Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 19

AT FIRST, Sadaré looks baffled by the sword at my throat, and then unmistakable horror washes over her face.

“ Why ?” she gasps.

“I’m the monster at the heart of this maze,” I say simply. “The one who should sacrifice his soul to save yours, not the other way around.” I press the blade closer, feel the stinging line of fire. My arm is as unwavering as my voice. “If there’s anything that can kill me, it’s this sword.”

Her expression twists in incredulity. “But I’ve already stabbed you with it. It’s your birthright. It won’t—”

“It will if my hand is behind it—and if I take off my head. I know it. Because if you try to fight the ocean, as my divine parent once said—to you , I believe, in your memory—”

“You’ll drown,” she finishes in a hoarse murmur, realization dawning.

“Since this blade has the power of the seas behind it, I imagine it will do the trick if I pit myself against it. Especially if a mountain of rock falls atop my headless corpse.” I look up at the particular house-sized rock I was going to drop on the dragon and click my tongue in satisfaction.

As if in support of my theory, another massive chunk of staircase comes down next to me, sending a shivering rumble through the ground that doesn’t cease. More rocks and dust begin to fall, rippling the water all around us.

It will be over soon.

Sadaré stares, wide-eyed, her expression going slack. “I can’t believe you.” She shakes her head, looking away.

When she looks back at me, absolute rage lights her eyes—enough to do a daemon proud. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone so angry, not even her-as-me, let alone her . She was always so soft. So yielding.

Not now. She’s exquisite in her anger. Her fingers flex as if she still had claws.

“You goat-fucking bastard ,” she hisses in fury, barely sounding like herself—or even me. “Don’t you do this. Not when I ask you, for once, to face yourself. This isn’t the harder choice.” She flings her hand out at me, shouting now. “Self-sacrifice is the easiest . Returning from this was never going to be easy, you skulking coward!”

“How can I return from this?” I growl, glancing about pointedly, some of my composure breaking under such a barrage. “It’s impossible—”

She stomps her foot, sending up a burst of water, and gestures around herself wildly. “You shoulder as much of this weight as you can as you crawl out of here, and then carry more as you go. You let it reshape you into something stronger and better than a monster, until you’re strong enough to carry the weight with ease. And then you help others with their load, like I have you. It’s not giving up .” She spits the words like the vilest curse she’s ever spoken. “Indeed, I’ve gotten you this far, you abysmal pain in the ass, and now I’m finished. Because you’re going to get yourself out of here. And not like that ,” she shrieks, pointing at the sword, her hand shaking, voice breaking. Her chest trips over gasps that might be sobs. “I want to save you, truly, I do, but you have to want to save yourself, or I can’t help you. No one can. So don’t do this. Please. ”

I’m more shocked than if she’d beaten me over the head with a cobblestone. A nearly delirious laugh burbles out of me. “ What a mouth. I almost want to kiss it except I think you might chew my tongue off.”

She bares her teeth, all rage and no mirth. “This isn’t amusing. None of this is. If I could give up immortality as a mortal witch who wanted it more desperately than I’d ever wanted anything—until you —then you could at least consider releasing the daemon within you and becoming a demigod once more.”

“If nothing about this is amusing, nothing is simple, either,” I bite out. “The things I’ve done—”

“Yes, yes, so much guilt.” Her sneer is so derisive I nearly stagger back. “Your burden is heavy, but you might find some things easier to cast off—such as the weight you have yet to add to your shoulders by remaining a fucking daemon . Your soul can’t withstand that forever, and you’ve seen what is waiting for you out there when these walls finally surrender.”

Indeed, I have seen what awaits—whole oceans’ worth of death. I can’t help but wonder what swimming through those waters would be like, when one can’t easily die. Even when one is the son of Sea.

Perhaps it would be a fate worse than death. The god of death’s grandest design yet. Immortal death.

“But—but—” I stammer. “ How? I can’t just quit being a daemon like a sentry post and abscond in the night, for the gods’ sake! It’s not filth I can wash away!” I gesture down at myself, hooves and all, gaining momentum. “Even if I’m knee-deep in blood, which is bad enough, I’m centuries deep in being a daemon.”

I’m panting by the end, but she merely stands there with her arms folded, brow arched.

“Deep, indeed,” she says.

Damn her. “I thought you said this wasn’t funny,” I snarl. “Making dirty insinuations is my role. I’ve only just gotten it back, and you’re already trying to steal it from me again.”

“So be the Daesra I know you can be, and don’t force me to step in.”

“How?” I cry, throwing out my hand. “I don’t see many other options. Just look around!”

“You live with everything you’ve done—but that means living ,” she hisses. She leans forward intently, holding my eyes in the emerald depths of her own. “I know you have the strength in you to see this through. Because I was you for a time. And because you were me, you should know how desperately I want you to do so—but the decision has to be yours.”

I know. I also know it can’t be that easy. “So all I must do is live with what I’ve done?”

“You live, and you swear to live differently . You face your past and move forward.”

“That’s it? Forward but up, this time?” I laugh again, incredulous but at the same time euphoric at the possibility. Or perhaps she’s finally managed to drive me mad.

But then it hasn’t been easy. It’s taken all of this to bring me to this point. To see myself clearly in the depths of my darkness and to decide if I want to take the final step out of the labyrinth. Loose the last thread in the binding I’ve put upon myself. I only have to want it.

And in the end, it is that simple.

I nod. “Then, I swear. I swear to live, and live differently.”

“You do?” Sadaré blinks.

“Yes!” I shout, unable to contain myself any longer. I fling my blade to the ground with a singing clang while another piece of stone, the giant hand with the broken sword—ever so symbolically—crashes down on the other side of me. I don’t bother flinching, let alone running for cover. I’m suddenly so exhausted, I don’t know how I’ve managed to stay standing this long. I’m centuries- exhausted by what I’ve been carrying. “I swear! I swear on my mother’s god-incinerated ashes! I swear on the bloodstained stones of her temple! I swear on my divine parent’s burning arsehole! I swear on this fucking sword that’s all they left me! I swear on my undying love for you—which you somehow haven’t managed to kill, by the way.” I take a staggering step toward her, kicking up water. “Can we stop shouting at each other now, or do I need to get down on my knees to prove my dedication or—?”

When Sadaré smiles, it’s as brilliant as her rage was. Positively divine.

I realize, belatedly, that I’m also brilliant. Not in an egotistical way, but literally. Strange light is emanating from my body, enough to reflect off her pale face and the sheet of water around us—all but that pooling at my hooves like the darkest of liquids, while my skin glows for a few more moments.

No, not my hooves.

My feet.

They’re bare, sending out ripples when I wriggle my toes in bafflement. With a shock that spears through me like lightning, I realize I might be positively divine in an equally literal manner. For better or worse.

I hold up my hands. My skin is pale blue as it has always been, but my long black nails are gone. I touch the top of my head with one hand as I swipe the other behind me. My horns and tail are no more, fallen away like so much dirt I claimed I could never wash off.

Except, unlike dirt, this dark, discarded shadow drifts through the shallow water in smoky tendrils. At first I think it’s moving for my sword, somehow intent on tainting my birthright if it can’t have me any longer, but it flows beyond. Toward the head of the dragon.

I’m not sure what it can do with that one body part, but I don’t want to risk it.

Sadaré lurches for my sword as I do, and we both pause. I gesture her ahead, happy to let her take it up for the moment. I can defend myself, even if I’m only a demigod now. She’s still mortal.

She must feel the need to justify herself, looking embarrassed. “You were never my monster,” she says. “Only your own. Since you killed mine, perhaps I’m meant to kill yours?”

I shake my head. “You already stabbed me and didn’t kill me, so why would this dark part of me fall to you now? As much as I hate to leave you less defended, the sword might be strongest in my possession. It’s the only thing that can kill me, after all, albeit by my own hand.”

She waves at where the strange, murky shadow is still drifting—less intently—around the dragon’s slack jaws. “But you’ve released your daemonic binding. It’s separate from you, so now it can die—just like the bull you sacrificed to become a daemon in the first place.”

“I’m concerned it’s grown a bit since then,” I say with a grimace. “I’ve spent years strengthening it.” I gesture for her to step back, stopping just short of hauling her behind me.

And yet, the shadow has stopped moving, freezing in the water. It gives me the eerie impression of a predator that has lost its prey. Searching in stillness.

Sadaré’s brow creases as she watches it. “It needs a body. One that can die.” She nods at the remains of the dragon. “That one might have worked, but it’s already dead—and it had to die first,” she murmurs, looking off into the distance, as if distracted by the topography of her thoughts, “because I had to remember myself before I could allow you to do the same. Defeating my monster let me wake up and release the collar on your power. But I’m still trapped here, same as you. For you to fully free yourself like we both need you to…”

She laughs suddenly, but it has a frightening edge.

Now I’m staring at her and nothing else. “What’s so amusing?”

But she’s not listening to me. “Even Pogli wouldn’t work as a vessel, because Pogli is part of you.” She laughs again, that horrible jaggedness only getting worse. “You told me I owed you one when it came to the actual monster, if the dragon wasn’t it. Well, it’s time for me to pay, I suppose.”

“I don’t like how you’re sounding, Sadaré,” I say, hoping my reproving tone will get her attention.

As quickly as she laughed, she curses. “That bitch. That fucking bitch. Horizon said I would know what needed to be done.”

“Talk to me, Sadaré, now .” I seize her shoulders and spin her around to face me. “What do you mean?”

The despair in her eyes makes my blood run cold.

“Don’t you see?” she gasps. “It was always meant to be me, in the end. This was Horizon’s plan from the beginning, long before we ever conceived of the maze. I proved I would do anything for what I want most, whether that’s immortality… or you. I surrender, you don’t. You only fight and fight and fight, but you can’t fight yourself.” She sighs, her shoulders slumping under my grip as if in defeat. “I thought undergoing this trial was the sacrifice I had to make for your love. For your forgiveness. But no. It’s me on the altar this time. Not only my soul, but my yet-mortal life.”

“No.” I shake her once, hard, flinging her red hair about her shoulders, as if I can thrust away what she’s suggesting. “ No . Horizon wouldn’t do that to me.”

I want her to fight me, but she only lets her head tip to the side, her gaze sliding away as she says, “They would do anything for you, just as I would. The whole purpose of this maze was to bring us here, together. To entwine our souls until they were nearly indistinguishable. Until we were a bridge to each other. So I could bring you home… and take this burden from you.”

“ You are my home,” I snarl in her face. “It’s taken all of this for me to remember that.”

She still won’t look at me as her breath hitches. “Horizon only promised me that if you found your way out, I would know what your love could be, and you would know mine. They didn’t say for how long.” She shakes her head, tears beginning to fall. “I was never meant to leave here alive.”

“I don’t accept that,” I say, already looking for another way out of here, my eyes roving frantically. Even if it means clapping my daemonic bindings back into place and raising that sword to my neck once more, I’ll do it. I just need to figure out how.

“It’s not you who has to accept it,” Sadaré whispers. “It’s me.”

“And you will not ,” I growl. I shove her behind me with ease, planting myself between her and the shadow—which now seems to be decidedly focused in our direction. “Summon some of your past selfishness, your stubborn will to live forever, and do not for a second consider throwing your life away for me. It can’t possess you if you don’t allow it.”

Ironic, as that’s one of the tenets of our own relationship.

“But then you’ll still be bound,” she says. “You need me to take this from you. I’m dead either way.” I turn on her in time to see her smiling sadly. “I can never take back the fact that I bound you myself. But I can do this for you.”

“I refuse to let you!” I shout, wanting to dive for my sword, and yet not wanting to take my eyes off that thing for even a second. “Do not surrender, Sadaré. You surrender only to me. You will obey me.”

I watch her long enough to catch her nod, preparing to leap for my blade.

“I surrender to you,” she murmurs, and then she drops to her knees next to me.

For a moment—one desperately foolish moment—I’m relieved. Because I think she’s speaking to me.

But it’s not me for whom she kneels. It’s the daemon.

I try to haul her upright, drag her away from the shadow that suddenly surrounds her. But I can’t help recoiling instead.

Because Sadaré’s beautiful smile twists into one of teeth and blood and horror. Fangs pierce through lips that become shredded in fleshy tassels. Black nails elongate into truly terrible claws, and leathery wings burst from her slender back as the horns on her head shoot skyward like massive spears, dragging her onto legs that are suddenly twice as long and thick as before. A scorpion-like stinger crowns the end of a much longer tail than mine was, which thrashes and quivers like a headless snake in the water behind her—behind what was her, rather.

Her daemon’s roar is a violent assault of its own, torn and bloody, filled with rage and anguish.

Gods, it must hurt so much. This weight she just took from my shoulders so I could at least crawl my way out of here.

She’s taken the worst of me.

I clutch at my chest impotently. At first, I don’t know what this pain is, inside. It hurts far worse than being stabbed by her—either time. And then I realize it’s my heart breaking. A heart I wasn’t sure I still had, until now.

That the monster’s eyes are green—her eyes, in that face—is the most terrible thing of all as it glares at me with every bit of a daemon’s fury. I know this rage well—I only wish I could borrow it, trade it for the despair that consumes me with the potency of a god’s fire.

I’m still so angry I could kill her. And that’s exactly what my divine parent wants me to do, isn’t it?

Kill her along with it .

“Fuck Horizon, and fuck you, Sadaré, for doing this,” I spit at the monster she’s become.

It’s the most selfless thing anyone has ever done for me. I can’t hate her for it, but, my gods, I want to punish her so badly. Except I can hardly spot any of her inside this thing.

“You must confront the daemon you have wrought.” The grating words sputter through broken lips, accompanied by drops of blood. “Now you can prove how much you wish to live with what you have done. Save yourself—from me.”

I can’t believe this is her. I can’t believe this was me. I’d rather face the abyss.

My gorge rises as the creature lunges for me. I once thought that those Other-Hers, the Sadarés made of ice, were the most spine-chilling monsters I’d ever seen.

They’re fathoms behind Other-Me.

First, I run. It’s all I can think to do. Not because I’m a coward—I run for my sword, after I duck under its raking claws.

But I don’t want to fight her, whether or not this is really her anymore. Never mind I’m supposedly made for that—fighting instead of yielding. Anger instead of forgiveness. But Sadaré was right. I couldn’t fight myself or forgive myself when this thing was inside me.

And yet, now that it’s in her, I’m not sure I can fight her, either.

I roll through the thin layer of water over the ground and snatch up my blade, holding it at the ready.

Once again, I think, Fuck you both, Sadaré and Horizon.

And then: Fuck me , as the daemon lunges. It’s a winged, clawed, spike-tailed horror on misshapen legs that sends a shudder of disgust through me even as I dodge its first charge.

Deep down, I know it’s still Sadaré, but very deep. This abyssal creature is the very manifestation of my dark depths, after all. But that seed of knowledge makes me withhold the swing that might have cleaved the thing from shoulder to hip as it passes me.

In thanks, the daemon nearly takes off my head. Unlike my sword, its arm is fully capable of slashing out, claws blurring, to slice halfway through my throat. As if trying to finish what my own blade started.

Quicksilver liquid sprays in a bright, glittering arc, but thank the gods that instead of lying down and dying in a mortal heap, choking on my blood in all its restored shine, all I can furiously think as I scrabble away, my throat knitting frantically, is, How is it this quick? I’m the daemon—

No, it is now. I gave up my daemonic side, however that works in a place like this… and Sadaré accepted it. This is actually the perverse reflection of what she did to me, slitting her throat to bind my power. Now she’s taken up the weight of my shackles and slit mine for the trouble.

I’m only a demigod now, a truth spelled out in the silvery color of my blood. That’s significant, I realize, but I haven’t been one for a long time—I’m out of practice. I can’t simply stab myself for power, trading pain for aether. I went back on my dark bargain. I’m not even entirely sure what abilities I have anymore, aside from inhuman strength and an unwillingness to die. Pitting a demigod against a daemon even on a divinely good day, I would bet on the daemon every time.

All I can hope to do is distract it. Remind it who lives inside it—and perhaps who I am. Not so I can save myself.

But to save her.

I dance back in the water on long-forgotten feet, shielding myself with my sword. “You’re one to disparage guilt and self-sacrifice when you did this only because you regret binding me, Sadaré ,” I snarl at the daemon. “You’re doing exactly what you accused me of—throwing your own life away for my sake!”

“We’re still mirrors of each other,” the daemon hisses, following me with what looks like too many joints moving within its cadaverous flesh, splashing through the water and leaving a bloody trail behind. “And I’m not throwing anything away. I’m going to rip you apart and drink your insides.”

I try not to picture Deos lying on the ice, torn in half by those Other-Hers. It’s symbolic in ways I didn’t want to consider then, and especially not now that I resemble the marble statue more than ever. “I think we’ve had enough of sharing our insides, don’t you? Besides, I can’t die.”

The daemon is trying to angle closer to me as it speaks. “Are you so sure? What if your own monstrous self tries to kill you? Like turning your divine blade upon your own flesh, if your darker half devours you, is that not a similar sort of end?”

I keep moving, saying with an admirable lack of concern, “I hope you don’t truly mean to devour me. Anyway, you’re not half of me. You’re a small, shriveled shred. A rotten fruit fallen from the tree. What did you call Pogli? Some nasty remnants left to fester? What’s more accurate than that—and more flattering for us both, I daresay—is that you’re Sadaré, and you need to stop this now.”

“ You need to kill me.” There’s a hint of desperation in that ragged, rage-filled voice. “Or I’ll kill you.”

Likewise in mine, as my composure breaks. “I can’t .”

The daemon draws itself up to its full, terrifying height. “If you don’t have it in you to destroy me, then I’ll take you into the darkness with me. Forever.”

The daemon lunges. I dodge the reaching claws, but I forget the tail. The stinger catches me in the shoulder like the stone monstrosity caught Sadaré—me— us back in the teeth-filled cave. I’m really getting tired of these ceaseless rounds, not knowing where she ends and I begin in this bloody battle. Striking each other over and over again, until there will be nothing left of us.

Maybe this is the end , I think, as the daemon drags me closer, speared on its tail. I manage to hold on to my sword, even though my grip feels weak, the bloody hilt slipping in my fingers. It’s even more difficult when the monster seizes my shoulders in both hideous hands, long claws puncturing my flesh.

“I’m not fond of pain, Sadaré,” I groan, barely able to struggle. “Not like you.”

“I love it,” the daemon slurs with split lips, blood oozing down its chin and neck. “But I’m not her.”

“I know,” I say, my voice catching, breaking. I’ve been trying to convince the daemon when I can barely convince myself.

It leans closer, fanged jaws widening. But it doesn’t bite into me. It drags me to the edge of the abyss and holds me over it.

Perhaps I’ve truly found the monster at the center of the maze. It isn’t me, exactly, and it isn’t her. And though it tears into me more than its claws to think it, I can’t see anything left of Sadaré other than those eyes. She’s no longer here. Perhaps she died when she became this piece of me, drawing it from me like a fatal poison.

“Now it’s over,” the monster says. “Time to touch the bottom.”

Its grip begins to loosen on my shoulders, claws retracting. Preparing to drop me. But I can’t look down. I can’t even look at it , the creature about to end me. Because I see an odd, small shape bounding down one of the chunks of staircase that has drawn closer to the abyss. I hear an even more incongruous sound, echoing in this terrible place.

Snorting.

There’s another part of me that has grown separate, and it’s not foul, strange and misshapen though it is. It’s quite possibly the very opposite of this monster before me.

The best of me. Just as the daemon is the embodiment of my hatred, this is the embodiment of my love for her.

And it takes a wild, awkward leap from the slanting steps of the floating staircase and sinks suddenly massive jaws into the monster’s arm.

“ Pogli! ” I shout.

Pogli flings his head back and forth, jerking both me and the monster with him. The daemon’s wide hooves slip on the water-slick slope of the abyss. In reflex, the monster twists to scrabble at the edge as it begins to fall—tossing both me and Pogli higher up the slippery bank, back to relative safety. The chimera shrinks back to his usual size and fluffs out his stubby wings, too impressed with himself to see what’s still behind him.

The monster seizes Pogli just before I can, claws digging into his furry hindquarters. My own hand lashes out and tangles in his little lion’s mane, desperately seeking firmer purchase on the scruff of his neck. Having let go of the edge, the monster begins to slide back into the abyss, the chimera caught between us. Pogli shrieks in agony.

It only takes one look into those bulging, panicked brown eyes in that wrinkly, flat face for me to act. I don’t really make a decision before I swing with my other arm, torn muscles flexing and knitting, my grip tightening on the hilt. My sword comes down in a liquid arc of light—severing the monster’s hold on Pogli at the elbow.

Another pair of eyes—green—fly wide. And then they vanish into the abyss as the monster falls backward.

I can’t think about what I’ve done. The choice I’ve made on cruel, desperate instinct. I try to shut down all senses as I wrench the claws from Pogli’s thigh by the wrist, flinging the hideous appendage into the pit with the rest. I clutch the bleeding, shivering chimera to my chest, and I stare down into the abyss.

It takes everything in me to not throw myself in as well. To not lose myself to the darkness. I know it would be the end of me, just like I knew my sword would be. An end, at least. I might be lost in the tortured landscape of my own soul forever.

Oblivion, even eternal madness, might be preferable to losing her like this.

Pogli licks my face, bringing me back to myself. Reminding me that I promised her. I swore I would live and live differently. My life is all I can give to the person who mattered the most to me—the person who saved me. Which means I can’t give her my life by ending it. I can only drag myself from the edge of the abyss. Walk away from it with Pogli in my arms, no matter how much the darkness tries to drag me back into its numbing embrace.

One.

Step.

At.

A.

Time.

The maze—what’s left of it—is both coming down and flying up in all directions around me. Utterly coming apart. The binding I placed on my soul is gone, after all. Huge chunks of stone shatter against the floor, which is shaking more and more until it grows difficult to walk.

But I keep moving, placing one foot before the other. I don’t even know where to go, how to get out. It’s not quite as easy as waking up from a nightmare, or else I would do it.

I jerk my head back to avoid a bit of flying debris, and I see it for the first time—a faint glow, high above. Like the light at the end of an infinitely long tunnel.

“Of course you can’t fucking fly,” I mutter at Pogli. Tears blur my vision as I kiss the chimera’s head, like the Daesra he once knew never would have done. “But you’ll be fine. We’re going to be fine.”

No, we’re not fine, and we’re not likely to be. But I don’t tell him that, never mind that he’s a part of me and should know better. He was never terribly smart. At the moment I envy him that.

And still, I keep taking step after step.

Until my toes hit stone—the base of a stretching staircase that suddenly rises before me from within the darkness. My eyes follow the winding stack of uneven steps up and up and up, into the gloom. It might even reach the light.

Even though they’ve sprouted up from nowhere, the stairs are beginning to shudder. And crack.

I launch into motion, bounding up the steps as fast as my legs can carry me. My limbs feel as strong as a demigod’s, if not those I’m used to, taking a dozen stairs at a time, the chimera clutched under my arm.

It still might not be enough. I dodge a massive boulder as it careens into the stairs, taking out a huge bite that plummets into the darkness below. I leap across the gap, barely making it.

Finally, the light grows brighter, glimmering like a mirror, but one of sunlight instead of moonlight, at the top of the staircase.

“Nearly there,” I gasp to Pogli, to myself, as I run.

A tug on my finger stops me short—not from the force of the pull. It’s gentle, barely a whisper against my skin, drawing me back down the stairs. It doesn’t matter that the world is bursting apart around me, and I’ve almost reached safety. I turn around.

She’s dead, I’m sure of it… But there’s something, maybe someone , there, on the other end of the invisible string tied around my finger.

For remembrance.

Remembrance of her? She’s fallen into the deepest of wells. The darkest of pits. The place to forget and be forgotten.

But maybe the thread is helping her remember. Maybe it’s helping me.

It’s so you could always find me. If you wanted.

Those words, spoken in my voice. But Sadaré was borrowing it. Does it mean I can find her, or that she can find me? Does it matter within this strange, endlessly looping logic?

The string didn’t guide me to the end. Walking in Sadaré’s shoes brought me to the daemon I wanted to deny and needed to remember. But here, at the end, maybe it can guide her to me .

Maybe it can bring her out .

Suddenly, I can see the red thread, trailing back into the collapsing darkness down the stairs. I twist my wrist and seize it in my hand. Pogli screeches from my other arm as the stairs give a final shudder and start to drop out from under us. I yank , just before throwing myself into the pool of liquid sunlight.

Everything turns to white. And gold. And fire.