Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 18

WHEN THE sword is ripped from her—my?—chest, I don’t reach for the wound to staunch it, or for the blade that made it. It’s already healing over, anyway. Because this isn’t Sadaré’s mortal body. It doesn’t even look like hers anymore.

It’s mine. An immortal daemon’s. Apparently.

I’m Daesra.

I’m Daesra. I’m Daesra. Or so I keep repeating to myself. It’s difficult to believe, even as I hold up my shaking hand—pale smoky blue, tipped with sharp black nails, and much larger than those I’d only recently thought of as mine. All this time, I’ve thought I was her. I still feel like her, even though I realize now I’m not. At least I know that much, despite my head ringing as if kicked by a bull.

For a moment, I don’t care where I am, never mind the darkness, the huge floating fragments of staircase and other statues, the severed dragon’s head, and the ungodly pit somehow dropping to even greater depths. Something apart from all of that manages to catch my eye, floating atop the thin layer of water on the floor as if it’s not the heaviest object of all—a metal collar, split open, as if only recently fallen from my neck. Out of reflex, either hers or mine, I kick it spiraling into the abyss with the snap of a hoof. That I have hooves again is not my most potent realization here.

She put that thing around my neck. After making me fall in love with her. And it’s been there all this time, hidden under her skin.

Sadaré stands a short distance from me, staring as dumbfoundedly as I must be, her mouth slightly agape. Her hair red and tangled, her tunic torn and stained, her softly luminous skin scratched and dirty.

She’s still beautiful. And yet it feels odd to think that, now that I’ve been her, for a time.

I hunch slightly forward, feeling as winded as if a god hit me in the stomach. I suppose I was hit, in a way. By Horizon. “Oh, fuck me.”

Sadaré’s hands are trembling as well, even though one is still wrapped around the black pearl hilt of a sword. The sword that just stabbed me.

My sword. My birthright.

“I think we did fuck ourselves,” she says, apparently possessing as much of a poet’s way with words as I do. “In truth.”

I hold up a hand. “Can we not talk about that, at least for a moment? Preferably not ever. I’m attempting to keep my guts inside.” Never mind that I already feel turned inside out, especially to imagine— no, don’t imagine it . Better to pretend it’s simply her memory of us making love, which I was somehow sharing, like my view inside the mirrors. That’s not so different a perspective from seeing oneself painted bawdily on a vase. I used to collect those vases, I now recall, especially when they depicted me defiling priests or priestesses.

And yet, I know, deep down, that our interaction in that cave involved far more than seeing myself in an unmoving painting.

Which is part of why I feel more queasy than daemonic—I’m still grasping to regain that potent mix of man-bull-god that makes me who I am. At least the sensation of her upon me is slipping away like a loosened tunic. It feels odd to think of myself as her now, but it wasn’t at the start of the maze. When one wakes up as a woman, slowly regaining the memories of a woman, then one is a woman. I was a woman, even if I’m not anymore. I looked like a stranger to myself, but only because I had no memory. Her breasts and hips gave me a sense of alien familiarity, like finding something beloved in a spot I forgot I’d put it. Now the reality of who I am is falling back into place with the dizzying violence of an avalanche.

I glance once more at the sword hanging loose in her delicate grip. That I’m not dead after taking that to the heart is further proof of who I am. Never mind humans, that quicksilver blade imbued with a god’s power can kill other demigods, daemons, and monsters with relative ease. Just not me, and not everything here, because here is apparently inside me.

Even though I understand that less than anything.

Perhaps I should be terrified by the great abyss at the center, but I don’t particularly want to consider what this means yet. All I can feel at the moment is strange relief that Sadaré’s not dead from the blow, either, never mind that she stabbed me . Perhaps more correctly: Daesra stabbed Sadaré.

Whoever the fuck they are.

Sadaré. That name I’ve been calling myself feels completely different now. And yet Daesra doesn’t fit quite right, either.

I realize with a sudden jolt: Daesra. Sadaré. Even our names, merely a twisted reflection in a broken mirror.

“These must not be our true names,” I say aloud. “Gods, I still don’t know what my name is. Or yours.”

Her eyes are wide. “Maybe it’s the entangling of our souls, but I don’t remember, either.”

And she knows a lot more than I do, since this was her plan, made without me while she forced me to kneel in the Tower of the Gods. I apparently needed the practice for this place, where I would do a lot more of it at my own inclination—her inclination, rather, while she borrowed mine. Willingly—no, ardently —bowing to her-as-me feels perhaps stranger than the rest of what we exchanged while wearing each other’s skin. My world upended on an even more fundamental level.

I still can’t tell what’s right or wrong, up or down. I don’t know how to describe any of what I’m experiencing. I might know I’m me now, but knowing and feeling the truth are two very different things. Just as part of me has almost no idea how I got here, while another part knows every painful step—steps I took wearing her tattered sandals.

“I know one thing—you need new sandals,” I say inanely.

Her mouth twitches. “And trust me, you really, really need a bath.”

“So,” I say without preamble, holding out my arms in invitation. “Are you going to stab me again? Honestly, now is your best chance. I’m quite disoriented.” It’s as if the maze is reflecting the turmoil inside me, coming apart like I seem to be, bits of colossal statue scattered in pieces across the black sky, staircases floating one way, giant heads another. It’s too much.

This is all too much.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Sadaré asks, and then she frowns, considering. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore, which means you might want to tear me limb from limb, like I imagined you would when you found out about all of this.”

I consider that, too, but I’m honestly too stunned to be angry. “You know, I’d rather have a chat first. Maybe a rest. But also not here, as this place is regrettably awful.” I gesture about. “I’d like to offer up some truism about our capacity for darkness and how there’s an abyss in all of us—but there isn’t. Not like this.”

Sadaré’s soul is somehow tangled up with mine, but at least, in this case, it’s clear what belongs to whom. She can be a horrible witch— execrable was actually her fine touch—but she hasn’t been carrying around one of these inside her. I know because I was just inside her, and not in the fun way.

It truly hits me then, this great wound inside me, like not feeling an arrow until it’s yanked from my flesh. Except I somehow shot this arrow into my own soul when I became a daemon, and now I’m far enough underneath said bindings to see it. Unlike the deep rents Sadaré has made in my chest, this one has never healed. It festers, growing to balance the lack of all others that immortality granted me.

A small grunt escapes me unwillingly as I take it all in—I could ignore the toll my daemonic binding took only when I didn’t have to stare into its depths. It’s a view I don’t relish, despite having already comprehended the horror of it as Sadaré. It was so much easier to regard this abyss as not mine.

She’s looking around as well, seemingly not as lost as I feel. “I told you, beware the maker,” she says shakily.

“Amusing,” I say witheringly. She said that to me when she was me, looking into a mirror, and I don’t currently appreciate the irony. “What about the walls, the trees, the caves?”

“While Horizon is responsible for its current appearance, all of it is arguably yours—and mine,” she adds, sounding a bit dazed, “though I can take credit for somewhat less, since I haven’t contributed centuries of being a daemon.”

“Even those oceans are mine?” The thought of those dead seascapes surrounding the upper walls of the maze still frightens me more than anything, even now, here at the edge of everything.

Sadaré’s elegant brow lifts in recognition, even though she still looks as if she’s fitting the pieces together herself. Remembering what she knows, not what I do. “Ah. Not those. Those were something else. Someone else, trying to get in. Horizon warned me that there was another god out there, waiting to get to you.”

Death. Now I remember—if only from her memories. She’s being vague for my benefit.

My skin prickles. At least those oceans don’t belong to my divine parent. “But if I’m immortal, how could Death hope to…?” I’m not sure what.

“He’s apparently patient,” she says after I trail off. “He wants to claim you, once your binding has finally become too much for your soul—and mine, now that it’s bound to yours,” she adds with a pretty grimace that turns sardonic. “Looking back, I’m not sure I entirely thought this through.”

I suppress an involuntary shudder. Perhaps I don’t want to dwell on Death; I have enough to concern me. “But the statues that are already inside, are they—?”

“The people you’ve wronged or slain, tangled up with the binding,” she says almost apologetically, “strengthening these walls even as the maze devours them. I recognized some of them.”

No wonder the statues—especially those new, horrible creatures that were born from them—had no love for me.

“Those made of ice were my addition,” Sadaré adds. “Or at least that’s my guess, because they were from my past, and fewer in number and more fragile. But I’m clearer on what’s yours than mine.”

“What about Deos?” I ask, sounding a little strangled for my taste.

His death still hurts almost as much as when I thought I was Sadaré. He saved me.

“Remember when I told you he was an extension of—well, you ?” She was about to say me . “Well, he was, since I poured in a massive amount of your power to make him animate. But you might remember that before he looked like he did, he was a statue of a woman.” Her voice grows softer. “Your mortal mother, in fact. I recognized her from your memories. So perhaps Deos had something of her in him, too, just like you do.” She’s trying to show me the shiny side of this frightfully tarnished coin, but not even she sounds convinced. “I’m sorry—I changed her because her face disturbed me. Well, me-as-you.”

“Ah,” I say shortly. It disturbed me, too, even though I didn’t know why. “So, I have her weight on my soul, as well. That she was ever here is all the proof I need.”

“She didn’t take her life because of you,” Sadaré bursts out—finally able to admit it without betraying any hidden allegiances. “Sky killed her.”

I know that now from her memories of speaking to Horizon, but it doesn’t make the taste in my mouth any less bitter.

“Yes,” I bite out, “because I decided to journey to the Tower of the Gods and become a daemon.” What else is weighing on my soul? My thoughts spin like a morbid mockery of a child’s top, iridescent wings and a haunting face within a thorax flickering in my mind. “And the butterflies?”

She closes her eyes, but she doesn’t spare me—not anymore, seeing as she’s no longer trying to trick me into loving her. “The screams of the dead—silent here, yet drifting in the air.”

I shiver under my skin. I remember such beautiful butterflies flying around the temple—my mortal mother’s temple. Those insects were innocent and lovely there, part of an oblivious backdrop to the carnage, but they became something else here. A twisted reflection of my past.

Like everything in this maze. Or at least the worst parts of it.

I’m the worst part of it.

“Pogli?” I murmur. I almost don’t want to know what Sadaré-as-Daesra may have done with him. She was a twisted reflection of me , after all, so it might be truly terrible.

Sadaré covers her mouth under wide green eyes. Even with a horrified expression, she looks rendered by an artist with her fine, high cheekbones and the graceful line of her wrist. “He eventually bit me and ran. I don’t know where he is.”

“No matter,” I say, even though I feel a twinge of pain inside. I want to find the little chimera, but I don’t have a clue where to begin. I still need to get my bearings—not that that’s even possible in this nightmarish heart of the maze. “And what is he, do you know?”

“He must have come from you, too, since he hates me.” She lets out a weak laugh. “I was right, whoever I thought I was at the time—the chimera is something like your child. While Breath used clay and aether to create humans, you must have left fur, feathers, and spittle to fester.”

“Amusing as always,” I say, even though my lip twitches. “Though I don’t think he exists because I hate you. He was protecting Sadaré all along, so it stands to reason he was born of—caring.” I choke on the word. “Fine, love .” Her eyes shoot to mine in surprise, and I snap, “You know I love you, you utter fool.”

“I didn’t know if you still would,” she whispers.

“I do,” I say seriously, but then my tone lightens. “Much like my tainted love, he’s small and useless, until he unpredictably and violently erupts.”

And yet, self-deprecation aside, I care for Pogli more than I care to admit. Perhaps the little chimera was a force cobbled together to balance the hatred laced everywhere in this place, tainting everything. Hatred for the gods who abandoned me, for the mortals who hunted me, for my lover who betrayed me. And especially for myself. It’s so potent I can taste it. I never could, before. It was simply a part of me.

Now I want to spit it out.

Instead, I suddenly spit at her , unable to contain it any longer, “What the fuck did you do to me, Sadaré? How could you make me think I was you?” I can’t seem to lower my voice—erupting, as promised. “I don’t want to feel this—this remorse, this shame, for what I am. If you want to feel that way about yourself, then go and do so.” I throw a hand at her. “You should, for binding me! I’ve never really told you how I felt about that, come to think of it—that was only you telling me , which is quite rich. The irony is growing thick enough to gag on.”

I’m floundering, reaching for anything so I don’t have to grasp this —my surroundings. Who I am. What I’ve become.

Sadaré closes her eyes again, flinching. “I know how it made you feel. Intimately. And we can have this argument now, but I thought you wanted a moment.”

“A chat, I said. So we’re chatting. ”

“Is that what this is?” Her voice is small. Light. A fine needle, sharp enough to pierce. “A chat?”

“ No! ” I shout thunderously, wishing I could cow her, knowing I can’t. “In fact, I’m telling you that your absolutely deranged plan that you made with my detestable god of a parent”—I punctuate each word with a stab of a sharp-nailed finger at the floor—“is all for nothing , because I rather enjoy being a daemon.”

Except I don’t. Not anymore. Sadaré took even that from me when she bound me.

Or maybe I didn’t enjoy it beyond a petty, vindictive pleasure, and I just never realized it. And all she took from me was a mask.

One she had already begun to strip from me as I fell in love with her.

She doesn’t even bother responding.

No doubt she knows all of this, since she was me.

I let out a deep sigh, half groan, and sink into a crouch, scrubbing my hands back through my hair, stubbing my knuckles against my horns. When I look up again, Sadaré has squatted a short distance away from me, facing me in the shallow water, the sword resting across her knees. She looks delicately slight, fragile enough to crush in her thin, tattered tunic, though I know very well she’s not so easy to break.

It still makes me want to stand over her. To shield her. But I can’t protect her, not anymore.

I drop my hands to stare at them, open-palmed before me. “This is both the kindest and cruelest thing you could have ever done to me. Not binding me, no,” I say, before she can speak, “but letting me feel the hero instead of the monster, for a time. Rather, to let you become the pitiable object of my self-sacrificing quest—the one to save, when I thought I was you. When I felt my journey was the most challenging, I clung to the fact that I was rescuing you , redeeming you .”

An onus I turned into armor. And now my armor is poisoned. What once protected me burns. Because I know the bitter truth. Everything I told myself in the dark to bolster my spirits, to find my inner strength, was a lie. Because I was really telling her —Sadaré. When I said I wasn’t execrable, when I insisted I wasn’t a monster, I meant she wasn’t—and I believe that about her now, after seeing through her eyes.

But I am. No matter how many times I told myself she was the worst of us, it’s me. Sadaré—and she-acting-as-me—made me realize that, despite her love for me. And maybe now, after knowing what it’s like to be me, she has no love left for me.

I wouldn’t blame her. I don’t blame her for anything anymore, even if part of me wants to, if only because it would be easier to blame her than it is to blame myself.

Just as when she felt naked in the Tower of the Gods, all her faults laid bare, I can see myself too well now—and my view is much less flattering than hers. I let my pride overtake me. I traded my soul for power I didn’t need for anything but spite. I’ve killed hundreds, if not thousands of mortals. And after I thought I shamed my mortal mother to her death, I grew numb to the thought of dishonoring her further.

Until Sadaré came to me at her temple.

Yes, Sadaré bound me, but the binding I’d put on myself was far worse. If I still wished to hate her for what she did, I would have to hate myself that much more.

And yet, while I forgive her, forgiveness for myself is impossible.

So I don’t reach for her across the dark expanse between us, cradle her in my arms like I so badly want to. Because I can’t protect her from myself .

Besides, I would lose all resolve to do what I now know I need to do.

“Look what you’ve done to me,” I say, more resigned than angry, gesturing down at myself in my crouch. “Do you know, when I thought I was you, I actually craved the comforting embrace of your mother at one point? How astoundingly ironic.”

Sadaré swallows a laugh, maybe a sob. “Ironic, indeed, considering your colorful history and that I—I never even let myself want that.” She bites her lip. “My mother didn’t deserve my disdain. She was born into a gilded cage, and just because she didn’t seek to free herself, that didn’t make her circumstances her fault. I could have embraced her, even if she never embraced me.”

“Perhaps I make a better you,” I say, with obvious sarcasm. “In which case I should indeed hang up my sword.”

Her eyes slide away from me. Ashamed. “I don’t make a better you. The anger I felt…”

“Don’t take credit for what’s mine, Sadaré,” I snap, the protectiveness surging back so quickly, even to protect her from herself . “I’m a detestable daemon, and yet you came to save me. Between the two of us, I’m indeed the more deplorable. At least until it comes to whining.” I rub my temples. “You whine an excessive amount, even inside your own skull.”

That doesn’t even earn me a smirk or glare. She’s still staring off into the darkness, igniting concern within me. She looks lost, and my palm itches to cup her cheek and bring her eyes back to mine.

“Do you still hate me?” she whispers. “Even knowing how sorry I am? I’m—” Her voice breaks. “I’m so sorry for betraying you. Horizon made me do it to help you, but I only wanted to help myself, at first. I wanted immortality. By the time I realized I wanted you, it was too late to take back my mistakes. I could only go forward—with you, here. Forward and down.” Her chest hitches on a sob. “I’m sorry.”

I can’t stand making her cry if it’s not fun for at least one of us. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I know,” I groan, deep in my chest. “Trust me, I know. I also know what you’ve sacrificed to get me here. But why? Why bother?”

Two tears track down her cheeks as she says, “You got here on your own. All I did was betray you once more— several more times.”

“That wasn’t your doing,” I insist, dropping my hands. “That was some twisted reflection of me trying to take revenge.” I wave it aside. “Perhaps because I was on the receiving end of that revenge, I don’t feel terribly interested in pursuing it, so let’s just forget about it. And you’ve brought me farther than you can understand.” I can’t help glancing around at the darkness. “Deeper.”

Disturbingly, the shapes overhead seem to be drifting closer and closer to the abyss. Even as I watch, a few smaller chunks of stone, perhaps less able to resist the pull, come falling out of the air and roll across the water-coated floor, sending up distant ripples. Tumbling toward the brink.

This place is going to come down, perhaps sooner rather than later. I can feel it in my bones. In my soul .

And Sadaré, at least, shouldn’t be here when it does.

She shakes her head, still not looking at me. “You can’t forget what I’ve done that easily. I just spent far too long in your skull, knowing you would never forgive me.”

“And perhaps I’ve learned a few things from dwelling within you, as well. That you’re a horrible witch who is infuriatingly determined to not be horrible. Who actually has a soul worth saving. And yet you offered it to save mine.” I can’t help but add in a low hiss, “You reckless fool. You don’t bargain with gods .”

Her eyes snap back to me, a reassuring fire returning to them. “As if your bargains are any better. As if nearly everything you’ve done since you were a rash, young boy of a demigod isn’t recklessly foolish—”

“Loving you wasn’t.”

She chokes on whatever argument—no doubt clever and biting—she was about to make. Her mouth parts in a way that usually makes me want to take her bottom lip between my teeth.

I smile back at her instead. “You were the brightest light in a sea of darkness. Before you came to me, I was lost. And yet you found me in the disgraceful ruin I’d made of my mother’s temple and you—” My voice catches now. “You helped me clean it. You made it a home for me, one lovely enough I didn’t have to feel shame at the thought of my mother seeing it. What did I ever do for you in return?”

Her brow furrows fiercely. “Even if it wasn’t pure, the love you gave me was without cause, like no one else has given me. You loved the better parts of me along with the worse, even if you didn’t yet know the worst. It didn’t matter that I didn’t bring you power or prestige, wisdom or mindless devotion. You loved me for no reason beyond the boundaries of my flesh and bones, my mind, and my heart.” Her lovely lips curve bitterly. “Shriveled though it is.”

“You were the one who called it that, acting as me in this play,” I remind her. “ I never thought it so.”

“You should have. I was lying to you as you were loving me.”

I shake my head slowly. “What you gave me didn’t feel like a lie, Sadaré. It felt like everything. And you loved me, too. Even if it wasn’t pure.”

Her eyes are wide, brimming pools, as if she can barely believe what I’m saying. “And then I betrayed you, remember?”

“Of course I do. And I still love you, even now that I know the worst of you. You’ve found me here in this maze to apologize—and to offer me a home once more. I still owe you for many things”—the threatening grin that twisted my lips falls away completely—“but for that,” I say seriously, “I’m not sure I can ever repay you. Forgiveness isn’t enough, though of course I forgive you.”

More tears drop down her cheeks, making me ache to touch her. She’s stunning even when she cries. “I know how you can repay me,” she says in a whisper. “We can leave here, together.”

The moment is another held breath between us. But I can’t crush her to me and kiss her like I want to.

I hate to do this to her. Really, I do. But I don’t see any other way.

“We can’t,” I say. “ You’re not staying here, but I’ll remain a moment yet.”

“What?”

I shrug, my arms dangling loosely over my knees. “I don’t know that what you’ve found of me is worth saving. I’m a monster, Sadaré, and I’m not sure how to be anything else. I only know that this is the end, and I can’t go with you. I shouldn’t . Meanwhile, you’re the singular light in this hideous darkness, and you need to leave here as soon as possible.”

She stands in a rush, taking a step back from me as if I might seize her, the sword in her grip. “It’s my darkness, too,” she spits, almost as if it’s something to be proud of. To own, like her pain. “I’m not some unsullied priestess.”

My lips curve into a smile, despite everything. “I know. But we defeated the worst of your darkness together.” My smile fades. “Mine, unfortunately, is still alive and well.”

“No,” she insists, “we defeated the monster.” She points at the dragon’s severed head with the quicksilver blade. But then her brow creases. “Didn’t we?”

I shake my head slowly. “You’re remembering. The dragon recognized you-as-me after you threw me the sword—which released your witch’s binding and returned my power to me. Before you stabbed me, completing our transition, the dragon turned on you, not me.”

“So?” she demands, even though she’s already realizing it—I can see it in her eyes. She just doesn’t want to, stubborn creature that she is.

“ So ,” I say patiently, “that was your own darkness to slay. Mine isn’t dead.” I tap my chest. “It’s still in me. I’m not just any monster, I’m still the monster that needs to fall for you to escape this. We both know this, deep down.”

Her grip tightens on the sword, but to keep it away from me, not to stab me again. “I don’t know what to do. Horizon said I would know.” She shakes her head furiously. “I refuse to hurt you. I love you.”

“I know, my dear, but look around.” I gesture about somewhat helplessly. “The maze has always collapsed behind us. I can feel it now. The heart of the maze— my heart—is a bottomless hole into which everything will fall. You brought us this far, and now I need to get you out of here—because I love you, too. And if you don’t go soon, it will be too late.”

As if my words are a spark to tinder, a chunk of floating staircase suddenly crashes into another one, raining bits of stone and dust all over the floor.

“You just want to stay here until the binding collapses? After nearly making it out?” she says in disbelief. “You know what’s waiting outside for you. Death is. And you realize I can’t just go free, since my soul is bound here, too, you utter—”

“I know,” I cut her off. “I’m not leaving, but I’m not exactly going to stay, either. There’s another way out—another way to break the bond and free you. I’m ready to accept the truth of who I am and what I’ve done, and to bear the consequences.”

I rise, extending my hand. My sword tears out of Sadaré’s grip, spiraling away from her side and through the air like light skating over water, until the hilt slams into my palm.

My birthright. My end.

Her expression falls, as if sucked into the abyss, when I hold the blade to my own throat.