Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 17

IN RESPONSE to Daesra, I hold out my hand to him without moving any closer to the edge of the abyss. “No. But you should come with me. We should finish the trial. Together.”

He shakes his head slowly, a faint smile still on his lips. He looks at ease—I don’t even want to think at home —in the yawning darkness at the bottom of the maze.

Which goes deeper still.

“Where’s Pogli?” I’m afraid to ask, but it’s still the first question out of my mouth.

The daemon shrugs. “You know, I must have lost track of him.”

He’s obviously lying, and I want to demand a better answer. But I know we don’t have much time left, however gnawing my concern is for the little chimera. I throw my arm out. “So what, then? We’re supposed to jump together?”

“That’s one option,” he says, unfazed.

“Or fight each other? As if you’re truly the monster?” I scoff, even if there’s not much force behind it. “Trust me, you’re not. I’ve already faced worse than you.”

He purses his lips. “Somehow I doubt that. Have you seen this?” He casually points to the abyss with one black-nailed finger. “This lives inside my soul. Quite the sight, isn’t it?”

I don’t want to look at it any more than I already have. “We can fix it,” I say. As if it’s a mere wound to bandage. I know how absurd, how feeble the suggestion sounds in this place, but I don’t care. “Somehow. You and I together. I refuse to give up on you. I won’t fight you, but I will fight for you.”

“Oh good,” Daesra says, shifting his hooves in the shallow water to gesture off to his side. “Because there’s also this inside me. And it looks like it needs fighting.”

What I’d mistaken for a massive nondescript lump of rock drifting in the air suddenly shifts, uncoiling like a serpent within the dark expanse. It is a serpent, a colossal one, with spreading wings, stretching limbs, flexing claws, and widening fluorescent-green eyes with slitted black pupils.

A dragon. I don’t recall ever meeting one before, but I suppose I know a dragon when I see one.

“A dragon,” I say, somehow still disbelieving. “You want me to fight a fucking dragon ?”

“Behold!” Daesra cries with exaggerated theatricality. “This is the shape of my rage. My resentment. My self-serving greed.”

Greed? Self-serving, yes, but Daesra has never struck me as particularly greedy. I only have a brief second to wonder at it before something far more important occurs to me.

Does this mean this creature is the monster, and not Daesra? That this thing has somehow been made to embody the binding on his soul? His inner daemon?

Even if the possibility lends me hope like a ray of sunlight in the darkness, I’m still staring at a dragon.

“I’d like you to kill it for me,” Daesra adds casually, picking at a fingernail. “If that wasn’t clear.”

“Sometimes I still really hate you,” I murmur, and then I’m running, kicking up spray, as the monstrous creature ducks toward me, swimming through the gloom as if in water. It doesn’t bother closing the distance entirely. It merely opens craggy jaws to reveal a glow as if its insides were filled with molten metal.

“Likewise,” Daesra calls. “But you might have guessed.”

I barely have time to throw up a shield before the stream of fire from the dragon’s mouth envelops me. It’s so ragingly hot that my shield isn’t enough, so I cast my other hand behind me and channel as much heat away from me as I can. All around me, the thin layer of water on the floor boils and turns to steam. I pour every bit of the pain from my needles and bindings into keeping my skin from blistering.

Panting, I shout, “Does that mean sometimes you don’t hate me?”

Daesra barks a laugh. “You still amuse me, I’ll grant you that.”

When the fire finally dies, I don’t have much strength for a return volley—neither for an attack on the dragon nor a biting response for the daemon. But I’m alive and unscathed by anything but my own needles and rope. Which are relatively useless as a weapon against this monster. It slithers closer and stares hungrily down at me with brilliant, slitted pupils, like a cat eyeing a tiny mouse.

When the dragon strikes again, I barely dodge its snapping teeth, set in jaws bigger than any creature’s I’ve ever encountered. I fetch up behind a column that’s not floating too high off the ground to cover me, plucking needles from my arm as fast as I can. I stab them directly into my palm in a tight cluster, choking on a scream.

I don’t have time to scream, anyway. I can feel its presence, looming right behind me.

I slam my palm into the pillar, smashing the needles against it like a hammer driving a nail deep into my flesh, and with that incredible pain I rupture the entire stone structure into the dragon’s face. A violent spray of jagged rock tears through the air, shredding both wings and scales. The dragon collapses to the ground in a writhing, splashing heap, coughing up gouts of indiscriminate fire.

My hand dangles, a twitching, volcanic throb at my side, and tears stream down my face, but it was worth it. I don’t want to look at the damage, but I force myself to. A spiking bundle of needle points protrude from the back of my hand, my skin angry red and oozing blood. My fingers don’t want to obey me. Luckily, it wasn’t my dominant hand.

“I really hope this is the real monster,” I gasp, clutching my wrist.

“Or else what?” Daesra asks, still at the edge of the abyss, watching the confrontation play out as if he’s the sole spectator in the grandest and darkest of amphitheaters.

“Or else you really owe me one.”

“Sadaré, I already owe you so much.”

“Then help me fight this!” I screech, spinning on him.

I know he didn’t mean he owed me anything good , and yet he actually seems to contemplate it for a moment.

There’s the splash of something shifting behind me. I know it’s the dragon stirring, so I don’t turn. I look up, instead, where the massive head of stone drifts far above me, as big as a house. If that falls, I don’t know what could possibly survive it. Even a dragon would be squashed like a fly. But to bring it down, I would need more pain than I’ve ever inflicted upon myself. Pain such as when the roots snapped my leg between them and left me dangling. My eyes dart just beyond my feet, where there’s a jagged chunk of rock parting the thin sheet of water flowing over the ground. It’s the size of several fists, yet small enough to grip in one hand.

My other hand is useless anyway. I don’t have time to heal it.

My knees fall out from under me more than I drop to my knees. Dizziness eats away at my thoughts, but I don’t let that stop me. It’s better if I don’t think about it. I only need to hold on to my intention. Cling to it like a raft in the ocean storm that’s about to hit me. I seize the rock and lay my other arm out in the water. The water pulls a red ribbon of blood away from the hole my makeshift nail made in my hand.

I raise the rock high above my head, ready to bring it down with all the force I have in my body. To give me the power I need to bring down a rock fit for a dragon.

You’re just hitting the nail once more , I tell myself. That’s all. Not crushing your hand to a pulp.

“ Wait .” The command in Daesra’s voice makes me freeze. “Don’t. I have a better weapon for you to wield against the creature—and not against yourself.”

I look up just in time to see him toss something my way. Even less time to hurl the rock aside to catch it. I realize, only when my fingers close around the smooth grip as if they were made to fit there, that he’s thrown me his sword.

The sword of Sea.

A hilt of black pearl. A blade of quicksilver. It’s surprisingly light in my hand. I stagger to my feet, drenched, marveling at it. And then at Daesra, for giving it to me.

He twirls a finger in the air, eyebrows raised. “Turn around.”

Of course. The dragon, too, has clambered to its feet, its wings a broken ruin, massive rents in its scales. But it still crouches like an animal ready to pounce.

My body sinks into its own crouch, unthinking, moving on instinct. When the creature lunges for me, I leap out of the way, slashing down with the quicksilver blade at the same time, tearing a ragged gash the entire length of the dragon’s ribs. Its front legs collapse, and it lands hard. And yet it’s struggling to stand even before it has finished sliding along the slick dark floor.

But it doesn’t come for me. Those slitted green eyes turn to Daesra.

Daesra blinks at it. “Well, that’s not supposed to happen.”

The dragon coils itself again, sinew bunching. And then it springs.

But I’m already rushing forward. I bound into the air just as the creature does. Bring the sword down hard in a double-handed swing. Daesra only has to dodge aside as the massive body carries on into the abyss, and the dragon’s head crashes to the ground next to where I land on my feet, the sword held low.

Daesra stares at me, wide-eyed, as if he’s never seen me before. I hardly recognize myself. My palm has healed, I realize, pushing out all of the needles. I’ve never used a sword before that I can recall, but somehow it feels at home in my hand.

It must be because he decided to help me. The sword has lent me the strength of a demigod. This is only a taste of the power we’ll both have, if we decide to strive together. And it tastes divine.

This is how we will free ourselves. Maybe we already have, killing the dragon that was the monster, and now we just need to find our way out. It’s what the maze has always wanted. I don’t need a mirror to recall the rest of what Horizon said—I can guess. I already lived that memory, after all. The knowledge is inside me. I can feel it in my bones.

Love will guide me out of here. It will guide us both home.

“You helped me.” I let the sword sag at my side. “You love me. I know you do. We’ve both hated each other at times—”

“Many times,” Daesra interjects.

“But if we can kill a dragon together, a fucking dragon , then we can move beyond the past.”

He’s still looking at me strangely. Considering. I desperately hope that my words are reaching him.

“But you haven’t gotten beyond the past,” he says.

I blink. “Yes, I have.”

He shakes his head slowly, still staring at me. “No, you haven’t.”

“Haven’t I proved it to you yet?” My voice catches, breaks. I gesture at the dragon’s head with the quicksilver blade. My chest heaving, I ask in a tight whisper, “I killed the monster, as you demanded. What else must I do?”

He contemplates me for another long moment, and I begin to despair. But then he says, “Give me back my sword. Prove to me I can trust you.”

My feet feel frozen to the ground. “Why do you need it?”

“It’s mine.” He holds out his hand, reaching across a stretch of darkness. “I only let you borrow it, and I’d like you to give it back.”

“But why?” Why would you want it now, right this moment , I don’t ask, when we’ve won? Instead I ask, “How can I trust you? You just betrayed me.”

“And you’ve betrayed me ,” he snarls, “the worst betrayal I could have ever imagined. I wasn’t prepared for such ruination then, and I don’t wish to be caught off guard now.”

“I just saved you!” I shout back at him, my voice echoing in the expanse. Sinking into the abyss. “And it’s not as if you could end up in a worse place at the moment!”

He waves a hand at me, at the severed head, at the bottomless pit behind him, as if sweeping it all away. “I don’t entirely know what your purpose is here, Sadaré. I don’t trust your motive for doing this, however fine it looks. However beautiful you look.” His voice drops, and his red eyes slide away from me. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Someone has to trust the other first.” His lips twist. “Since I still look like a daemon, it must be impossible for you to trust me.”

My own voice is low. “I trusted you back in that cave.”

“Did I give you my sword then?”

I keep a straight face when I say, “Something like your sword.”

He laughs, drags his fingers back through his hair. Abandons the endeavor when he can’t get past his horns. It tugs a string inside me. “I didn’t trust you then,” he says. “But now I’m beginning to understand.”

“Me, too.” Leaving the sword pressed to my side, I march right up to him, my sandals kicking up sprays of water. His mouth twitches when I splash water all over his hooves. I take that as a good sign.

I tip my head back, peering into his eyes. “I’ll give you your sword, if you let me do something first.”

There’s something alive in the air between us. Invisible as aether, crackling and igniting, ready to become something else even within these dark, wet depths that could smother all else.

He searches my face, his own expression still. “All right,” he says, without asking what.

I throw my hand around his neck and pull his lips to mine. The sword dangles between us as I kiss him as I never have before, tongues clashing and then melding with furious heat, utterly certain that this is where I should be.

Even at the bottom of the darkest well, at the end of everything—I belong with him.

“If I can trust you,” I gasp when I’m able, my fingers still tangled in his hair, “you can trust me. If you can forgive me, I can forgive you. It’s over. We defeated the monster.”

Daesra breath is coming no less hard than mine. Still, he asks, “Are you sure?”

“You’re not the monster. I know you’re not.” I shake my head, press my lips to his again. He doesn’t resist. In fact, he kisses me back as fiercely as I kiss him, his nails digging into my back, making me groan into his mouth.

When I finally pull away, I see something dawning over his features that causes hope to flare in my chest. It’s like a sunrise upon his own face. “You might be right. I know where the monster is. I know how to awaken it.”

“Wait—what?”

In one swift motion, Daesra yanks the sword from my hand. It’s difficult to comprehend what follows, only that his arm keeps moving, thrusting. I gasp, lurching.

Blinking slowly, I look down at the quicksilver blade lodged in my breast, his hand upon the pearly black hilt. I stagger, and Daesra catches my weight on his other arm. I don’t really feel pain, only a strange pressure that pushes on more than my chest. It’s pressing through all of me in a flood. The glow emanating from the sword flares.

Almost like a mirror.

“And here’s the rest of your memory,” he whispers in my ear as he leans into the hilt, pulling me farther onto the blade, plunging it deeper. “Returned to you. Finally.”

Blinding light consumes me in the darkness.