is?”
“I—I don’t know! I—” But yes. There it was. A whisper of a voice.
Faint. Tiny. But there. “I’ve got it.”
Dirty grey smoke started pouring out of Malcolm’s mouth. His perfect porcelain skin was suddenly riddled with pulsing black veins.
“What have you done?” Belikon roared. Both he and Madra floated down the slope of the coins, raising their hands…
Fisher gave me a shake. “Saeris. Is it here?” “No, not here.”
“But inside the labyrinth?” I nodded.
Fisher pressed Solace into my palm and closed my hand around its hilt. “Then go. Find it. End this.”
 |
The Widow’s Bane was wearing off. My ribs spiked with pain as I hurtled through the labyrinth. I pumped my arms, Solace cutting through the air as I ran. The walls weren’t moving anymore. Clearly, they needed direction from Malcolm to do that, and the vampire was too busy choking— dying?—to pull those kinds of strings.
The obsidian passageways had been terrifying enough when I’d been running through them with my friends, but now they were downright petrifying.
It was too quiet.
It took me a moment to realize why.
And then it occurred to me: the smoldering bodies in the stands had fallen silent.
What did that mean? Was Fisher dead? Were Lorreth and Carrion gone, too? I wanted to scream. Fear and panic claimed me bit by bit. I was going to lose my mind. I could barely hear the little whisper now. It seemed to be growing quieter, even though my gut told me that I was getting closer.
Saeris…
Saeris…
It called to me by name.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure anymore. I had thought I was going the right way, but the whisper seemed to be coming from every direction. “Where are you? Please,” I begged. “I need you.”
“Not need,” the whisper said. “Want.”
“No! I need you. I need to save my friends. I need you to help me.
Please show me where you are!”
I ran back the way I’d come, my heart climbing up into my throat. It was so dark. So quiet. I felt the lightest tug in my stomach as I ran by a turn and backtracked, sprinting that way instead.
The whisper said nothing.
“Please. Help me!”
“A bargain, then,” the whisper purred. “No! No bargains. No tricks. No deals.” “Then why would we help?”
I stopped running. Overcome with exhaustion and pain, all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and pretend that none of this was happening. Instead, I said, “Because this is wrong. What they’ve done here. It’s evil, and you can end it.”
“Evil and good are two sides of the same coin.” The whisper snickered.
“If that was supposed to be funny, then… then…” I threw my hands in the air, my eyes pricking with tears.
“There is always evil. There is always good,” the whisper said.
“Yes! But look how much evil exists here. So much pain, and death, and suffering. Isn’t it time for some good? For balance? I…” I trailed off, not knowing how to win this argument. “I love him,” I said. “I can’t bear him to die.”
“The Kingfisherrrrr,” the whisper buzzed.
“Yes.”
“Your mate.”
I stared into the dark, feeling hopeless. “Yes,” I said. “My mate.” The silence rang in my ears, deafeningly loud.
The whisper was gone. The thread guiding me to it was gone.
It was over. I was stuck in this awful labyrinth, alone. I would die here. I wouldn’t even be able to make it back to him, so that we could die together.
“A small favor, then,” the whisper said. “We will do it for a favor. And for a restoration of balance. And for love.”
I burst into tears. “What kind of favor?” I choked out. “As we said. A small one.”
A small favor. That was vague enough to ring all kinds of alarm bells, but it was the best I was going to get. I would deal with the consequences of whatever foolishness this was later. “All right, then. Yes. I’ll owe you a small favor.”
“This way, then. This way.”
The thread flared back to life, pulling me forward. I followed it. I ran. I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me—
—and I screamed when I rounded a corner and came face to face with Morthil.
The demon was still dead, but that wasn’t much of a comfort. According to Fisher, it would ‘respawn,’ whatever that meant, and I had no desire to be around it when it did.
“Where are you?” I hissed.
The whisper answered delightedly, “Inside! We are in. Inside.”
“What do you mean?” I was verging on hysteria now. This was too much. Because I already knew what it meant by inside, I could feel it, so
close, humming, and I didn’t want to admit to myself what I was going to have to do.
“Inside,” the whisper insisted.
I crept forward, approaching the spider demon’s steaming corpse. It lay in a heap, its abdomen ripped wide open where I’d stabbed it with my dagger. One of its legs lay on the ground three feet away. The huge mouth in the center of its face was mangled from the blow Lorreth had death it with Avisiéth, which only made it more hideous. I held my breath as I leaned over and peered into the demon’s yawning maw.
Fuck. Any hopes that I might have been wrong went up in smoke when I saw the gleaming flash of silver at the back of the beast’s gullet.
A ragged, wordless cry cut through the thick silence that hung over the labyrinth. Somewhere, Fisher, Lorreth, and Carrion were fighting for their lives, and I was wasting time.
I had to move.
Come on, Saeris. You can do this. I would have preferred the encouragement from Fisher, but I was sure he had his hands full right now, so I gave myself a pep talk instead.
I lifted my hand, and—
Oh.
My skin was stained black with ink. Runes upon runes upon runes. The God Bindings flared metallic blue around my wrists as if consolidating and becoming more real, somehow.
My whole body rushed with heat.
I’d said it out loud, hadn’t I? I’d acknowledged that Fisher was my mate. That was too big and too wild to comprehend right now.
Gingerly, I reached my inked hand into the demon’s mouth.
Its teeth glistened, circular rows stacked on top of one another, growing smaller and smaller as they traveled down its throat. This close, I could see the serrations of each tooth. They were made for ripping and grinding through flesh.
Further.
I needed to reach further in. My heart seized between beats. The air froze in my lungs.
Further.
A little further still…
The demon’s gullet was still warm, not to mention slimy. I grimaced as I plucked the coin from the back of its throat and closed my hand around it.
The demon twitched, and I panicked. Yanking my arm out of its mouth, I yelped, staggering back. And a hand closed around my wrist.
“You’d better give me that coin, girl,” a rough voice said. It was Malcolm.
