Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 14

I FEEL split in two as I stagger into a new, unknown part of the maze. I was ascending the sunny temple stairs in the memory, so confident, and now I’m slipping over slick ground, anything but sure of my footing. Both the floor and the walls, even the ceiling, are translucent like nothing I’ve ever seen—glass, I think at first, glowing pale blue in the dimness, until the coldness of the air finally strikes me. Ice. I don’t recall having seen much ice in my life, not that that’s surprising. The unnatural light emanating from it reminds me uncomfortably of the water in the cistern. I had assumed the color was due to the mirror hidden within those depths, but I see no other mirror here, and so I draw away from the walls in case they’re tainted like the pool was. I don’t know where the cave with the underground river went—the peaceful, dark water and gently sloping stone banks. It vanished with Daesra and Pogli.

I tip my head back, my breath fogging the air as I gasp. The ceiling is perhaps twice my height above, capping the walls with perfect corners. I seem to be buried in ice, despite the eerie, smooth corridor stretching before me, beckoning to me as a way out. It will have to wait—not that I trust it to deliver.

Warmth and sunlight should be a distant memory, but I can still feel both on my skin. The Daesra I just met in the mirror, drawing me lightly up the stairs, overlaps dizzyingly with the one who just dropped a pile of rock between us with the weight of our shared history behind it. My heart feels split in two, so much so that my stomach roils, and I have to inhale deeply through my nose to steady myself.

In a way, my feelings at the start of all of this echoed the inevitable end: that we both would fall, and we both would break. I broke him when I bound him, and he’s breaking me now.

After double-checking that nothing and no one is lurking, the corridor remaining chill blue and silent, I close my eyes. Give myself a moment to grieve. The shape of it hollows out my chest, and I want to curl around the wound protectively. Part of me even wishes I were back in the memory, being led up those sun-spilled temple stairs like a new bride, my back turned on the bloodstains. Excited. Oblivious to what was to come. But then I would be starting this twisted journey all over again.

He’s still a monster, and, knowing only what I did then, I might still betray him. Although it makes me a bit monstrous in turn, I’m not entirely sure it was the wrong decision. Especially knowing what I do now, after he’s left me like this.

Perhaps the god was right: Daesra is incapable of truly loving me as he is. He betrayed me after I bared myself to him in every imaginable way. Well, every way except telling him that I love him. But he knows I do. And he was still willing to look me in the eyes while he ripped open my chest.

Never mind that I did the same when I stabbed him in the heart.

I resist bracing myself against the ice when my legs shudder. I nearly sink to my knees, putting my face in my hands. Involuntarily, my fingers dig in at my hairline as if to find the hidden edges—the other face beneath, a mirror of this one from the past.

Yes, I betrayed him first. But I’m different—he even said so himself, back at the river. My love is new. And he could have made his love new, too. He could have changed himself. But he’s only embodying the shape of his revenge, clinging to the monster within. He’s chosen to remain trapped in a prison of his own making.

Even as I drag my hands from my face to regard the icy corridor once more, I can still see that final vision of him. The implacable look in his eyes as he showed me his true self. My lips twist at the bitter taste in my mouth.

I see him for what he is now. I ignored who he was at the temple first because I had to, for my plan. And then because I wanted to, as I began to fall in love with him. And finally, perhaps mercifully, I forgot who he was entirely.

Only to be reminded, rather forcibly, by falling in love with him once again. And this time, he’s not only a monster, he’s the monster I have to face.

To defeat for the ultimate prize. Immortality.

My gaze drifts to the floor, as glassy smooth and cold blue as the rest. And yet, all that seemingly waits beneath the transparent sheet of ice, only a handsbreadth thick, is darkness. I’ve been imagining myself in underground tunnels or contained in a cavernous enclosure, like the lake and stream before, but now I’m not so sure.

I hope that’s black stone beneath. Otherwise, I may have journeyed so deep in the maze that this icy cage of mine might be surrounded by nothing . Like the windows looking out onto the endless oceans of death surrounding the maze above.

Well. I’m not going to get anywhere by hiding from the dark truths lurking all around me. I need to meet them head on.

I force my spine straight, even though I’m beginning to shiver in the cold. My hands fist until my nails stab into my palms, pain lending me clarity. Gritting my teeth, I take a deep, aching breath against my chest harness. I flex my foot and wrist, the ties on my arm and leg making my muscles shriek. Warmth ignites throughout my limbs. And then I walk into whatever this wretched maze has waiting for me next.

Smooth ice hems me in on all sides but one, opening the way forward until the corridor splits into another passage and a flight of glassy, slippery-looking stairs. I take those, going ever down. The semitransparent sheets that make up the walls don’t glow so brightly that I can see entirely through them, and yet here and there I spot the lines of other walls and steps like a dim reflection—other parts of the maze, barely visible through the ice. The sharp edges and forking paths, branching out and rejoining, make me feel like I’m walking through a palace made of frost. Or that I’m trapped within an infinite-sided snowflake as it drifts downward through endless darkness.

It’s beautiful, but so cold and crystalline hard. Perfect edges, sharp enough to cut.

The easier to shape me, perhaps.

I haven’t wanted to consider it, but… was Daesra right about me, at the same time I was realizing the truth about him? Did I plan for him to become worse in the maze, to pose a real threat to me so I could stomach killing him, or so my victory over him would be better earned? He wasn’t monster enough for me or the gods—for them to justify his punishment or for me to earn my reward—so this place was intended to make him more of one?

I don’t know if I believe him. He could easily have been lying, to hurt me.

Or perhaps I just don’t want to believe him.

He claimed that everything closer to the center gets more monstrous, even the monster itself. Perhaps the same will happen to me. My feelings for him twisting ever more, like a dagger in flesh. I’ll become the cruelly ambitious, execrable witch he’s accused me of being. Or maybe that I’ve always been, deep down.

Why, as I catch glimpses further back into the past and struggle deeper toward the end of the maze, doesn’t it feel like I’m finding my way forward or out?

I rail against the thought even as I keep my steps as smooth and silent as the halls around me, my drifting clouds of breath the only evidence of my passage. I won’t allow myself to become the worst version of me, even to spite the daemon. I refuse to succumb to the intentions of the maze like he has. Whatever he becomes, however badly he hurts me, I won’t hurt him unless he gives me no other choice. Let alone will I…

I can barely think it.

But I have to reach the end for either of us to escape this place. And he’ll be waiting for me there. Maybe he’ll be the one to stab me this time.

The cavernous ache in my chest makes it feel as though he already has. The greatest sacrifice , the god called it—my love, his.

I don’t know that immortality is worth it. But is my survival? Maybe I’ll eventually find it in me to stab him through the heart again, if only to be free of this place. To see the sun once more.

But I’ll never make it to the bottom of this torturous well if I give in to despair. I turn away from those thoughts, refocus on the maze.

The crystalline corridors, indeed like the lines of a snowflake, seem endless. All I pass are more dimly glowing halls, descending more sets of treacherous stairs. Until… I think it’s merely a flaw in the ice: fine cracks and bubbles locked beneath the glassy surface. But then shapes begin to materialize as I pass. Not through the walls. Within them.

They’re subtle, at first. Bubbles that stipple shadow and texture along a partial glimpse of a face. A crack that begins to carve out a limb. The slope of a shoulder.

I try not to dwell on them, only on choosing the correct path, using the method Daesra and I have followed. Forward and always down.

But soon the disparate body parts begin to come together. And when I round the next corner, there are figures flanking me in the walls on both sides, forming an aisle to walk down as if I were at a wedding or a victory parade. They’re life-sized, like the marble statues in the maze above, except they’re encased in the very material they’re made of.

And, unlike those statues, I recognize some of them.

My mother. My aunt, Hawk. Others I don’t recognize, but they tug at me as if I should. The figures look as if they are sleeping, expressionless, eyes closed. Their pale, translucent faces seem to float just beyond the clear surface of the wall like those drowned, lying under a frozen lake. But then I startle as I find one with its eyes open—translucent globes, milky white with bubbles, staring back at me.

My pace quickens before I even realize it. I get the itching, uncomfortable feeling that the figures are alive somehow, even while trapped in ice, and I don’t want to know what might happen if they start to prove their liveliness more demonstrably.

I’m so busy scanning the corridors for movement that I don’t notice the jagged rock I trip over until I nearly sprawl flat, slipping and barely managing to catch myself. Cursing under my breath, I snarl down at the offender—and then I freeze.

It’s not a rock but a foot formed of ice, stuck to the floor, shattered and abandoned at the ankle.

I remember how the elongated stone creature broke loose from its base in the previous cave. Perhaps these creatures can break free as well.

And then I hear a rough scraping behind me. When I quickly straighten, looking over my shoulder, I spot nothing in the stretching gloom. But the sound comes again, echoing off the walls.

I lurch into a run, lifting my feet in an awkward trot so I don’t slide. My sandals pat loudly against the ice of the floor, but I don’t think stillness would serve me well.

After I round a corner, I pause to listen, managing not to slip. The scraping noise has increased its pace with mine. I leap into another shuffling dash, trying not to notice how every one of the frozen figures now stares at me with white eyes, their unmoving gazes seeming to follow me. They remind me of the marble statues’ frantic progress in the maze above, except now they’re looking at me . My skin prickles into wild gooseflesh as I hurry past, the sensation rippling down my spine. My breath leaves bigger and more frequent plumes in the air, like a trail of smoke behind me.

If these ice creatures are anything like the monstrosities made of stone, I don’t want to wait around to greet one of them. Especially if I ever intend to catch Daesra. With the jump forward that the mirror gave me—though I still don’t understand exactly how—it’s not too much to hope I might have come out ahead of him. I just need to survive long enough to find out.

But as I turn another corner, the scraping noise comes from in front of me. The creature, or whatever it is, must have taken a different path and cut me off—these corridors seem to be interconnected. I can’t halt my momentum fast enough on the icy ground. Arms wheeling, I slide forward—nearly into a human shape, dragging itself along on one leg and coming down gratingly on the stump of the other. The figure is smooth, pale.

But made of marble, not ice.

Deos.

When I recognize him, I no longer try to stop myself from careening into him. We both nearly topple. Even made of marble, he’s not as stable as he once was on one leg, and he only has a single arm to catch me. The crack in his shoulder reaches his navel now. He manages to steady me with one stone hand. I stare back at his unmoving visage with tears in my eyes and my breath in my throat. He still possesses that serene expression even while looking like a fallen, shattered demigod.

I throw my arms around him before I can think better of it, though fear flares back to life in my chest. Deos has hindered me nearly as much as he’s helped me. He’s a piece of Daesra, albeit a small one. And if Daesra has changed for the worse, perhaps the statue has, too. Never mind that the daemon can see out of his carved marble eyes. Speak through his unmoving lips. Maybe even control him.

I pull away quickly, if reluctantly, and step back, trying not to slip again in my haste.

“Deos,” I choke out, unable to swallow the tension that strains my voice. Or the relief, despite myself. “You’re alive.”

As alive as a statue can be, even one whose strange existence was gifted by a daemon. And yet I can’t help but see Deos for himself—if not entirely separate from Daesra, then different. Simpler. Something that once was part of and still exists outside him: a kinder, softer side to him, despite being wrought from marble. Even if there’s nothing of that left in Daesra, it’s here in Deos.

I want to cling to that piece of him. I reach out a hand and then let it drop.

“You survived the falls,” I add for something to say. I don’t know that just any plunge could have killed him, and besides, the monstrosity that ate his arm and leg was the bigger threat. My breath hazes the air between us as I hesitate, rolling words around in my mouth before I spit out, “I know you’re there. Both of you. The Deos that cares for me and… you, Daesra, wherever you are. Whoever you are now. Deos’s eyes served as yours before you lost him in the water. I imagine you might be able to see out of them once more. Talk to me.” Then: “Please.”

There’s a long moment, and I begin to think I won’t get a response.

There is nothing to say, Sadaré. It’s Daesra’s voice. Detached and distant in more than one way. Cold as the ice around me.

And yet, he managed that much, when he could have stayed silent. Which means he might be willing to talk. Open himself to reason.

But I don’t wish to scare him away, so I merely shrug and say, “So be it.”

I carry on down the corridor, seeing if he will follow. Deos does, at least; I’m unsure of Daesra’s part in it. While I walk, I hold my tongue, the statue clumping and grating along behind me, moving in a lunging fashion. His presence is almost enough to draw my attention away from the figures in the walls.

It’s a welcome distraction. Because out of the corner of my eye, they’re starting to resemble me. I don’t know precisely how I know, since I haven’t seen much of myself, aside from my reflection in the true mirror back at the start of the maze and occasional glimpses in the quicksilver pools’ surfaces or in that first memory, when for a moment I watched from overhead as if outside my body. But something in the curve of the hips, the arch of the neck, seems to trace my own flesh like a familiar hand. I don’t look any closer. Because those same white eyes the other figures possess are open and following me. I don’t want to meet their milky gazes to know what they might hold. Or what they might see in me in return. The hair rises on the back of my neck as if I can feel their cold eyes through my skin.

My patience in ignoring Daesra, at least, pays off.

I can’t help but find you admirable, the daemon says behind me. Even after I told you what you’ve done, how ruthless your goal is, you haven’t given up. You fight on, tooth and nail, with every selfish bone in your body.

I’ve even seen proof of what I’ve done, at least in the beginning, and of the ruthlessness of my goal, but he must not know I have, since he didn’t experience the most recent memory with me. I don’t feel like verifying his claims. As I walk, my eyes flick to the glowing walls as if against my will. The icy likenesses of me are now frozen in mid-run, as if trying to escape. But they’re still staring at me. Lips parted. Brows creased in consternation. I look away.

“I could say the same about your persistent cruelty,” I say without turning, but not out of disregard for the daemon. I’m trying to avoid slipping on ice as much as making unwanted eye contact. “And that you left me no choice but to continue down this path when you betrayed me. I’d set aside my goal in that cave, gave myself over to you, and you reminded me why I shouldn’t trust anyone but myself. Why I should resume the journey. But we could have done this together.” I hesitate over my next words, wondering if I’ll regret them. “We still could.”

My fragile hope laid bare. An offering of peace, proffered like a wilted flower in a bloodied palm.

He as good as slaps it away. No. You left me no choice when you put me in this maze to be your monster.

“I didn’t,” I say shortly. I want to hear what proof he has about as little as I want to see what’s staring back at me from my own face. “Even if I had, you didn’t have to betray me like I did you. I wouldn’t do that now.”

As soon as you fully recall who you are , he says, you will do it again in a heartbeat.

My eyes dart up. The figures around me, these strange mirrors of me, are now cringing and grimacing in pain, their white eyes fixed on me as if I’m the cause.

I shake my head. “No.”

You can’t fight against your nature , he says . Or against the will of the gods.

I toss a derisive hand back at the marble statue. “How can you say such a thing when you’ve done precisely that? You changed your divine nature—never mind your very flesh and bone—to challenge the will of the gods when you became a daemon.”

Are you lauding my choices? I appreciate the acknowledgment.

The next, too-familiar figure is flailing, limbs frozen in arrested motion, as if fighting something invisible.

“No,” I snap, hurrying onward. “I mean there are other ways to change our natures. Better ways.”

Then you’re suggesting you’re better than me. That your choices are superior to mine.

“They are now.”

And what could have changed within you to make this possible? You’ve always wanted to be invulnerable, free, just the same as I.

“No longer at any cost.”

Ah, but you’ve already paid the price, just as I have.

Unable to resist, my eyes flick to the next face in the ice. It’s mine, of course, and it’s contorted in a hideous scream.

If these are mirrors, they’re out of a nightmare.

I grit my teeth against the pain his words bring. This is useless pain , I think—pain that I can’t use—until I catch myself. Not every cost need result in gain. Not every sacrifice in reward. “Perhaps I paid with love, which you seem to view as worthless. You paid with your soul.”

And you think yours is still intact?

“Yes,” I say, willing it to be true. “At least, insofar as I can remember.” I bark a laugh that rings uneasily in my ears. It echoes off the glassy walls, making it sound as if the screaming figures within are laughing back at me in a twisted timbre. “I still have the mortality to prove it.”

So far , the daemon says. But you’re moving away from it with every step.

I can’t help spinning on Deos then, my arm shoving at him—or rather, at Daesra, wherever he is. “I’m trying to reach you ! And the end of this godsforsaken maze,” I hiss more quietly. Uncertainly.

I shouldn’t feel ashamed of wanting that. Should I?

The end of the maze is my end , the daemon answers from unmoving marble lips, as if in response to my unspoken thought. Or yours. To hasten it, you could always follow the string I tied around your finger. For remembrance.

I glance down at the red ringlike scar before I turn and carry onward. He said it would bring me to him, so if he’s now hinting it will take me to the end… does that mean he’s already reached it?

It could be a trick. He might still be behind me in the maze and wish to draw me back. Even if he’s not, and I use a shortcut that he provided me, then I won’t have made it to the end on my own—with potentially disastrous consequences in a trial such as this. I’d thought it a boon. But even in giving me a seeming advantage, the daemon could be setting me up to lose.

And yet, should I want to win?

My eyes seek out my nearest icy likeness, as if she’ll provide an answer to the question. One of her arms ends in a jagged stump. Except there’s something else trying to escape her wrist where a hand would be: a spray of thorny branches and twisting vines. Or maybe those are insect legs and crawling tentacles. Instead of grimacing in pain or even screaming, she’s grinning widely. Too widely. Still looking right at me, but this time that gaze pierces me deeper than ever before. A shudder wracks me.

“Are you trying to make me hate myself so that I give up?” I ask, walking faster, as if to outdistance Daesra. Or my many selves trapped within the ice. These terrible versions of me are everywhere now, seeming to compose the very walls.

Remember, you’re the one who spoke to me, the daemon says . It’s the statue who can’t seem to stay away from you. Not I.

“Then why are you still talking? Trying to slow me down?”

More to distract you.

“From what?” I ask, striding even faster. I’m too afraid to stop and turn. Slipping on the ice is the least of my concerns now.

From what you fear even more than me. Yourself.

A cold, hard hand clamps on my shoulder. I spin around, expecting to confront Deos. But the statue goes flying into a wall with such force that I hear the ice—or maybe his marble—crack. Where he once stood is another figure.

It’s me. Or at least it would be me if I were made of glowing, translucent ice and had one hand and both feet ripped off, as well as mad, wide eyes and a shrieking grin that nearly splits my face in half.

Her frozen fingers seize me, holding me in place so firmly they bruise. When the jagged stump of her other arm lifts like a club about to come down, I realize why she’s here.

She’s come to end me.