Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
LARA
I hurry through the maze passages, my heart still pounding from Ivrael’s kiss.
My fingers trail along the ice walls as I move, partly to help me navigate and partly to cool my flushed skin. The icy surface burns against my fingertips, but I welcome the sharp sting.
When I finally hear voices ahead, I pause to catch my breath. To collect myself.
My lips still tingle where Ivrael’s touched them, and I have to resist the urge to press my fingers there, to hold onto the sensation a little longer.
“Lara?” Izzy’s voice carries a note of worry that makes guilt twist in my stomach. “Where did you go?”
“Here!” I call out, rounding the corner to find them all staring at me. Izzy’s arms are crossed, her expression suspicious. Rhaela’s hand rests casually on her knife hilt while Harai looks merely curious.
“Where did you disappear to?” Izzy demands.
The lie tastes bitter on my tongue, especially mixed with the lingering sweetness of Ivrael’s kiss. “Thought I saw something interesting down one of the side passages.”
“Seriously?” Izzy’s eyes narrow.
“Yeah.” I wave my hand vaguely behind me. “Turned out to be just another trick of the light on the ice.”
“You shouldn’t wander off alone,” Rhaela says, her tone carrying that unexpected gentleness that seems reserved for moments of genuine concern. “This maze is designed to be deadly.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I move to stand beside Izzy, avoiding her searching gaze. My sister knows me too well—she’ll see right through me if I meet her gaze right now. “Did I miss anything important?”
“Just Harai explaining how the patterns in the ice are supposed to guide us,” Izzy says, still studying my face. “Your cheeks are awfully red.”
“It’s cold,” I snap, then immediately regret my sharp tone when her eyebrows shoot up.
“The cold usually makes our human servants pale, not flushed,” Harai observes helpfully, and I want to groan.
“We should keep moving,” I say quickly, gesturing ahead. “Lots of maze to explore, right?”
As we continue forward, I catch Izzy mouthing “Later” at me with narrowed eyes. I nod, knowing I’ll have to come up with a better explanation by then. But for now, I focus on memorizing the path ahead, trying to ignore how every icy surface reminds me of Ivrael’s cool touch against my heated skin.
The maze might be designed to be deadly, but right now, these feelings burning through me feel far more dangerous than any trap Prince Jonyk could devise.
But it doesn’t take long for the ice maze to entrance me. It’s magical.
At least at first.
All around us, the icy walls glitter and shimmer, some of them so polished I can see our reflections in them, distorted and stretched. And the moonlight bounces off the walls like we’re walking through hallways full of hundreds of mirrors.
With a shiver, Izzy says, “We can take a left turn ahead. Let’s keep turning left whenever we can. At least that way we’ll be able to backtrack if we need to.”
“Backtrack to what?”
“I don’t know. The entrance? Anything that might help us find our way out?”
As the four of us wend our way through the maze, nothing makes a sound except for the creaking of the ice, the crunch of our boots on the snow.
“Why did I agree to this?” Izzy mutters under her breath.
I assume her words aren’t meant for me, but I answer them anyway, giving emphasis to the lie we’re acting out. “Because you want it to be clear we’re totally on board with Ivrael’s plan?”
She blows out a laugh. “That’s it.”
We make five left turns without anything changing. For all I can tell, we might be going in perfect circles.
“This place is fucking creepy,” Izzy finally says, halting at a Y-split in the path.
“Welcome to life among the Icecaix,” I say dryly.
Rhaela laughs.
“ Every time I think I see an exit,” Harai says, “it closes.”
“Caix tricks,” Rhaela snarls. “We should not agree to any of their entertainment suggestions when we get to court.”
“Icecaix entertainment does tend to run to the macabre,” I say.
“I half expect to find a dead body at the center of the maze,” Izzy adds with a slight laugh.
“At least that would make sense,” Rhaela says.
They keep talking, but Izzy’s words have made me think. “I have an idea. The goal of a maze is to get to the center and then back out again, right? So what if in order to get out, we have to go all the way in first?”
“You mean, like solve the maze?” Izzy asks.
“Yeah—get to the center. Then we can get out again.”
“Surely it couldn’t be that simple,” Rhaela says.
“I’m willing to try anything,” Harai announces.
“I’m glad we’re together,” Izzy says quietly to Rhaela.
I need to encourage that connection, I decide. It might be helpful to have these firelord twins on our side—even if they are the daughters of Ivrael’s co-conspirator.
If we’re going to leave the Icecaix lands with the firelords, we’ll need all the help we can get.
For a moment, we all stand huddled together, glancing around.
“So which way should we go next?” Harai finally asks, then points to our right. “That way?”
“Couldn’t you two turn into dragons or something?” Izzy waves her hand, gesturing between the firelord twins and the tall hedge woven from the ice-plants. “And then… I don’t know, burn your way out? Melt the ice with your fire? Fly over the walls?”
Rhaela laughs. “You don’t know much about firelords, do you?”
“No,” I say. “We don’t exactly have a lot of them where we come from.”
“But we’d like to learn,” Izzy says eagerly, and then cringes. I can practically see her silently berating herself for saying something stupid.
Rhaela falls into step beside my sister as Harai leads us in the direction she pointed.
“We don’t shift for the first time until we’re adults,” she says. I flash back to the story of the Caix woman with the firelord pregnancy, the one that Adefina had told me. I guess that hadn’t been true.
“Have you and your sister shifted yet?” Izzy asks Rhaela.
“No, though it could happen any day.”
“I still don’t understand why Father is taking us to the peace summit with our Change so close,” Harai says, turning around and walking backward as she speaks.
Something shimmers in the air behind her and I shout, “Watch out!”
At the same moment, Rhaela leaps forward, knife already in hand. She lands atop the thing that has separated out from the ice walls—a creature well over six feet tall, maybe seven, made up of tangled ice vines.
It opens its mouth and roars out a sound like an avalanche rolling down a mountain. The moonlight flashes off its sharp teeth, and I lunge forward, grabbing Izzy’s arm and jerking her behind me—as if I can do anything to protect her from this Caix-created monster.
Rhaela, on the other hand, clings to its back and at least tries to hurt it as she stabs that knife of hers into its neck over and over again. I don’t see how it can be killed—none of the knife strikes cause it to bleed, falter, or even flinch.
But then, Rhaela shouts, “Now!”
Harai spins around and throws her body into the air, kicking one foot into the thing’s chin and coming off the ground in as badass a move as I’ve ever seen in any action movie, much less real life.
Its neck weakened by Rhaela’s icepick moves, the creature’s head flies off and sails over the wall of the maze. The loss of its head doesn’t stop the creature entirely. However, it does seem to affect its ability to navigate as the monster begins reeling around, its arms outstretched.
Rhaela drops off its back and gives it a kick in its ass, sending it stumbling away from us.
Then the fierce firelord twin says, “Now—run.”
She waits until Izzy and I start running behind Harai, and she takes up the rear. As far as I can tell, we run haphazardly, Harai leading us but with no care for which way we turn.
After we make several switchbacks, Harai slows, and then stops. Izzy and I are breathing hard; the firelord twins aren’t.
We all stare at each other silently for a long moment. I don’t know who begins laughing first. But before long, we’re all hanging on each other, tears streaming from our eyes. I’m not even entirely certain why—it isn’t like the monster had been all that funny in the moment.
More like terrifying.
Which is probably why we react the way we do. Stress followed by relief, and all that.
The laughter finally dies away, and we all catch our breath.
“Do you think it really could have hurt us?” Izzy asks.
I shrug. “I give it fifty-fifty. It’s certainly a Caix kind of thing to do, though pointing monsters at your guests seems like an odd choice for a peace summit activity.”
“Duke Ivrael is supposed to have guaranteed our safety while we’re here,” Harai says. “That thing didn’t seem very safe.”
“Did you see its fangs?” Izzy asks.
“I was too busy trying to cut its head off.” Rhaela grins.
“It had huge pointy teeth made of icicles,” I say.
“Maybe something went wrong?” Harai suggests. “Like… maybe all the monsters were supposed to be turned off or something, but that one got missed.”
“Father said we could protect the Evans ladies,” Rhaela says. “It seems he knew what we were walking into.”
I don’t reply, but in any case, it doesn’t really matter. The monster is dealt with. I’m just glad we were with Rhaela and Harai when it showed up.
Finally, the four of us once again begin trying to find our way to the center of the maze.
By my estimation, getting to the center of the maze takes more than an hour, but in that time, we learn more about the firelords than we could have learned in a year of court lessons or miserable dinners.
I walk beside Harai as in front of us, Izzy and Rhaela stroll along, their heads tilted together as they murmur. I hope Izzy realizes this flirtation she’s striking up is probably doomed. After all, our ultimate goal is to head home—even if we have a stopover in the firelords’ realm.
“Seems like back there would’ve been a good time for your first shift,” I say to Harai as we’re making our way along a curved passageway.
Harai turns a horrified look on me. “That would have been terrible.”
“Why?” I ask.
“The first shift is the hardest. It’s painful and difficult and takes longer than any of the others.”
“So you’re vulnerable during your first shift?”
“That’s part of it,” she agrees. “But also… it doesn’t always work.”
“What doesn’t? The shift?”
“Yeah. First shifts go wrong about ten percent of the time—that’s the number they tell us, anyway.”
“So what happens? You just don’t turn into a dragon? Like ever?”
Harai’s expression is solemn. She tilts her head forward, and that curtain of hair falls down to obscure her face for a moment before she brushes it back. “Worse. Those who can’t shift—it means their bodies can’t handle the trauma of the Change. They die.”
“Oh, no,” I breathe out.
Harai and I fall silent. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but I can’t quit wondering what it must be like to grow up knowing there’s a ten percent chance you won’t make it through the firelord equivalent of puberty. “I’m so sorry,” I finally say.
She gives a little one-shouldered shrug. “It’s all right. Ten percent is really kind of a small risk.” Her face brightens. “Besides, no one in our family has ever not made it through the Change.”
“That’s good.” I berate myself for how lame I sound.
After that, we fall silent, and a few moments later, Harai and I catch up with Izzy and Rhaela. The spiky-haired twin stands at the edge of a switchback turn with her arms crossed, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong?” I ask with a frown.
“Take a look.” Izzy points around the corner.
I lean out to see around the corner.
“Oh, hell no,” I say, backing away from the pitch-black corridor stretching out in front of me. I glance down and see a straight line of shadow at the edge of the path.
It’s like the light just stops there for no reason.
There is no way I’m going down that path.
And nothing anyone says can convince me.