Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 4

I’M BACK in the maze, or more likely I never left. I blink slowly.

Daesra is there waiting for me. Fortunately, he hasn’t caught me this time—but a nest of strange roots has. I’m cradled in thick, fibrous arms, tangled at the base of a massive tree rising to dizzying heights overhead.

For a breathless moment, I can only stare at the daemon.

Before I fell into the pool, I’d wanted to shout at him until I was raw in the throat. I wanted to burn him for leaving me. Now, I lock eyes with him where he leans casually against the wall, arms folded, a sly gleam in his red gaze.

He knows what I saw, since he went through the pool, too. And he knows I have no grounds to accuse him of any betrayal. Not after what I did to him—if I truly bound him, and it’s not some trick of the maze.

But the memory feels more real than anything else around me. Like rediscovering a missing limb—it’s a part of me, returned. And even with what little I remember, I already know how badly I want immortality for the endless power, the safety it would grant me. If I couldn’t gain it for myself, I very likely would have bound him to access his eternal life.

To use his bottomless well of pain instead of mine. Use him .

No wonder he hates me. Wants to leave me to die.

And yet, he’s still here. He didn’t leave me for long , never mind that I might indeed have perished in his brief absence.

“I knew you would make it,” Daesra says, as if reading my thoughts. Not that I believe him. “You’re too irritatingly intractable to die. Take some time to collect yourself.”

Since he isn’t coming at me with sharp nails and an intention to gut me, I do take a moment to look around, wrenching my eyes from him.

I appear to have descended deeper into the impossible labyrinthine structure after leaping into the quicksilver pool— through that strange, shimmering surface, apparently—to what lay beneath. I don’t feel as if I took a hard fall, though I seem to have dropped far. I trace the path of the trunk, up and up, along where it hugs a towering black stone wall as slick as the maze floor save where it’s dotted with moss. I realize with a lurch in my stomach that the trees must have formed the hedges of the maze above, and the tops of these walls beside me were the paths I’d traveled, thinking they were the ground. Now, that ground has fallen out from beneath me, becoming my new enclosure. I search for any hint of the quicksilver pool, but it’s vanished. The sky is a pale strip far above, a blue-gray river cutting through the deep canyon of dark stone, wide tree trunks, and the thick canopy of foliage hemming me in.

Forward and always down . Well, I’ve certainly gone down.

The new floor under my feet is made of rougher, massive square cobbles like the bones of an older, deeper structure, roots spilling over them like piles of writhing snakes. I blink when the roots seem to actually writhe. But when I look again, they’re unmoving. It must have been a trick of the light, or my still-muddled senses.

I would do well to remain wary. After all, the foliage at the tops of those trees was not only the maze’s walls but also the vines that drank my blood.

I briefly close my eyes against a wave of dizziness. My past is its own sort of maze, and I’ve only just started to glimpse it. Now that I’ve passed through the pool, perhaps it’s in me. A memory, restored. Its shining surface a mirror, to peer into and see myself—the self I’ve forgotten, if only the barest flicker. I both hope for more mirrors and fear them. Like the bloodthirsty hedge wall, they seem to want to take from me even as they guide me forward.

Who am I? I bound Daesra at some point in the past. He’s a daemon, and perhaps deserved it, but still, it’s a heavy thing. Even though the collar is no longer around his neck, I can almost feel the weight of it myself, chafing, pressing down on me, strangling…

To feel so guilty strikes me as unfair, like the burden should belong to someone else, since I don’t even remember doing it. But I’ve seen the proof in the memory. And if I bound him before, what else might I have done?

You don’t know what’s inside you , Daesra said to me. I shudder.

Something wet swipes my face. Licks me.

Of course. Pogli is here with me, too, squirming in the crook of my elbow, his claws gouging into my thighs, bringing me back to myself. I jumped with him tucked under my arm, and he seems to have survived the fall none the worse for wear. He tries to lick me again, and I shove him off my lap onto level ground, careful of his useless wings.

I’m glad for the impetus to move, which for once the daemon isn’t providing. I don’t want to think about my buried past right now or feel the pressure of the roots around me anymore, which suddenly feel clingy and suffocating. I drag myself out of the tangle, none too dignified, with my still-bound arm and sore wrist and hip.

Despite my aches and fears, when I right myself and shake out my shoulders, I feel more at home in my body. I started as a passive observer in the memory, but that glimpse tied me to my self, however flimsy the connection. However disturbing. I cling to it like an anchor line in a storm when really it’s a loose strand of spiderweb drifting across a rose-gold sky, only visible for a second—a warning against potentially unseen, venomous fangs.

Daesra bares his own fangs in a humorless smile. “Enjoy your rest?”

I ignore him as I limp by. I don’t know what to say to him, as if we’re both at crossed swords—except his blade is sharper and has much better reach.

“Come on, brave sir,” I say to Pogli instead.

“Brave?” Daesra scoffs, shifting on his hooves to follow me. “That thing?”

It’s just as well that he doesn’t know what Pogli is capable of—if the chimera will even be bothered to be so helpful again—in case I need to use the creature’s strength against the daemon, if he decides to turn on me. A dagger up my sleeve, so to speak. At least that’s one benefit to Daesra’s brief abandonment.

Without responding, I start down the wide corridor between black stone walls and towering trees, stepping over roots and uneven joints in the cobbles, letting the awkward silence stretch. Miraculously, the little chimera trundles after me, goggling at me with his bug eyes for a few seconds as if making sure I’ve fully committed before following. No wasted effort with that one, apparently. Never mind that his wings are themselves a waste. At his rear, his scaly curl of a tail wiggles back and forth with his waddling gait. My lips quirk at the sight.

That is, until Daesra steps past me without saying anything else, resuming the lead and giving me his broad back.

The statues are less amusing company as well. Their discomfort has turned almost entirely to distress, the pale stone figures only running now, tripping over roots, flailing. Several faces look twisted in frightened screams. Frightened of what? I wonder.

After what the maze has already done, perhaps I don’t want to know.

For now, the corridor is straight, but even that is hard to navigate, if for a different reason than before. Because of the bloodthirsty vines and my impact with the marble ground after tripping, I’m covered in tiny bites, patchy burns, and numerous bruises, dried blood flaking from my skin. Worst is my jaw, where it feels like I took a punch from a giant, and my wrist, which feels sprained.

I can fix this. Just as intentional sacrifice—either mine or someone’s I’ve bound—can give me strength and speed elsewhere, one wound can heal another. It’s simply more challenging. I can feel the hum of aether just under my skin, ready to rise and burst out of me with explosive force. Or fire—that would be easiest. Water and especially solid matter are more difficult to manipulate, perhaps because they’re more fixed, less changeable, and flesh and blood are both. And if I’m healing a wound within the same body that generated the pain, it’s never as effective as it would be otherwise. Like using a waterwheel to push the very water that turns the wheel.

I can’t help glancing at Pogli. If I bind the creature to me, use his pain… But no, even the thought of it makes me sick. Never mind that he saved my life; I saved his first. I still don’t understand the generous impulse, just as Daesra didn’t, but it wasn’t for this.

My own pain it is, then. It’s not about the severity of what I self-inflict versus what I heal on my body, only about the intensity. It has to hurt… a lot. Or come with other sacrifices, such as surrender, apparently, but I’m done with kneeling. Preferably forever.

I abruptly recall where I stash my needles, as if the memory is in my fingertips: under the rope cuff on the arm I bind least often, my dominant left. Maybe remembering some of my past jarred the information loose, or the knowledge has simply been lying in wait within my flesh, like my understanding of my power. I unbind my pinioned arm, because I need it to get to my needles, and because I suspect, thanks to my throbbing jaw, that the benefit of immobility might not be worth the risk.

Surrendering, on the other hand, isn’t worth the risk to my pride .

Freeing myself sends pain zinging through me from shoulder to fingertips—enough to heal the bruises on my knee and hip. When the pinprick feeling of blood returning to my arm follows, I heal the tiny bites and burns all over my legs. But the relief of untying myself comes too soon. For my wrist and jaw, I’ll need something more.

With my newly freed hand, I part the rope coils of my arm cuff to find the heads of the needles pinned in the folded leather strip bound underneath. I remember I prefer needles, as opposed to cutting. Less mess, less risk of the wounds growing sour and requiring more healing. Needles are downright tidy, when put in a line that only slightly puckers the skin, easy to keep in out-of-the-way places, like the upper arm or the thigh. I like to make pretty patterns, if I have the time. Crossing them over each other hurts even more, and if I wrap rope over the top of that, I gain excruciating strength. I’m used to doing this, somehow. I don’t mind this sort of pain. Deliberate. Purposeful. Part of me even likes it, in a strange way. I understand that suffering makes me stronger, more powerful, so perhaps that’s why it feels good .

I shove away the thought of Daesra calling me a leech.

I withdraw a needle with still-clumsy fingers and pass it to my more dexterous hand, turning to my upper arm, the one that still has angry red indentations from the rope. It’s the arm I use less, after all, and if I poke an already-aching spot, the effort will go further.

Daesra plucks the needle from my fingers just before I pierce my skin. I didn’t even hear him drop back to join me.

“Give me that!” I snap, and then nearly retreat at the look on his face. It’s as unforgiving as one of the stone walls.

“No,” he says. He holds out his hand, curling a long-nailed finger slowly. “Give me the rest of them.”

“ No ,” I echo angrily, brushing by him with as much dignity as I can muster. “I need them to heal myself.”

His implacable voice follows me. “You have other tools.”

“I like these. ”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Why do you care?” My sharp retort echoes off the high walls. I glance around sheepishly before spinning on Daesra—and I nearly fall back again. He’s very close behind me. This time, I force myself to look up and hold his gaze. He said he’s hurt me, after all—never mind that he also said I deserved it—so why would he care if I hurt myself? “And why should I, even if you do?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation, and you don’t want to test me. Now hand the rest of them over. Or do you want me to take them from you?” He grins, a decidedly wicked gleam in his eyes. “Because that could be fun.”

I fold my arms protectively. “I don’t like your flavor of fun.”

“You used to.”

I don’t want to know what he means by that, so I scowl at him without saying anything—or giving him the needles.

“You could always beg once more,” he says, “and heal yourself that way.”

“Or you could help me,” I grate.

“Making you beg is helping you. Practice is the path to perfection , after all.” He shrugs. “The real question is why should I help you? I myself am torn on the answer.”

I know why he’s torn. I bound him, which is nigh grounds for him to tear me limb from limb. And yet he supposedly needs me to get out of this maze, which involves my remaining in one piece. If he can humiliate me in the meantime, so much the better.

What I don’t know is why that stings worse than any needle.

“I know why you hate me,” I blurt. “I bound you. I remember.”

His tone is falsely polite while his eyes burn into me. “Then you must also remember that you’re an execrable witch.”

He maneuvers around me, as if he can’t stand looking at me anymore, a motion as effective as a slap to the face. I follow him, feeling both foolish and strangely desperate.

“ No , I don’t remember that, and I’m sure I’m not.” At least I hope I’m not. “Why did I bring you before the gods? And which gods? Who and what are they?”

He speaks without turning. “I’ll tell you if you repeat after me: I’m an execrable —”

My cry of frustration cuts him off. “Why can’t I remember?” I know it must have to do with the challenge—perhaps the weight of the reward I was trying to imagine before—but that isn’t a good enough explanation for me, not anymore. “Why are you here as my ally, reluctant or no, if you were once my captive?”

He keeps striding forward, avoiding roots. “Because we’re doing things differently now.”

“If you think I’m going to play your supplicant, let alone your captive in return, you’re wrong.”

“Who says we’re playing?”

I do, never mind that he’s said it himself. It’s all a game, however horrible.

“You must have deserved such treatment.” I don’t like how my tone is more pleading than certain, making me miss my instinctive confidence. “You must have betrayed me somehow.”

It’s Daesra’s turn to stop and face me, so suddenly that I nearly stumble into his chest.

“ I betrayed you ?” His voice is so dangerous, I think it might be best to avoid that line of questioning. When I don’t say anything, he holds out his hand again and snaps, “Needles. Now . I’ve lost my patience.”

“No.”

He takes a threatening step toward me, his hoof-stomp sharp on the stone. I don’t need the memory of dirt on my tongue or the scent of woodsmoke and autumn leaves to make me recoil from the feeling of helplessness that surges through me.

Tears of humiliation sting my eyes. I’d rather lose my needles than lose myself, and so I hold up placating hands and bite down on a groan of frustration. I’ve lost this round—the daemon is stronger than me. And in losing, I’m giving up more power, but that’s better than losing it all. I loosen the rope cuff on my arm, yanking out the leather strap containing my needles, and I thrust the packet at him, slapping it against his shoulder.

He catches my wrist, squeezing it. “There’s a good little witch.”

“Go fuck yourself.” I spit the words before I can rethink them, and I wrench my arm away, leaving my needles in his grip. I feel the heat of his fingers against my skin like a burning cuff. Luckily, it wasn’t my sprained wrist. I ignore the sharp pain of that , the throbbing in my jaw, as I seethe at him.

Something flares in his red gaze I can’t quite place. “Do you remember fucking me?”

The question draws the air from my lungs. This is what I didn’t want to consider, even as part of me pokes at the possibility like my sore tooth. To imagine it, with the hardness of his horns under my fingers, guiding his head toward my pleasure. For a moment I can only stare at him, desperately trying not to picture such things even now. “I couldn’t have. You hate me.”

He shrugs. “Maybe you forced yourself upon me while I was bound to you, unable to resist.”

I’m moving before I realize it. As his brow starts to rise, I flatten both hands on the daemon’s hard chest—ignoring the pain in my joint—and I shove him as hard as I can, using a burst of force to do it. As if I can push away the possibility of such a hideous thing.

“You’re lying!” I screech.

I barely notice the jolt of agony up my arm. The strength behind the blow should have sent him flying. But he merely stumbles, needing to watch where to place his hooves among the roots. Other than that, he laughs. Laughs.

He has to be lying. If that is indeed a fragment of my missing past, I don’t know how I’ll be able to piece myself back together. How I could ever look at myself in a mirror and feel whole.

He continues to laugh until he sees whatever my expression reveals. I’m shaking, my eyes hot and stinging with the threat of tears. He grows still, regarding me.

“You didn’t,” Daesra says shortly. “Use me, that is.”

It takes me a moment to squeeze the words through my choked throat, my vision swimming. “Then how could you even suggest such a thing?”

“I wanted to see the look on your face.” He’s not looking at me now. “Turns out it wasn’t terribly satisfying. I only like to make you cry when it’s fun—although there’s still time for that to change.”

Pogli whines at me, making me blink, and I drag my non-throbbing hand violently across my eyes.

“I hate you,” I spit. To threaten me with violence, with powerlessness , and then take advantage of my lost memory to falsely suggest I did worse to him, just so he could savor my reaction? I don’t care if it left him with a bitter aftertaste in the end. He can burn in hell.

“Ah, yes, back to playing the innocent victim, and me, the evil daemon? Even if your crimes didn’t include that , it doesn’t mean your hands are clean.” His grin returns. “You like to sully yourself, and in so many ways. Mind you, before you bound me, our carnal relations were a very different story. That did happen, I’m afraid.”

I stare at him again, hardly daring to breathe. “No.”

I’m more willing it to be false than I am certain it is.

He claps his hands, making me jump. “We don’t have time for idle chitchat. The sundial is shifting.” He starts back down the maze’s path, just like that, his tail swiping the air behind him like a finishing blow.

He’s obviously changing the subject to frustrate me, but I’m happy to let the subject of our carnal relations stay behind, preferably for the maze to bury. And something in his backward glance seems genuinely wary, even though nothing in the maze has shifted that I can see. I hesitate only for a moment, shooting a nervous look over my own shoulder, before I follow him once more, cradling my wrist to my chest. There’s nothing else I can do; there’s only one way forward for now.

It takes a while for me to swallow my anger enough to ask, “Why do you look concerned? I thought I was the only one at risk of death.”

“I said I can’t die, but if we don’t do what we came to do, I won’t be… free.” He sounds mildly hesitant. Uncertain, when I thought he only had the advantage.

“Free of the maze?” I ask.

“Perhaps of your torturous company.”

Na?ve of me to think that he would finally share something with me, even his concerns. That would be too vulnerable for him. Not nearly arrogant or cruel enough. Clenching my jaw again reminds me it’s as sore as my wrist. I cup my cheek, wincing, and stumble over a root.

Daesra’s hand catches me, once again moving too fast to follow, steadying me. I throw it off.

“ Heal yourself, Sadaré,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “We may need to move quickly, and this won’t do.” Another wary glance at the walls.

Fine. I don’t ask him to return my needles, because I know he’ll refuse. If this is a game, I can play it as well as he can. The vines give me the idea, really, how they bit into my flesh when I moved and flexed against them. Or perhaps they’ve triggered a memory of what I already know.

I seat myself on the rough stone ground without preamble, going to work with my ropes. I untie both cuffs from my wrists and twine them anew up one calf, overlapping—as tight as I can manage with my sprained wrist, while the muscles in my legs are relaxed and pliant. Hunched over as I am, I also pull any slack out of my chest harness. Daesra merely regards me impassively from above, long-fingered hands on his hips. Perhaps waiting for the kneeling and begging to commence. It would be terribly painful with these ties.

But never again, for him.

I stand instead, my suddenly tense muscles screaming against my bindings as I put weight on that leg. I give the daemon a coy smile when he frowns at me, and I arch my back—painfully—into the serpentine wave that rolls down my arms and through my hips and knees. And then I do it again, walking on my tiptoes in incremental steps toward him. It’s a dance that servant girls—sometimes boys, depending—perform before kings and queens. I do it as best as I can with my tortured leg and straining ribs, my bold eye contact never breaking.

It’s all an act, of course, but a terribly forward, sensual one. He wants to taunt me with hints of our intimate past while hating me? Well, then. I’ll do the same to him.

“This is what you wished for, yes?” I murmur, making my voice low and seductive, feeling power unfurl inside me like spring’s brightest blossom. “How may I please you?”

Daesra’s mouth is a flat, hard line, making equally warm satisfaction glow within me. “You can stop this farce any time now.”

I heal my jaw and wrist without much effort, drop out of my dance, and then stalk past him without another glance—well, such that I can stalk. My rope tie is still excruciating, forcing me into a limping, throbbing gait, but I leave it in place in case I need it.

The daemon’s voice rises behind me, refusing to let me have the last word. “You’ve danced for me like that before. Only it was more convincing, back then.”

I miss a step but force myself onward, ignoring him even as he catches up to me—and passes, resuming the lead once more. I want to ask him when, how , I could have performed such for him, but I also don’t want to ask. Not at all.

Besides, he’s probably lying to throw me off-balance, just like he did before.

We both carry on in frosty silence after that, while the ropes cut lines of fire into my calf. The trees grow bigger and their roots thicker as we go. I occasionally have to lift Pogli over the fatter offshoots lying across the ground. The strip of pale sky above narrows, and soon the leaves that were once the walls make a green ceiling high overhead, scattering dappled luminescence around us. Dust motes drift through shafts of emerald light like flecks of glittering gold.

It’s calm—too calm, like a held breath. I don’t trust the maze any more than I did before, no matter how lovely it appears on the surface. My calf settles into a ferocious, furnace-like burn that I keep at the ready.

The statues continue to look disturbing, especially since I can now spot some of them tangled up in roots, others toppled and buried with only limbs or hooves sticking out. I try my best not to focus on them, though I watch the roots more carefully.

The next break we reach in the corridor is a fork with only two branches to the left and right. This is what I’ve feared even as I knew it was coming: no clear way forward or down, only side to side. The paths appear to be identical. Even the roots and statues are equally congested over the wide cobblestones.

Daesra seems unconcerned. “Let’s go right.” His dominant side, I’ve observed, though I don’t know if he’s used that to make his decision as foolishly as I did. “Follow me.”

I follow without arguing—for now. And I don’t have to for long. My silence has a satisfied weight to it after we both round a bend and find ourselves facing a dead end.

I would gloat more audibly, except there are a pair of statues there that make me swallow any taunts, posed on a low platform, pressed up against the final wall. They’re in the throes of passion or violence or… something. The one standing behind looks like a mortal man, and there’s a woman with her back arched against him, in the style of my dance. Except, instead of being put off by it as Daesra was, the man has one of his arms wrapped tightly around her chest, making her breasts swell temptingly above her parted tunic, his other hand clenched around her throat. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted, her head tipped back onto his shoulder. Her own arm is raised to wrap behind his head, leaving herself completely exposed. His lips are bent so as to kiss the slope of her neck. Or maybe to bite it.

“Well, it’s clearly not this way,” Daesra says, abruptly turning on a hoof and marching back the way we came.

My eyes locked on the statues, it takes me more than a breath to follow him, lost in a reverie of a hard body lining mine as if carved to fit, strong arms holding me pinned, soft lips and sharp teeth caressing my throat, before I shake myself out of it. What repulsed him in the configuration has ensnared me… and I’m a fool for it. This maze is no place for such distractions. Unless, perhaps, I’m using such things to my own ends. My own advantage.

We return to the fork and take the left passage, after which I do manage to laugh at the daemon. Because we arrive at another dead end that’s empty of all but a low plinth. Pogli barks at nothing, and my snort echoes in the empty space.

“I don’t see why you’re pleased,” Daesra says over folded arms as he glares at the blank stone wall. “Remember, you also don’t make it out of here if I don’t, and as of now we have no path forward.”

He’s caught me there. I limp ahead on my burning leg and hesitate as I note the exact same shape and placement of the plinth as at the end of the other passage, just minus the statues. I scrutinize the stone behind it—and spot the fine seam running from the ground up the towering wall, until it vanishes out of sight.

Pogli barks again, flapping his stubby wings. Perhaps not at nothing.

“It’s a door,” I say. “If a colossal one.”

Daesra scoffs. “Not even I could open a door that big. And I am rather strong.”

I ignore him, pointing at the plinth. “It’s only missing the statues. They must be the key.”

He looks surprised, perhaps because he didn’t notice the pieces of the puzzle first. I don’t know how my eyes picked out the details before his—and then I tell myself firmly to stop selling myself short, mortal though I am.

“So do we haul them over here and set them in position?” he says, his tone heavy with skepticism. “I don’t think you can manage to carry one, which leaves them both conveniently to me, I see.”

“No,” I say slowly. Not wanting to admit what I’m thinking.

He turns on me with rising impatience. “Then what?”

“There are two of them. And two of us.” I don’t meet his gaze, and yet I can sense his eyes on me, and then on the plinth, spotting the indentations on the surface where feet would rest, just as I did. “Perhaps we need to…” I can’t finish.

The inside of my chest feels like it’s constricted, and it has nothing to do with the tightness of my ropes.

“Very well,” Daesra says eventually, his voice flat. Almost resigned. “I don’t know why the maze would want to torture us like this, but it’s worth a try.” His usual smirk appears on his face. “I assume I get to play the part of the man, despite my hooves.”

“I suppose,” I say, feeling in somewhat of a daze as I make my way to the plinth behind him.

He steps onto the low platform, his hooves clacking sharply on the stone, and pivots to face me, leaning back against the wall, muscular arms at his sides. He beckons me with a flick of his fingers.

“Your turn,” he says.

I step up in front of him, much more hesitantly than he did. And then I can’t move; I can only stare at his broad chest. Frozen. In fear, yes, but there’s something else, too. I just don’t know what.

“I think you have to face away, if we’re to resemble the other pair,” he says, arching his brow.

Cursing myself under my breath, I turn my back to him. Waiting for his nails to pierce my flesh. Almost wanting them to, with a sort of sick anticipation.

“Sadaré,” he says with exaggerated patience. “Come here. I won’t bite.”

“Won’t you?” I breathe.

His large hands land on my shoulders, startling me, and he pulls me firmly back into his hard chest. “Not right now. You’re decidedly not to my taste.”

I don’t entirely believe him as we both stand there awkwardly for a moment, pressed against each other, his heat at my back.

“So I should…” I begin.

“Yes, and I’ll…” He pauses, waiting.

I close my eyes and try to recapture the sensuality I saw in the statue of the woman—or that I felt when I was happily spiting the daemon with my dance. I arch into him, tilting my neck into his shoulder and raising my hand to the back of his head, letting out a little breath to part my lips as my fingers wander into the waves of his hair. It’s surprisingly soft. My ropes bite deeper into my calf and tug at my ribs, but I hardly notice the discomfort next to the sensation of him.

This feels both strangely familiar and completely wrong. Like my foot in someone else’s shoe, even if the shoe fits.

He freezes, long enough for me to murmur, “Are you going to make me stand like this forever?”

His arm comes hard around my chest, just like the statue of the man holding the woman, hoisting me against him and eliciting a gasp from me in earnest. As if to choke off the sound, his other hand seizes my neck. He bends his mouth to my throat, where I can feel his hot breath on my skin—and my swallow against his palm. Prickling heat erupts across my scalp, traveling down my spine and sinking into my core. When his lips brush my neck, my knees go watery beneath me. My hand involuntarily tightens in his hair, and the daemon lets out a small groan, deep in his throat.

A loud crack and a grating rumble sound behind us. Daesra practically shoves me off him and spins away, leaping from the plinth. The both of us are breathing harder than we were, I note, before my own gaze wanders drunkenly to the crevice widening in the stone before us.

What was that ? I can’t help but think, and I don’t just mean the strange magic behind the towering doorway—more of a narrow fissure—opening onto a new passageway that I can now glimpse. I rub my throat without thinking, and then hurry after the daemon as he slips into the new gap. I only vaguely make sure Pogli is following. I’m too dazed to even smile when one of Daesra’s horns clacks against the stone in his haste. I wonder if he doesn’t like tight spaces at his size… or if he’s eager to put distance between the two of us .

He certainly keeps me at arm’s length when we all emerge on the other side of the wall. We spill out into a passageway lined with trees and piled with roots much like the one we left, except this one almost immediately forks into a pair of descending stone staircases that level out into matching corridors. And the same distance down each, there are shimmering curtains of what looks like quicksilver, hanging vertically this time.

Mirrors. Two of them. The paths mirror each other as well—both forward and down with no dead end, with the potential reward of a new memory either way, which makes me lean toward them on my toes even as part of me wants to shy away from whatever they might reveal.

“I think we should split up,” Daesra says immediately.

I blink at him in alarm. “I was given to understand—quite clearly—that it was dangerous to do so.” I glance at the identical corridors again. Is this an exception to the rule… or a temptation to break it?

The daemon doesn’t look concerned. “Only if one of us takes a wrong way, yes. But if both ways are correct, we should investigate both.”

I can’t help but think he’s disturbed by our recent… proximity… and would prefer less of it. I don’t entirely blame him. And yet, if splitting up turns out to be dangerous, it’s likely to be worse for me than it will be for him, as he’s the immortal. Trepidation ripples through me. The thought of continuing without him, not having his strength at my back—if not literally—makes me feel frightfully vulnerable. Cold. Naked.

But there’s no way I can tell him that.

“I can’t imagine you’ll give me my needles back if I ask for them,” I say.

His lips twist in distaste. “No. You don’t need them. Besides, I told you to stop using them a while ago, and you used to listen to me.” He gestures at the mirror on my side of the splitting passage. “Perhaps you’ll remember. We’ll find each other afterward.”

Will we? I wonder with a shiver, and can’t help hugging myself. What if the mirror deposits me somewhere else instead of directly on the other side of it? I don’t know how they work—if I merely fell through the first one and landed where I would have anyway, or if it transported me somehow. Despite the breathless chill seizing me, would it be such a terrible thing if we didn’t find each other? He’s the only familiar face I have in this maze, not to mention a powerful being capable of helping me—but also of hurting and hindering me. And he reminds me regularly that I largely despise him, and that he despises me just as much, if not more. He clearly wants to get away from me now.

Perhaps it’s for the best.

“What if we come upon another puzzle that requires the both of us?” I ask, rubbing my arms.

“We’ll find another way.”

I’m not sure it will be that easy, but his abruptness feels too much like a slap to argue.

“Very well,” I say, dropping my hands and starting off toward the staircase nearest me without a backward glance at the daemon. I don’t turn in case he sees the fear in my eyes. I only glance down to tap my thigh. “Come on, Pogli.”

As the chimera waddles after me, Daesra asks derisively, “Still not leaving that thing behind?”

“He’s better company than you,” I call over my shoulder, hoping the daemon only hears the nonchalance in my voice, not the deep disquiet in leaving him that I don’t even want to acknowledge myself.

After gingerly stepping down the stairs, I wait at the bottom, hoping nothing shifts behind me or leaps out to attack. Pogli doesn’t seem to notice anything strange, either. When I finally allow myself to look back up the steps at Daesra, he’s gone. Obviously having taken the other way, likely without a backward glance.

Very well, indeed .

I still traverse the stretch of corridor before the mirror with care, tentatively navigating the roots. I slow even more as I approach the quicksilver curtain and eye the shimmering surface warily. It felt so strange closing over my head last time. And what it showed me was even stranger. What is lurking within this time?

I feel compelled to know, no matter what it is. I have to remember who I truly am. Whoever I am. Without Daesra’s help, if need be.

I’m about to hoist Pogli in my arms and step into the pool of silvery liquid when I hear a shout of alarm from back the way I came. It sounds genuine. I freeze.

It’s Daesra.

This time, I don’t run toward the outcry without a second thought, like I did for the chimera. I stare back up the staircase, giving it a second and a third thought. Because it’s Daesra . It could be a trick.

Even if it isn’t, I could let whatever is likely attacking him carry on with it. He wanted to part from me, after all. And he’s left me—twice—even if this second time at least had the appearance of being mutual. Never mind that he hates me for what I did to him in a past I can’t remember.

I should wait before blindly running back to him. He doesn’t need my help anyway.

But then I get a warm flash of how he held me just now, his hard chest pressed into my back, his strong arms encircling me, his sharp-nailed hand at my throat, his breath hot against my neck…

If he hated me that badly, he could have killed me. But he didn’t. And he didn’t refrain only because he needs me to get out of this maze. He was too willing to part from me afterward. Though his body, during our embrace, told an entirely different story—one neither murderous nor repelled.

Perhaps Daesra only needed a moment alone to collect himself. Catch his breath, so to speak, which we both somewhat lost. I think I may have surprised him with our embrace as much as he surprised me. And now he might actually need help.

When I hear another startled shout, Pogli whines. I meet his buggy eyes, and he does an absurd little hop on his front paws, growling as if to provoke me. Or to remind me what I did for him, and he did for me.

I grit my teeth. “Godsdamn you, Pogli. And you, too, daemon.”

I break into a run, back the way I came, the little chimera on my heels.

The gods have probably damned the daemon already. But I can’t leave him like he left me to get crushed by the shifting maze. Because Pogli is right, insofar as a thought has ever entered that strange round head of his. I don’t have to be as spiteful as Daesra. I can show him that we don’t have to be bound by the past; we both can start over again. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I reach the base of the stairs—that my choice has everything to do with taking the moral high ground and nothing to do with my fear of being left alone in this place. A fear so great I’ll accept even his miserable companionship.

When I glance back over my shoulder, the mirror has vanished.

Well, then. There’s no longer any incentive for me to go that way. Almost as if the maze wants me to return to Daesra.

Or it’s punishing me for doing so, taking away my chance to remember.

There’s no time to consider which it is as I climb the stairs and round the corner to take the other fork, because I find myself facing the strangest scene I’ve ever witnessed. It’s not as though I can recall many things in my life, but I’ll remember this, at least.

The statues have come alive. And they’re attacking Daesra.