Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 2

DAESRA STRIDES into the middle of the three passages without hesitation, and I follow without argument. I don’t wait to see what destruction the mist wreaks on the rest of the greenery in the courtyard. I certainly don’t wish to see what it would do to my bare skin.

Even though my legs carry me forward with all haste, keeping the sharp pace that the daemon’s hooves tap out on the marble between patches of moss, the two of us don’t make it far before the necessity of choice stops us—another three-way fork in the form of an intersection. I keep looking over my shoulder for the mist, but it doesn’t seem to be following us, or at least it’s unable to move quickly. The three hallways splitting before us appear more or less identical, framed by green hedges, mirror-black floors, and a silvery sky. White marble statues are scattered along their lengths.

Daesra stops to scrutinize our options, pursing his lips and shooting me a sideways glance as a few butterflies flap about us. Based on the slight curve at the corner of his mouth, I have the distinct hunch he knows which way to go, and he’s simply not telling me—keeping me in the dark on purpose. Forcing me to turn to him, especially with the slow pressure of death at our backs.

I resist looking over my shoulder once more, calming my breath. I can’t willingly grant him control of the situation out of panic. He’s already tried to take it; I still have his nail indentations in my wrist to show for it.

The mist just proved what I already suspected before Daesra’s insistence: This is a matter of life and death. To survive, I need my power—not him .

And yet, I’m happy to take inspiration from him. As I pretend to consider our options alongside the daemon, I subtly dig my own nails into my arm. Pain stabs through me, and that warm feeling of potential pools like blood around my fingertips, even though I haven’t broken the skin. I try to seize the warmth, unintentionally squeezing my arm harder, but it recedes as soon as I try to grasp at it.

When the daemon turns to me fully, I drop my hand.

“Which way?” I ask grudgingly, nodding at the three passageways. Perhaps by humoring him I can keep him occupied with the maze, while I experiment with my own internal puzzle.

He tosses me an indolent shoulder. “Which way do you think? I chose the first time.”

“I thought you were my helper.”

“As your highly reluctant ally , I would suggest you pick now and we see what happens, since you don’t trust me.”

He’s not going to let me sink into the background so easily, and I rise to meet his challenge more readily than might be wise. Without waiting for him, I stride toward the left. My left is my dominant hand—a disposition reputed to bring ill luck, which I always found foolish, not that I can remember the precise circumstances under which I did. That’s the only justification I have for my choice, which is so feeble it doesn’t bear repeating to the daemon.

And yet, if he’s testing me, I don’t want to shrink from it. At least my pride is far less shy than my power.

I hear Daesra’s smirk as he follows me. “Taking the lead, are we?”

I speak without turning, approaching a bend in the path warily. And yet our only company remains the statues. “You didn’t seem to want to.”

“Oh, I always do,” he says in a low, slow way that once again reminds me of a stretching cat. A predator at his leisure. I begin to wonder if it’s worth maintaining my pride to have him at my back, ready to pounce. “It’s only a question of whether or not you’ll follow me. You can be rather thick-skulled, if you must know.”

“I mustn’t know.” I clench my jaw as I make my way around the corner. “Seeing as you haven’t given me any reason to trust you, I’ll follow my judgment for the moment.”

I draw up short, and Daesra crows, “And what fine judgment you have!”

The passage halts in a dead end—another hedge wall, with the statue of a lone satyr girl looking somewhat lost with her bundle of grapes.

Fitting.

“To the right, then,” I declare, marching back the way I came.

“Why not the center path?” the daemon asks. It’s what he chose the first time. When I glance over my shoulder at him, he’s still following—and still smirking. “Seems more balanced.”

“And it’s the obvious, easy choice.”

“Of course, you would overlook what’s obvious.”

I ignore him, taking the right turn after I make my way back to the intersection. Shortly—even shorter than before—we arrive at another dead end where there’s a statue of a boy clutching an unlit candle and looking over his shoulder in surprise. If this was a test, I’ve apparently failed.

“Fine,” I say, folding my arms and glaring at the hedge wall. “You pick.”

The daemon’s red eyes widen in faux gratitude. “Offering me the lead when there’s only one choice left, the one I suggested and you ignored—how generous you are.”

I spin on him, dropping my arms. “I asked your opinion before!”

“Ah, but you didn’t ask politely enough.”

I shake my head. “I knew it. You know the way, or at least how to spot it, but you don’t want to tell me. Or you want something in return, such as my groveling.” I shove by him to retrace my steps once more. “But I never asked for your help”—at least I don’t think I did—“so I’m not going to beg for it now.”

“Pity,” he says behind me. “It would get you farther.”

“Because you fancy me at your mercy?” I ask without turning. Ignoring the prickles his unseen presence leaves against my neck.

“Because you are at my mercy,” his low voice hums. “And the sooner you realize it and bow to my superior strength and knowledge, the better.”

His words only reinforce my resolve: The sooner I learn to tap my power, the better. And now, I know a third thing, after the fact that I possess such power and that I once didn’t: I can’t trust him, no matter how much knowledge he might possess. Not when he would so readily render me powerless.

Or worse, have me voluntarily surrender my strength to him .

“Bow to you , you mean?” I snarl, marching faster, as if I can leave him behind. But his long legs keep stride with me over the slick stone, hooves tapping, until we regain the intersection. “For some sick game of yours? As if the maze isn’t enough.”

The only indication he’s heard me is his slight smile, which I catch as he draws up alongside me. I pause as something else draws my attention—a whispering rattle of leaves as if there was a breeze, except none stirs around us.

I turn to find tendrils of mist creeping along the passage that first brought us here, flowing inexorably along the ground and spreading death in its wake. The hedges are withering to either side, dropping a rain of brown leaves in a morbid shower.

I gasp in horror, but Daesra merely steps around me. As tall and broad as he is, he’s light on his feet—hooves—and yet his shoulder brushes mine as he passes, and his tail stingingly whips my thigh.

“Shall we?” he says, as if we’re out for a casual stroll.

I don’t protest as he takes the lead; I only run to catch up when he takes the center passage opposite the mist, my heart thundering.

This time, we find no dead end or loop. I might wish we had just to spite him, save for the mist trailing us. At least we outpace it quickly. I still can’t help checking over my shoulder every few paces, too nervous to make conversation.

Instead, I take the opportunity to dig at my arm again with more desperation than before, lagging behind intentionally so the daemon can’t see what I’m doing. I feel my power rising with the pain, and rather than clutch at it with invisible hands as much as I’m gouging into my skin, I simply welcome the sensation. Relax into the piercing warmth. My eyes flutter closed with the release of it.

It’s like opening a doorway. My eyes fly open as the heat under my skin becomes actual fire in my palm, just as I suspected it might. I raise it before me, marveling as the cool blue flames dance across my fingertips without burning me… and then my attention focuses on Daesra.

Specifically, his tail, curving sinuously out from the folds of his black tunic.

I extend my arm, channeling my power outward—and the fire launches from my hand. And yet, it sputters in the air, flickering and weakening in an arc, and only fizzes against the tuft of his tail. At least it singes a bit of fur.

The daemon spins on me, lashing his tail to douse the sparks, anger lighting his red eyes. “Playing games, are we?”

“No more than you,” I snap back.

As if reminding me of my mortality, Daesra snaps a finger, and blue flames flare around his hand in response, crackling as brightly as a torch and sending me leaping back.

“If you play against me, Sadaré,” he says, his eyes glowing purple in the firelight, “you’re going to lose. I didn’t even need new pain to do that. Only the binding on my soul. Do you want to see what I can do with a fresh wound?”

Drawing my gaze with his own to his hand, he pierces the pad of his thumb with one of his long black nails. Hardly a wound. And yet, a column of white fire as thick as his arm bursts above his fingertips, shooting into the sky. It doesn’t last long, but certainly long enough to make his point. The bright shadow of it remains scorched into my vision as I blink in shock.

After the searing flame dies, he holds out his hand, palm up. There’s no more wound on his thumb, only a smear of dark blood—a red so deep it’s almost black. Daemonic.

So he can use his pain, too, but to much greater effect. And his immortality heals him in an instant. He has a limitless wellspring of pain from which to draw. As limitless as his life.

While I’ve cracked the puzzle of accessing my power, I haven’t discovered anything remotely like what he has. I can’t endure endless pain. I need to work with what I have—my limitations. Beyond welcoming pain, I need to house it, somehow, in my flesh. Store it within me rather than open a fresh wound. I need my own well, not merely a bucket, scooping at it as it passes.

I still can’t help eyeing his hand hungrily. He’s secure in his strength—forever. If immortality is my prize, it’s everything .

He must see the longing in my expression, because he whips his hand away as if taking a toy from a naughty child. My teeth clench.

“I suggest we work together,” he says. “Although if you prefer not to, I might very well enjoy myself.”

The threat is obvious. Of course he would enjoy hurting me. He doesn’t seem any different from a man, in that way. Perhaps he’s worse, as a daemon, with potentially more depraved proclivities.

I glare at him, taking him in from the segmented curve of his horns to the long whip of his tufted tail, down to the sharp cleft of his hooves—stifling the wonder at what it would be like to run my fingertips over them—and finally hold his bloodred eyes.

“Have you hurt me? In the past?” I ask.

He smiles. “Only when you deserved it.” My eyes widen, but before I can step back, he adds, “And yet you never feared me, even when you should have. The source of your fear… that wasn’t me.” He sounds like he’s only grudgingly giving me this information.

I want to ask him what happened to me on that autumn day of woodsmoke and moldering leaves and dirt, but I don’t trust him with so vulnerable a feeling. “And now? Should I fear you?”

He stares at me seriously. “Absolutely.”

I do my best to keep my shiver under my skin.

“And I thought the monster would be the worst part,” I say, making my voice nonchalant.

He only turns on a hoof and carries on, leaving me to follow. The labyrinth remains free of any monster, save the daemon in front of me. Instead, there are ever more butterflies, floating before us as if to demonstrate how open and peaceful the way forward is. Oddly, the statues are no longer frozen in laughter or leisure. Most of their poses make them appear to be walking along with us, their faces set in more serious lines. They tickle a sense of unease within me—an urgency to get wherever it is we’re going, as if the mist slowly chasing us isn’t incentive enough.

When we reach another intersection and Daesra pauses, I don’t simply go forward like we did last time, as I imagine he might suggest. I don’t go left or right, either. Instead, I approach a marble pillar in the center of the cross, an idea forming.

“Why not go up?” I say. “Get a view?”

“Because there is no path up,” Daesra says, as if speaking to a simpleton.

I toss my head at the pillar. “There’s this.” I smile before he can try to inform me that I can’t climb it. “And there’s you.”

He kicks up a hoof and sets it down with a clack. “I’m made less for climbing sheer marble than you are.”

“But you are tall. Help me up.” After he just told me to fear him, the thought of forcing him to help me is pettily satisfying. And it does serve a purpose.

He frowns down at me. “I don’t think you’ll like what you’ll see.”

“I won’t know until I look, will I?” I say sweetly. “You suggested we should work together, anyway.”

He grunts in neither agreement nor disagreement, but laces his hands together to make a stirrup of sorts, bending for me. I try not to imagine I’m climbing upon a horse as I settle my foot in his wide grip, because then I might laugh.

Instead, a startled cry escapes me as he boosts me with easy strength, shooting me up into the air and forcing me to clutch at the side of the pillar to steady myself. It’s indeed too wide and slippery for me to scramble up. Knees bending, I wobble precariously on my perch, and my hand shoots out against my will to seize one of the daemon’s horns for balance.

We both freeze, save for my fingers where they can’t help flexing over the hard surface. The horn is cool to the touch and as smooth as stone, except where the ridges actually provide a fine grip. I picture holding both tines in my hands, directing his head wherever I will—my arms like a bridle as I angle his face, perhaps downward, between my thighs…

I blink frantically, trying to cast the vivid image aside, to find him glaring up at me though the strands of his hair.

“Do you want me to drop you?” he growls.

“No,” I gasp. “Don’t.”

“Then let go .”

I do so with all haste and barely have time to reach for the top of the pillar before he lifts me ever higher, well over his head, giving me an extra shove that’s nearly a toss. I sling my arms over the squared edge, getting a grip on the other side, and then my leg, clambering up with effort. I gather my knees beneath me on the narrow platform as soon as I can and try not to look down, taking a moment to catch my breath and regain my balance—but I’m less unsteady from the height and more from where my mind had wandered.

It hadn’t been a memory—had it? No, we couldn’t have done anything like that. He hates me, and I hate him.

I shake myself internally, while I rise carefully to standing.

And I look out at the maze.

Corridors of hedges stretch and twist in every direction, as far as the eye can see, until the many paths flatten into a solid green band on the horizon under a hazy gray sky. Statues vanish immediately around bends, swallowed. From this vantage, I can no more follow the direction we should take than a tangled pile of yarn on the floor—a pile with no end. The maze is impossibly big. Dizzying. At least I don’t catch sight of any mist drifting among the pathways, or even dead greenery, though it’s barely any comfort.

When a butterfly alights on my shoulder, I turn from the view of the maze to it with something like relief. It’s small, recognizable, and its slow-flapping wings are lovely in their iridescence. But as I parse the myriad beautiful colors gleaming in them, I spot what else is there.

A face. In the thorax. I’m not imagining it, and it isn’t a trick of a pattern; it’s right there, as clear as any one of the sculpture’s faces, composed of tiny ridges. It is unmoving, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent, unending scream.

I scream, flailing and batting at it—and I lose my balance. The pillar slides out from under my feet me as I topple sideways, the sky and hedges blurring in an arc across my vision.

Strong arms arrest my fall instead of letting me hit the ground with bone-breaking force. Panting wildly, I look up at Daesra. His body is firm against me, though I can feel the thumping beat of his heart and rapid rise and fall of his own breath within his powerful chest. His eyes are wide—worried, almost. But then he blinks, and the expression is gone. He as good as hurls me to my feet, sending me stumbling away from him to fetch up against the pillar.

“What’s the matter with you?” he hisses. “Do you intend to kill yourself before the maze can?”

I toss my hair out of my face. “No, I—I got distracted.”

“By what ? The futility of your quest?”

There was the impossible size of the maze, but that’s not what had made me fall. It had been the horrible, screaming face hidden in something seemingly so beautiful. I can only hope the maze isn’t similar, with so much more to hide.

I open my mouth to describe the butterfly—and then I close it. I would sound foolish, letting something so small unsettle me enough to lose my balance. Never mind that the hair rises on my arms at the mere recollection.

“I can’t tell which way to go. The maze stretches to the horizon,” I say, as calmly as possible, smoothing my tunic if not my dignity back into place. “It’s flat without any distinguishing features.”

Daesra shakes his head as if he already expected that. “I don’t think gaining ground is the answer. I think the way we need to go, other than forward, is down .”

I scoff. “Forward and down. Sounds too simple. Besides, I didn’t see any way down . Other than my fall from the pillar.” And then I glance at him, unable to keep my eyes from snagging on his horn where my hand had been. “You caught me. Thank you.”

“Don’t expect it. I may well decide not to next time.”

I start to make a retort when another butterfly flickers in front of my face and almost lands on my lips, making me startle back and spit. I see more where it came from, gathering in a loose cloud around us—perhaps starting to swarm.

Without hesitation, I dash through them, waving my arms wildly, barely keeping the presence of mind to go straight like we should have in the first place. It’s only when I’m clear of the shining wings of the swarm, tucked between the less-threatening, ever-present hedge walls, that I let myself pause. I ignore the amused look on Daesra’s face as he catches up, occupying myself by vigorously scrubbing my sweaty palms along the coils of rope on my arms as if I could cleanse myself from the sight of that twisted thorax.

The tines of the daemon’s horns tip as he regards me with a lifted brow. “Something wrong with the butterflies?”

Meeting his red eyes, I inexplicably feel a rush of relief. Never mind that he might also be hiding something horrible behind his beauty. I dislike him, and he’s frightening, but he’s… familiar? Is he familiar? I don’t entirely know. The butterfly had seemed so, too, at first glance, and he’s not much more comprehensible than the screaming face on its back, with his hooves and horns and tail and deep hatred of me. But, at the very least, he’s reassuring in his consistency.

And he did catch me when I fell.

“They’re… strange” is as much as I can manage, this time. I only somewhat successfully suppress a shudder.

There’s that look on the daemon’s face again: pity.

“But you’re stranger,” I half lie. “If supposedly useful.”

I’ll see how useful he truly is.

It’s his turn to scoff as he starts forward again. Perhaps it’s that hideousness within what at first glance appeared peaceful and lovely that reminds me, but after maneuvering for a brief time around statues cluttering the passage, I ask, “What about this monster that’s supposedly at the center of the maze?”

Daesra strolls slightly ahead of me, tucking his hands behind his back, the shape of his arms standing out more than I care for as muscle glides under his smoky skin. The clack of his hooves is loud among our still, silent companions. I’m grateful when the stray butterfly shies away from him, and so me.

“It’s why this place was built,” he says. “To hold this creature, because whoever trapped it couldn’t—maybe didn’t want to—kill it.”

“Whyever not?”

“Is it so inconceivable that maybe someone, somewhere, at some time, loved this monster?” He shoots me an ironic glance. “Why, Sadaré, even the parents of daemons love their spawn.”

Maybe Daesra’s words are a key as to who he is and, by extension, who I am. I eye him sideways, taking in his fine, sharp jaw and arrow-straight nose, noticing the odd frown on a sculpture’s face as I pass it. They continue to look like they’re moving deeper into the maze along with us, even as they’re frozen.

“If daemons were once demigods,” I say, “that means one of their parents is still a god.” When he doesn’t respond, I add, hoping to at least uncover a hint of his parentage, “And parents love their children, at times to a fault.”

I can’t remember any gods, so I don’t entirely know if they would feel the same as a mortal parent. It’s not as if I recall having any of the latter, either.

Is there a god out there who still loves you? I feel an odd twinge at the thought—pity for the daemon, who made an unspeakable trade to become such, binding his divine soul. I find the feeling almost as disagreeable as when he shows it for me. If there is such a misguided god, which? I wonder.

Soon, we reach another intersection in the hedges. It’s a six-way cross this time, the passages branching like a star around us, but Daesra doesn’t hesitate before going straight, only giving me an arch look to ensure I’m following him.

Arrogant bastard.