Chapter 22 #2
“It’s… I need your help. I need to know if I can transport something into the maze, by gyre. I can obviously get myself in there, but can I also take something along?”
A line appears between her brows. “Well, sure. You should be able to. I’ve transported things by gyre plenty of times.”
“Right, but my gyre is different. It can’t take more than one person at a time, but do you think it could still take an object?”
She peers into my eyes, her focus narrowing. “I don’t see why not. Your clothes always go with you. Anything you’re holding. Why, what’re you thinking?”
Hope flickers at the center of my chest, and I grab hold, crafting my words from its heat. “A boat. I need a boat. Preferably a small one, with a paddle. Something sturdy enough to withstand a lake of acid for thirty seconds, at least.”
Her eyes pop. “A lake of acid?”
I give her a rueful smile. “The labyrinth isn’t a nice place. But I’m so close to the end. I just need a boat. And maybe some luck.”
“A lake of acid,” she repeats, her voice flat.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m this close to shore.” I hold up a thumb and forefinger. “I just need something to jump from.”
She stares for another beat, then drags her hands down her face and props her hands on her hips, a look of concentration passing over her features.
“Okay. A boat that can survive a lake of acid. Great. That’s great.
But we don’t have any boats here. I could get one, maybe, but it’d have to come from the Cloisters. Do you need it right now?”
“Yes. As soon as possible. Before Amriel wakes up and realizes I’m gone.”
“Before he…” Her head tilts, her look turning sly. “Wait. Sweetheart. Did you—?”
“Yes,” I rush out. “And it was incredible. It was everything you said it’d be. And now I need to help him. I need to save him. Which means I need a boat.”
Off to the side, Calen laughs under his breath. He mutters something that sounds like, “Mates.”
Ravenna ignores him and takes me by the arms, her eyes brightening. “I knew it. I knew it would happen. And I get it. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll go get my gyre from my room, transport to the Cloisters, find a boat for you and bring it back.”
I have Amriel’s gyre out of my pocket before she can finish. “Could you use this one?”
She stares down. “Doesn’t that belong to—”
“Him. Yes. But you should take it. And don’t let him have it back. Don’t let him come into the labyrinth. Don’t let him get himself killed for no reason.”
She must realize that’s exactly the sort of thing Amriel would do, because she swallows hard and sweeps the gyre into her hands. “Right. Yes. I’ll hold on to it.”
“Good. And you.” I spin to Calen, who regards me with suspicion, his arms crossed over his chest. “If Amriel comes for me before Ravenna gets back, I need you to distract him. Keep him away long enough for me to get into the maze. And keep him out of there until I break the hourglass.”
He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You want me to keep a man from his mate?”
“Well. Yes.”
He looks at me askance. “Do you have any idea what you’re actually asking?”
I pause, my tongue tripping over itself. “Well…no. Not really. But this is my last chance to break his curse. If I don’t go now, he’s never going to let me.”
Calen lets out a sigh that seems to empty his entire body of air, but ultimately nods. “Fine. But I won’t do it in this jacket. This one’s my favorite.”
I scan him, taking in the deep black velvet of his evening coat, the glittering embroidery swirling down the sleeves. “It is very nice.”
“Take her to our room,” Ravenna commands, Amriel’s gyre already flaring in her fingers. “I’ll meet you back there as soon as I can. With a boat.” She tosses me a wink.
The gyre’s whine rises to a scream. Reality tears open, the force of it tossing me back a step. Then she’s gone.
Calen regards me for a moment. “You’re really going to do this?”
“I’m going to try,” I say, and something happens to my voice. It turns sharp, steel-edged, finding some new register I’ve never accessed before. These are words I could grab hold of and cut someone with, if I had to.
“Hmm.” Calen coughs into a fist. “The bond’s coming along nicely then, I see.”
“The—” I stop, my brows snapping together. “What?”
He gives me a look of suppressed amusement, then inclines his head and spins on his heel.
I scurry after him down the passageway, then another.
The filigreed beads in his hair clack with every step, and I follow him until we arrive at a vine-laden door.
Calen ushers me into a sunset-soaked room similar to mine, only filled to the brim with armoires and mirrors, with the bric-a-brac of a shared life.
A half-full bottle of perfume sits on a vanity, its pump tassel puddled on the wood.
It must have only recently been spritzed, because the whole room smells of lavender and vanilla.
A low bed occupies the center of the space while various charcoal sketches paper the walls, each one depicting a woman wearing a wind-blown dress or hanging on to a flying scrap of silk.
I step close, drawn to the movement in each picture, to the dynamism the artist has managed to capture. “Wow. Are these yours?”
“No.” Calen pulls open an armoire to reveal a row of hanging jackets. “Ravenna’s.”
My eyes pop. The sketches are incredible, each one an homage to femininity and joy. “She draws?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He shrugs out of his coat and hangs it up, then turns to me, his fingers on the buttons of his silk shirt. He pauses, scrutinizes my expression. “What? You didn’t think we just fight and fuck and eat all day, did you?”
My face heats. “Well…” I toe the floor with my boot.
He laughs. “Shadows below. Really? What’ve you been doing this whole time?”
My hand finds the back of my neck, trying to scrub away the heat there, but he’s right. I haven’t given the fae a fair chance. I haven’t sought to learn about their ways, haven’t even stepped foot in the library Amriel spoke of.
But I will. I should.
Later. Some day. If I ever get the chance.
Calen shucks his shirt and tosses it onto the bed. I avert my gaze, excruciatingly aware that I’m alone in a room with Ravenna’s half-naked mate. Then again, I’ve already seen him in much more compromising positions, so maybe I’m just being prudish.
When I glance back, he’s shifted into his goblin form, and I startle at the change. “What’s that for?”
He flexes his shoulders, splays his claws. “You want me to stop him, right?”
Something twists in my chest. “Yes, but not by hurting him. Please don’t hurt him.”
His baritone laugh fills the room. “I think it’s much more likely that he’ll hurt me, but sure. I’ll leave him alive. Just for you.” He grins, a fang-filled threat that makes me shiver.
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s not meant to be.” He crosses to a chest at the foot of the bed and withdraws a coil of rope, tests its strength by snapping it between two hands.
“Calen?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“What’s that for?”
His gaze cuts to mine. “You want me to keep him from his mate. I’ll have to physically restrain him. Tie him up. Even that may not be enough.”
I pinch between my closed eyes and turn away. “Oh, okay. Lovely.” Whatever it takes, I guess.
My fingers tap out a rhythm on my leg as I pace. At any moment, Ravenna will appear with my means of survival.
But a minute dies away, then another, and nothing happens.
I peek through the window at the sinking sun. “What’s taking so long? How long does it take to find a rowboat?”
Calen shrugs. “Ravenna knows the Cloisters better than anyone. So…this long.”
A huff overflows my lips as my boots punch out a rhythm across the floor.
I dip a hand into my pocket, cradling my gyre in my glove.
I’ll be ready when Ravenna gets here. I’ll jump into the boat and hang on tight, make sure it comes with me into the labyrinth.
Then I’ll paddle to shore, or jump, or whatever it takes to survive. To keep going.
To save Amriel. To free him.
A commotion rises, out in the hall. I spin toward Calen and find his expression tight.
A moment later, someone pounds on the door. “Sariah? Are you in there? What’re you doing in Ravenna’s room?”
I suppress a wince. Amriel sounds angry. Panicked.
“Sariah!” His pounding grows louder. “You’re not going back into the labyrinth, are you?”
Calen and I exchange glances.
“Because you can’t.” His voice rises to a shout. “I forbid it. I command you not to. I command you to go home, to—”
“She’s not in here,” Calen calls. “You’re wasting your time.”
A moment of silence, then a snarl, a rattle of the knob. “I know the smell of my own mate. What’re you doing with her? Is Ravenna in there, too?”
“No. Now go away. I’m busy.”
Amriel’s snarls turn frenzied. “Why’re you busy with my mate? Alone?” Something solid bashes against the door.
I spear Calen with a pointed, wide-eyed look. “Why’d you say that?” I whisper. “Now he’s going to break it down.”
He gives me a bored look. “He was going to break it down, anyway. At least this way, he’ll go for me, first.”
“I—” I retreat an inch. “Okay. Good thinking, actually.”
“Sariah! Let me in!” The door frame shudders beneath the force of Amriel’s rage. Each thud of flesh against wood drives a sympathetic stab of pain through me, but I brace my feet, my muscles knitting as I wait for Ravenna to show.
A crack arrows down the center of the door, the wood groaning as its surrender becomes imminent.
Anticipation squeezes my airway, my pulse shortening to a rattle of jumbled heartbeats. Calen uncoils the rope and stations himself by the door, his feet braced, one massive blue shoulder lowered in readiness.