Chapter 16
Idream of the room with the steps.
In the dream, I fall up, down, and sideways, one set of stairs sucking me into its pull after another. I fall and fall, never landing, just going around and around and around.
My eyes flutter open. Just for a second. I go around and around and around.
My head throbs, a violent drumbeat inside my skull. Still—around and around and around.
I try to touch my head, try to rub away the ache, but my hands won’t move. Something stretches my arms wide, pins them in place. My feet, too. And still, I go around and around and around.
My eyes fly open. The world whirls, a nauseating kaleidoscope that refuses to stay still.
Pain bites into my wrists and ankles. I tug, but I can’t move. I’m…fastened to something, spreadeagled, my arms and legs tied.
Only the world isn’t spinning. I am. Because I’m lashed to a frame of some type. A…wheel? Around it goes, taking me with it, spin after spin after spin.
Ishanna help me.
I try to fixate on something, anything, but I can’t focus long enough to make sense of this whirlpool of color. Gravity yanks at me from every direction as I cycle from right-side-up to upside-down and back again. My stomach heaves, but thankfully, I have nothing to throw up.
Laughter bombards me, cruel and delighted.
Everything jerks to a stop suddenly. My head cycles through a few more disoriented revolutions, my eyes jittering back and forth before finally stabilizing.
I can make out trees. A dusky sky, just past sunset. And the toad-creatures from the hedge maze, only now there are four instead of two. Their beady orange eyes drink me in, the glee there only fueling the churn in my stomach.
One rests his hand on some kind of lever that sprouts from the ground. “Wakey wake,” he says, his gloating so thick it oozes over my skin. “Pretties can’t sleep when they’re on the wheel.”
My pendant has somehow ended up in my mouth, and I spit it out, the cool metal thunking against my chest. “Get me off this thing,” I gasp. “Take me down right now.”
The toad-creature laughs. “No, no. Pretties don’t get taken down. They get played with. They get enjoyed.”
A bolt of pure terror punches into me. I thrash, funneling every ounce of strength into fighting my restraints, but it’s no use.
The ropes circle my wrists so tightly that trying to escape only makes my hands go numb.
“Untie me,” I shout, my voice breaking. “I let you live. In the maze. You begged me to spare you, and I did.”
The creature grins, his smile twisted by those grimy tusks. “Yes. That was nice. Maybe it’s a nice pretty. Not so nasty after all.”
A scream rushes up my throat. I manage to trap it behind my teeth, reshaping it into words. “I gave you mercy. Now you have to grant me the same.”
He gives me a you-ought-to-know-better look. “Pretties give mercy. Not get it.”
More laughter erupts from the thing’s friends, but I barely hear it. Icy terror blasts through me, so powerful my vision goes dark.
I spared him. I obeyed Ishanna, let him keep his wretched life.
And this is what happens?
This has to be a dream. A nightmare. I can’t possibly die like this, in this awful maze. I can’t end up tortured to death, or raped, or whatever these horrendous things plan to do to me, simply because I refused to take a life.
Oh, goddess. Please, no.
The toad-things start talking—discussing how best to “enjoy” me, I think—but I can’t follow what’s happening, can only fight for breath while my lungs seize and my pulse roars in my ears. I buck and jerk again, but that only cinches the ropes tighter.
The creatures’ discussion escalates to a squabble. One insists on cutting my clothes off while the other three argue for some kind of game.
“Strip it bare,” the first one shrieks. “Make it squirm. Make it scream.”
“But we have its knife,” another shouts. “And now I want to see some pretty blood.”
My stomach convulses. Sure enough, one of the horrible creatures clutches my dagger. He jabs it toward the others, driving them back. A scuffle breaks out as they push and snarl and shove.
A ragged sob catches in my throat, but I mash it back down. I have to think. Calm myself. Get out of this, somehow.
I close my eyes. Force my mind to settle. It only halfway works, but a sensible question manages to peek through the chaos. What do I have? What can I use?
My gyre, maybe. It’s still in my pocket, digging against my thigh.
But I can’t get to it. With my arms and legs tied, my means of escape might as well be stranded on the moon. Aside from that, my knife has been taken, my vial lost, the pebbles in my pockets useless here. Which leaves me with…
A spark catches inside me. My bracelet. If I can manage to reach it, spin the orb, I can talk to Amriel again. He could send his Shadow to find me. Save me.
One of the toad-creatures punches another in the face. The second one screeches, dark blood pouring from his nose as he fastens his hands around his assailant’s throat.
Good. The longer they fight, the longer I can strategize.
I turn my head, grateful the toad-things didn’t tie that much down, at least. The wood beneath me is pock-marked, stained with dark splotches I don’t want to know the genesis of, but I get my bracelet in my eyeline. If I can just pin the orb between my wrist and the wheel, rotate it a fraction—
Every tendon in my shoulder strains. Crystal squeaks against wood.
A quarter of an inch is all I get. But hope flashes through me. I arch my wrist, pinning the orb again, pushing harder this time.
Another quarter inch. Another.
The creatures’ fight reaches a fever pitch. One rolls on the ground now, moaning, covered in blood. The one that wanted to cut my clothes off, I think. I hope.
Another quarter inch.
Light flares from my wrist. My lungs expand, brightness blossoming in my veins.
“Princess?” Amriel’s voice fills my ears. “Are you all right? Where are you? Why can’t I see anything?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my entire being centering around the timbre of his voice. The sound is a candle flaring in the darkness. It’s more soothing than any elixir, more gratifying than any prayer.
“Help,” I rasp. “I’m trapped. Captured. And I need help. I need the Shadow.”
“What?” Panic laces Amriel’s voice. “Where are you? What’s happening?”
I turn my wrist as best I can, straining to point the orb toward my face. I have just enough leeway to glimpse the edge if I press my cheek flat to the wheel. Amriel stares out through the sliver I can see, horror flooding his features. “Sariah?”
“The Shadow,” I say, the words hardly more than a warble. “Please. It’s past sunset. Is he himself? Can you send him to me?”
“Sariah, you’re… I…” His eyes go liquid, then turn glassy, as if he’s looking past me to something else. “He’s looking for you. But he’s lost. Following too many trails.”
A wet laugh breaks loose from my chest. Dispersing my scent across the maze must have worked better than I’d hoped, but now I’m on my own because of it. Kind of how I’m on this wheel because I obeyed Ishanna’s Book.
“Tell me where you are,” Amriel says hurriedly.
I swallow my jangling nerves and survey my surroundings.
I’m in a meadow with a dead birch at its center.
A single crooked branch sprouts from its crown, like a clawed hand pointing at the sky.
Behind it, shadows darken the horizon, meaning more lost hours, but I can’t think about that right now.
I search for the castle and fail to find it, so it must be behind me.
I describe it all to Amriel.
“You’re facing east, then,” he says. “But who has you? Who took you?”
“Ugly green monsters. They’re arguing about what to do with me next.”
He grimaces, curses rolling off his tongue.
“Trolls. They’re barely capable of logic and completely incapable of morals.
Which means you don’t have time to wait for my Shadow.
” He lunges out of the frame and reappears a moment later, not bothering to hide the gyre in his hand.
Already, its light flares, its rings humming to life…
“No!” A scream rips from my throat. “You can’t…
” Panic scrambles my thoughts, but my mouth keeps moving, keeps making words.
“You can’t come in here. If you die, then so will your Shadow.
He won’t be able to save me. You’ll both be gone, and these things will do whatever they want to me. They’ll kill me.”
That hits him right in the chest. He flinches back, the light of his gyre dimming. “Fuck,” he bites out. “Fuck.”
He sweeps a hand over his face, his shoulders heaving. But, for all that terror still chews apart my insides, the sick feeling in my belly uncurls a little.
At least Amriel won’t sacrifice himself right in front of me.
He gasps his way through a few more breaths. Then something…happens. His shoulders lower, his hand falling from his face. Something steals over him, a deadly sort of calm.
“It’s going to be all right,” he says, his voice steadying. “I’m going to make it all right.”
I stare. And suddenly understand, with vivid clarity, why we lost the war. How the fae managed to kill so very many of us.
Because I’m no longer looking at my panicked mate. I’m looking at a commander right now. A king.
One who’s clearly done this before. Or something like it, at least.
“I want you to listen, all right?” His tone doesn’t waver from that reassuring frequency. “Tell me what you hear. Right now.”
I suck in a breath, my ears straining. My captors shout over one another while birds settle in for the night, but nothing else breaks the stillness. “The trolls,” I croak. “Birds.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. What am I listening for?”
“Just wait.” His tone remains even. “We’ll try another door. Give us a second.”
I stare into his eyes. His beautiful, soulful, steadying eyes. Why did I ever think they looked dead? They don’t. They burn like stars, ones I can steer by. And somehow, that’s not just Amriel looking back at me right now, but both of them.