Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 1

WHEN I open my eyes, I don’t know where I am, only that I’m lying on a bed of velvety moss over a black stone floor as smooth as glass. I don’t know who I am, either. Not even my name. But I can feel power humming under my skin like a wellspring waiting to be tapped. I don’t know how to reach it, but it’s there. It’s a comforting presence when everything else is unfamiliar to me, even my own body.

Rolling onto my side, I gag as my stomach heaves, but nothing comes up. For a moment, I simply lie there and breathe. There are strange coils of rope at my wrists, but at least my limbs aren’t bound. My vision swims and my stomach churns like a stormy sea as I blink to bring the world into sharper focus.

I spot sculptures of threaded white marble emerging gracefully from hedges that form tall green walls with no ceiling but the sky capping them. Even though the statues are inanimate, my eyes flick from one to the next in search of danger. The stone shapes depict humans and gods, as well as animals, strange beasts, and creatures part beast and part human. The soft scent of flowers tickles my nose. Some of the figures stand free from the hedges, vines and leaves draping necks and shoulders and fresh blossoms wreathing heads or horns.

All seem placid, benevolent, as if they were frozen in the midst of a pleasant outdoor gathering. Butterflies drift haphazardly in the air, one alighting on the upraised hand of a nearby statue, a smiling man with a fish’s tail instead of legs. The place looks at once like an old ruin and something uniquely new.

I wince—the hard ground beneath me is biting into my hip. Propping myself up on one elbow in a patch of moss, I take stock of myself, letting my stomach settle. The pale expanse of my thigh is laid bare by a creamy white tunic that splits below the hips for ease of movement. Mysterious coils of thin, fibrous rope that looks spun with gold entwine my arms and slender waist, winding even between my modest breasts, I notice as I look down. I recall a fleeting sensation of lips brushing over them, and it’s as if, for a moment, I’m looking at myself from outside my body.

I’m female, it appears. This realization, like everything, is disorienting. My hand moves to my ribs, and then my buttocks. Yes, I’m solid. I seem to understand the boundaries of my world, just not what it contains.

“Well, well. Look where you are now, you colossal, bloody fool,” says a voice behind me, both hiss and purr, outraged and gleeful.

I look over my shoulder and choke on a shriek.

He stands above me, both man and monster and yet no statue—he’s too menacing and vivid and alive. He’s tall and well-built, sinewy arms revealed by a black tunic cut much like mine, twined in scarlet ropes. His skin is pale but lightly smoked, even blue toned. Strong hands with fine fingers and pointed black nails rest on hips that taper from wide, wiry shoulders in a way that draws my eye downward.

But it’s his furious expression more than his eerie beauty that drags my attention back to his face, his eyes a bright, livid red above sharp cheeks that look chiseled from stone. Even stranger, curving dark horns grow from within the slate-colored waves of hair on his head, a pair of them, like the tines of a wickedly large fork.

“I have you at a disadvantage, it seems,” he says with a white, sharp-toothed grin. “As usual.”

Indeed, I don’t recognize him, but then I don’t even recognize myself. A tail tufted in silky fur the color of his hair lashes behind him. In place of shoes and feet, that same fur coats his ankles and drapes over dark cloven hooves, one of which taps sharply on the ground next to me.

“What are you?” I rasp. Who are you? might have been the more polite question, but it’s hard to focus beyond his horns and hooves.

He gestures as if presenting himself. “A daemon.” When I only blink at him, he adds, “Once a demigod who bound his divine soul. Divine souls are pesky things, so limited by divine rules . I prefer no bindings but my own—and in this case, they’ve freed me. Immortality is much more fun this way, don’t you think? You should know this, but of course you remember nothing, do you?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond. “My memory is mostly intact, because I still remember you—alas—if not exactly how we got here.”

“Where—?” I begin, clearing my throat and sitting up all the way. I have feet, I discover, bound in sturdy sandals with straps twining up my slender calves. Long waves of burnished bronze hair fall in my face. Oddly, I don’t recall having this hair, and yet I remember always liking the shade of it, inhabiting the space between red, dark blond, and light brown. I scrape it out of my way and look up. I’m dizzy, but not too much to better make out the towering green walls and moss-carpeted, glassy black floors all around me.

I’m in a small courtyard, a patch of nondescript pale sky above, too reticent to reveal time or weather, with those living hallways branching off in three different directions, white marble statues scattering the lengths of them. The paths bend too quickly for me to see where they lead. In the center of the courtyard is a huge fountain, its basin dry, patchy with emerald moss and dripping with vines. No water, but despite my dry mouth, I’m not thirsty.

“A maze,” the daemon says, answering my half-asked question. “Not part of the mortal plane, but still a mess of your own making, I must emphasize. You witches are all so overreaching, grasping for what doesn’t belong to you. Grasping at beings you don’t understand.” He waves about. “Fine work, you finally annoyed one of them enough to accept your challenge. If anyone could be so irritating, you could.”

His harsh tone doesn’t fit the scene, it doesn’t fit me , and it’s making my head hurt. I press a few fingers against my temple, as if that will get everything to stop spinning.

“What challenge?” I ask. I don’t feel very challenging or irritating, like this.

He brings a hand to his mouth. “Gods, I love this. You, brought so low. But I can be generous, even if you’ve taken me down with you.” He swallows unmistakably spiteful mirth. “We’re in this maze as a trial. This is your path to victory. Your ruin.”

My surroundings aren’t unlovely, and there’s only these strange, peaceful statues inhabiting the airy green corridors. Nothing prowling that I can see. But the walls feel heavy. Waiting. Alive , beyond being hedges. I wasn’t mistaken to look for danger.

And maybe it’s right in front of me, in the form of this towering, malevolent daemon. He isn’t unlovely, either, but the devastating smile and the pleasingly sculpted musculature that I can trace even under his tunic don’t mask the sharp nails and coiled violence of his motions.

“What sort of victory?” I ask, squinting up at him and trying to moisten my tongue.

The daemon gestures around, waving a pale bluish hand. “Why, if you get out of here alive, solve the puzzle, and defeat the monster at the end, you’ll be granted immense power beyond your wildest imagining. Not beyond my ken, because I’m already powerful.”

“So am I,” I say. It’s the only truth I know. I was more concerned by monster until he cast doubt on my abilities.

He laughs, a sound sharp enough to draw blood. “You’re nothing, next to me.”

That doesn’t seem quite right. “Why should I believe you?”

He’s a daemon, after all. While I don’t fully grasp what that means, he’s painted himself in opposition to his once-divine nature—unbound by rules. Which means he could also be a liar .

Then again, he’s supposedly immortal. That might indeed make me nothing, next to him. And yet, I don’t feel like nothing.

“Questions, questions.” He puts a long-nailed hand to the broad plain of his chest. “But I’m generous, remember? Now I’ll help you even more. I’ll help you get through this. It’s not all altruism on my part. If you don’t get to the end, I don’t. That’s the deal.”

I shake my head. “None of this makes sense. Why can’t I remember anything?”

The daemon shrugs, done with answering, only a delicious satisfaction spreading over his face like cream over a cat’s whiskers. His lashing tail fits the image.

In a flash, like lightning illuminating a dark scene, I remember: me, feeding him a honeyed fig in a room of soft silks and pale marble beneath a foliage-cloaked sky. His tongue, licking the stickiness from my fingers as well as his own lips after he takes the bite in his mouth. His wicked grin. But his red eyes held something beyond hunger. Something more potent, possessive.

I hug my knees to my chest, sandals scuffing over moss. A shudder lurks under my skin, but the coldness I feel isn’t in my flesh; it’s somewhere deep and forgotten inside me. I don’t know much of anything, but I do know that this man, this daemon, does not like me. And I, instinctively, do not like him. So it seems impossible there was ever a time I could have given him a sweet offering and he could have looked at me like that in return.

There’s obviously much more to our story. But I need to start at the beginning.

“What’s my name?” I whisper.

Grudging emotion flickers over his sharp, cold features. Reluctant pity, perhaps. I probably do look pathetic, in my huddle on the ground.

“Sadaré,” he says.

I repeat it, without recognition. “And yours?”

“Daesra.”

I don’t repeat his name, to avoid summoning him closer—in vain, because when I try to stand on ground that glints like the night sky where the moss doesn’t cloud it with blooming green, my legs wobble. That unwilling feeling ripples across Daesra’s face again, and he reaches out to steady me.

How I already hate that expression after only seeing it twice. I recoil from him.

He sneers, gripping my elbow with alarming pressure before tossing it away in disgust and nearly toppling me. “I don’t know why I bother helping you at all. Right, because if I don’t, I’ll be stuck here with you. At least you can die.”

I barely manage to regain my balance. His size and strength certainly seem to emphasize my own frailty, though I still feel powerful—perhaps undeservedly. I look around again at the looming hedges standing over twice as tall as me, the branching hallways filled with faces and limbs—the three paths forward. But before I can approach those—or the monster at the end—I have more foundational matters to attend to. “What am I ?”

I suppose I can turn such an unkind question on myself.

Daesra raises a dark eyebrow, but surprisingly he doesn’t sneer again. “Like I said, you’re a witch. Otherwise known as a leech,” he adds.

“A woman,” I say, only half question, ignoring that last bit.

“I believe so, but looks can be deceiving, and that’s all so changeable, anyway.”

“I’m mortal?”

“As they come.”

“But you’re not,” I say. “You’re a daemon.”

“Brilliant, you noted the horns and tail,” he says, even though he was the one who told me as much. “And already you’re understanding our relative significance. Or, rather, your lack thereof.”

I ignore that, too, as I force more confidence into my voice than I feel. “So I’m here to solve a puzzle for gain. For more power. Immortality, perhaps, if I’m contesting a higher being. You’re obligated to aid me, at least insofar as you must to get yourself out of here, since you’re not doing it out of the kindness of your heart. I don’t remember anything because that’s part of the challenge, and you don’t intend to help jog my memory. Does that about cover it?”

Daesra bows his head, and the curves of his dark horns glint. Aside from the rings segmenting the length of them in ridges, they look as smooth as the dark stone surrounding me. My fingers twitch, and, for a moment, I wonder what it would feel like to reach out and touch them, but then he raises his eyes to mine and once again I can’t imagine a world in which I could ever bridge that gap between us. I suppress a shiver and fist my hand.

“Did I somehow force you to help me?” I guess. “Is that why you hate me so?”

“My dear Sadaré,” he says with a calm, languid smile. “I have far, far more reason than that to hate you.” He shrugs, moving on from such a statement as casually as shucking a garment.

I feel as unsteady as if the earth had quaked.

“But no,” he adds, “I’m helping you because I actually owe you.”

“What did I do? Never mind.” I can already tell by the look on the daemon’s face that he’s not going to answer, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of denying me.

I’m starting to realize I might hate him with as little cause as he hates me.

I turn away from him to approach one of the statues, my legs feeling as fresh as a foal’s, unused but gaining strength. The sculpture of a heroic-looking warrior with a shield and sword displays the bare musculature of his chest and much more besides, as he’s wearing a belt and nothing else. A fine piece of work all around, I must say. The pale marble is almost translucent in certain… protuberances. The artist—otherworldly or not—paid attention to detail.

“What is this?” I reach up to touch the statue’s cheek where I can almost see the peppered shadow of stubble, but I stop short when a strange look twitches across Daesra’s face, there and then gone. At least I didn’t grab for the lower half.

“Part of the maze” is all he says.

“Jealous where I bestow my affections?” I don’t know why I ask, other than to goad him. I know he despises me; he’s said as much. I would breathe the words back in if I could, especially at the fury that flares in his red eyes, unmistakable.

“Jealous,” he says, his voice perfectly flat. “Of you .” A statement, not a question.

My heart kicks into a gallop in my chest, my body sensing danger while my mind is still catching up.

Before I can flinch, Daesra seizes my wrist in a crushing grip, black nails digging into my skin. “You would do well to want my affections,” he hisses, “as limited as my regard for you is.”

I cry out in pain and try to pull away, but he twists me closer, dipping his clever lips to my ear. Again, I remember his tongue licking that lush bow of his mouth, but this time he bares sharp canines. The discordance of the overlapping images dizzies me until what he says next brings reality into a clear, sharp focus. Or maybe that’s his nails stabbing my wrist.

“When you’re scratching blindly at the bottom of this particular well with bloody fingernails and no hope of escape and no one who cares for you,” he whispers, almost seductively, in my ear, “just remember that I am the only one who can get you out. And if you press me, I won’t hesitate to leave you to die, even if it means my own end.”

Fear jags through me. If I’m powerful, his strength is overwhelming, his broad frame bending me over, his fingers burning into me like an iron from the fire, his spoken threat hot on my cheek. I can smell his scent so near—a clean, earthy musk, something between man and beast that might otherwise make me lean into his neck to breathe deeper.

But suddenly I can smell woodsmoke, even though I hadn’t before, and autumn leaves, even though the hedges around me are green and the air is warm enough. My breath heaves in my chest, and panic trills in my veins, climbing inside until I can almost taste it. And then, I can taste it—dirt inexplicably in my mouth, blood on my tongue. The pressure of being held to the ground, helpless, despite the fact that my feet are still planted on marble.

It’s less a flash of memory and more a deeply buried bruise reawakened by Daesra’s hand, an old, forgotten wound underlying my instinctual understanding that power can be taken. And that if I’m not powerful, then I’m vulnerable.

Something must have happened to me. I can’t remember, but my body hasn’t forgotten.

Did he do that to me?

Instead of shrinking, I want to seize that force pressing into me, both past and present, and push back . Leaning into the daemon’s grip, I dig his nails in deeper, ignoring his narrowing gaze, until I feel something other than fear. Pain, yes, but it lends me clarity, and now it comes at my beckoning. And lurking beneath it, humming under my skin, I feel it.

A warm glow of potential in my flesh, however it might manifest on the outside. Power. I just don’t know how to access it. It’s confined inside me as tightly as Daesra is holding my wrist.

I’ve already tried to pull free from him and failed, so I swallow my fear and bide my time in silence until he loosens his grasp. He eventually does, when he sees the stubborn set to my jaw—but not before his strong, nimble fingers pick out one of my own and tie something quickly around the base of it, complete with a tiny bow.

Daesra withdraws, and I see a thin scarlet thread stretched between us, with a matching knot around his finger.

“What—?” is all I have time to say before he gathers up the minimal slack in the thread and yanks . The knot tightens around my finger in a searing line, cutting into my skin. I hunch over it, gasping, not wanting to jerk away in case he pulls too hard. Briefly, I wonder if that’s his intention—to take my finger off. But the pain subsides almost as quickly as it started.

I stare at my finger in shock through watery eyes. There’s only a thin red band there now, like a scar. Or a ring.

“What, no appreciation for my gift?” Daesra asks innocently.

I glare up at him with furious heat. I want to unleash the potential inside me and tear him limb from limb, but before I can try, he waggles his own finger with its purplish-red, ringlike scar, his smile playful. “It hurt me, too. Don’t whine.”

I haven’t said much of anything, as far as I know, never mind something that could be construed as whining. “What did you do?”

“Just a string around your finger,” he says, “for remembrance.”

Goat-fucker , I think. The mark must signify more than that, since I still remember next to nothing. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it is. And I know he won’t tell me.

I’ll find out, sooner or later. Probably whether I like it or not.

“Well, then,” the daemon says, clapping his hands and making me jump, as if this were a normal day—as if I knew what a normal day was. “Anything else before we venture forth?”

“What is the source of my power?” I ask, glancing once again at my finger, and then to his, where that scarlet thread no longer connects us, but something else might.

“Ah, so you remember at least a little of how your witchery works.” He nods at the thicker flaxen ropes twining my chest. “It’s through sacrifice. Pain . You’re particularly fond of bindings and sharp, pointy things. In this case, you don’t have some poor creature to bind and suffer on your behalf as fuel for your fire. You’ll have to work with what you’ve got. Namely, yourself. Use your own pain.”

Now that he mentions it, my bindings are uncomfortably tight, making my lungs strain and my ribs ache. Just as when I leaned into his grip, I draw a deep breath against the ropes. There’s the same answering spark of warmth inside me underneath the discomfort, like the heat of fire, almost at my fingertips. I just need to reach for it.

And yet… to not suffer myself should be preferable. But it wasn’t the pain of Daesra’s nails that scared me. If I know that I’m powerful, I also know that I wasn’t, once. Even if I can’t remember what forced me to the ground, the fear still echoes through my body like a scream. I’ll do anything to avoid finding myself in that position again. The thought of pain is even thrilling, if it opens the way to something greater. Something to burn others before they can hurt me—even if I have to hurt myself first.

Maybe there’s something to Daesra’s desire to have no bindings but his own. My eyes wander over him once more, lingering on his wide, dark hooves and viciously curved horns. Those aren’t exactly bonds, but they’re markers of the one entrapping his soul as surely as the ropes around my chest. Markers of power.

And yet, being a daemon is probably wretched.

“There’s you,” I say, my fingers worrying the knotted end of the rope gauntlet around my forearm.

The daemon’s red eyes burn with more rage than I could possibly understand. “If you try to bind me, I will tear you apart piece by piece, devour your shriveled heart raw, and piss on your remains.”

I unconsciously take a step back. He only too recently demonstrated he could probably manage all of that and more.

“Didn’t you just bind me ?” I demand, unable to contain my indignance beneath my fear. I feel shriveled was a bit much.

“Sadaré, Sadaré,” he says, his tone suddenly light, the expression on his face flipping like a coin. “That was a tickle in comparison to what I can do. To what we both can do, much as I hate to credit you for anything.” He spreads his wiry arms, muscles and tendons standing out—which I now eye warily instead of appreciatively—to encompass the statues, the high hedges, and the three branching pathways. “Shall we get on with it? We’ve got a maze to solve and a monster to slay. Or else we’re stuck here until you die.”

If I don’t kill you first , I think.

He grins at me as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking—and is thinking much the same thing. And then he turns on a cloven hoof as elegantly as a dancer, tail swishing the air behind him, and shows me his broad back.

Instead of going at him with my bare hands, I grit my teeth—and seat myself on the edge of the fountain, folding my arms.

“I don’t trust you,” I say when he stops and turns on me with a questioning brow.

“And I will never trust you,” he says with a low growl. “But you’re a bigger fool than even I expected if you think waiting here without me is a fine idea.”

I shrug around me at the statues. “ You’re the worst thing I’ve seen so far.”

His red eyes narrow and he starts to hiss something through his teeth when we both hear a different , louder hissing. His gaze shifts over my shoulder, bright alarm flashing within it.

I spin to find pale mist oozing out of the hole in the fountain’s center. As with the rest of what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t look so frightening, more peaceful in its slow drift—until it reaches a patch of moss and the green tufts instantly wither and brown, curling in on themselves in unmistakable death.

I leap up from the fountain’s edge just as the mist laps at where my buttocks had been. It pools in the basin, ready to spill over the lip. I stumble away, my feet eager to run, especially when the misty tendrils unfurl and reach for us like the tentacles of a living creature.

“Now would you like to go?” Daesra asks sardonically, as the mist eats along the vines dangling from the fountain, chasing the green vibrancy as if drinking it.

“Let’s,” I gasp, and when he turns his back on me this time, I hurry after him into the maze.