Chapter 23
I’M HALFWAY UP the stairs when the Collector shuffles into the space beside me sheepishly. They hang their head and take my bag. At the top, they offer to keep watch while I rest.
As I lie down, they whisper, “We were afraid.”
I reach out and pat their clawed foot. “I know.”
It’s only when I wake from my snooze that I wonder: “How did you get up here? Did you have to face the choice with the key?”
They shake their great head. “We are of the labyrinth. We may move freely between the levels.”
I sit up. “So you could just… carry me through?”
The hair on their face blows as they huff. “We would if we could. But you are a supplicant, not of the labyrinth. You must face the trials before moving on. And we still face the dangers.” They glance back toward the previous tier and shudder before helping me to my feet.
Once more, we set off.
When I return with the sunset, Min is waiting for me, arms folded, lips pursed. Before she even opens her mouth, I know I’m in trouble. I wince and wait.
“I told you not to make any bargains, and now I find that you’ve…” She blasts out a sigh and shakes her head.
I curl up on the settee as she delivers her lecture and breakfast appears on a side table. She grabs a pastry, continually talking around each bite.
“And a bargain with the king no less. What were you thinking?”
“That I might get a chance to go home?”
She exhales, shoulders sinking as she puts down the remainder of the pastry. “Your family. You miss them.”
Lowen’s grin comes to mind. It’s an ache to not see it in person. Since he was born, there hasn’t been a day in my life that I haven’t seen his face. Until I came here. The realization makes my eyes burn, but I smile and shrug at Min.
I almost ask, “Wouldn’t you miss yours?” But then I remember. Not all families are the same.
“You are too good for this place, Rhiannon.” She huffs. “Too good for me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t tr—”
“It’s true.” She plops into the seat opposite, elbows resting on her knees, head bowed. “I need to make a confession.”
Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this? I set down my cup of coffee.
“When you arrived, the king ordered me to get close to you. To earn your trust. And then to tell him everything.”
The few mouthfuls I’ve eaten are lead. My illness. The king knows. He knows. “But you promised—”
“Not that.” Her head shoots up, brow crinkled. “I kept my promise. I didn’t tell him that you were ill.”
I flop back into the chair, relief a physical force tugging on every aching muscle. “Why not?”
She exhales through her nose, frowning at the low coffee table lying between us.
“I know what it means to be considered weak in this court. And I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.
Not even my worst enemy.” She presses her lips together and lifts her gaze to mine.
“And you are far from my enemy, Rhiannon.”
I’m not sure what to make of her, of what I thought might be the start of a friendship.
“I wanted to think of you as one at first. But then you were… kind. And”—her face screws up—“you didn’t treat me differently.
And then—then you helped me. You made sure the king credited my work and rewarded it.
You invited me to spend time with Astrid.
” She stares at me, lips parted as she shakes her head, eyes gleaming.
“And today you chose to save my life over going home. The thing you want most in all the world. How am I meant to go on betraying you after that?” She rubs her mouth.
“No, I won’t tell the king another thing, and I’ll never betray you again.
I swear it. You have my loyalty, whether you want it or not. ”
I hold her gaze a long time. There’s a crack in her. It has split apart the too-bright smile she always gives me. A too-bright smile to win me over, I understand now.
It’s no surprise that she spied on me for her king. But it still stings.
Though I’m sure stopping is no trifling matter. “I can’t imagine he’ll like it if you tell him there’ll be no more reports about his fiancée.”
“Oh, he won’t.”
“And if he ever finds out you kept my illness from him?”
She sits back, hands behind her head as she gives the ceiling a sardonic grin. “He could have my heart delivered on a platter, if he wanted—if he found out. I’m hoping I’m unimportant enough to escape his wrath.”
That’s quite the gamble. “Small fry. That’s what my pa would call it.”
“Hmm.” It’s almost a laugh, but quickly turns into a heavy sigh. She leans forward, hands clasped, eyebrows pinched. “Do you think we can start again?”
I turn my coffee cup on its saucer, lining the handle up with the black hellebore design. In this world, what she’s doing—what she’s done—sounds tantamount to treason. She may have let me down, but she’s also risked a lot for me.
We can’t jump straight to the friendship I thought was brewing, but starting again? “I think we can do that.”
Her first penitent act is helping me get ready for bed, and I drop into it.
I wake some hours later, pleasantly surprised to find no one’s knocked at the door and woken me.
But I know better than to think I can push my luck.
There’s always some meal or appearance in the Great Hall where the king’s bride-to-be is required.
So, although I’m still tired, I drag myself out of bed and work on making myself presentable.
“Is that deliberate timing?” I ask when I see Drystan’s face behind me in the mirror.
He cocks his head in question.
“You somehow manage to always appear when I’m brushing my hair. I’m starting to wonder if you have a hair fetish.”
His mouth twists as he appraises the freshly brushed lengths. “If I did, it wouldn’t be for yours.”
Of course not. It would be for the perfect, shimmering locks of some other fae. Humans are mortal. Frail. Weak. And probably quite ugly to fae. I hadn’t considered that.
Before I can acknowledge his retort, his eyebrows shoot up. “I didn’t come here to insult you, actually… I have a peace offering.”
I’m pretty sure my eyes bulge at that. “You have a…? I didn’t know you knew the meaning of the word.”
He exhales through his nose, expression flattening as if he’s holding back another rejoinder. “Annon. You’re testing my resolve to be… nice.”
“Another word I didn’t know was in your vocabulary.” But I flash him a playful grin as I turn from the mirror.
In the King of Death’s arms is a gray cat.
I stare. It doesn’t disappear, and he doesn’t threaten to hand it over to a fae with a spit over a fire.
The cat merely stares back with bright green eyes. The roundness of its cheeks suggest it’s a male.
I’ve never had a pet. Pa always says cats are good for ratting and stealing fish and not much else, and Annem’s afraid of dogs—says they make her think of hellhounds, which she’s been deathly afraid of since she came to Albion, even though she’s never seen one.
Now I’ve seen them, I can understand the terror.
The cat pokes his dark gray nose out like he wants to sniff me. My throat feels suddenly thick, because he’s so damn adorable, I want to make unnecessarily high-pitched noises.
I turn wide eyes on Drystan, and he holds out the cat. “He’s… for me?”
“Peace offering, like I said. I saw how you’d grown attached to Min so quickly, and it made me wonder if you were lonely, so…” He offers the cat again, who starts squirming as if he doesn’t like having empty air beneath him.
That’s almost thoughtful. And he didn’t even say lonely like it was an insult.
I straighten in my seat and let him deposit the cat in my lap.
The cat sniffs my hand when I hold it out, then rubs his cheek against it.
His thick fur is soft, but there’s something odd about the sensation.
A strangeness I can’t name. It isn’t cold or wet but something adjacent to that. Something that’s not quite substantial.
“He likes you.” Drystan nods, the corner of his mouth twitching like this is a victory for him.
Sure enough, the creature is purring as he rubs his face all over my hand. “All right, all right,” I chuckle, and set to work rubbing behind his ears. “What’s his name? Or does the taboo about names apply to animals too?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t. You get to choose.” He pulls over one of the armchairs from the fireplace. He’s sticking around for a while then.
I busy myself with stroking my new feline friend, because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about having the king in my space after that odd moment in the labyrinth. There’s this squirmy feeling in my belly that I don’t want to examine too closely.
“I’ll have a think.” I don’t look at him. The cat curls up in my lap, apparently satisfied he’s found a good spot and that I’ll continue stroking him, which I do while he rumbles.
“I’m impressed with how well you’re doing in the labyrinth so far.”
My head whips up. “Impressed? You didn’t sound impressed by my choice yesterday. And I could’ve died if I hadn’t worked out how to appease the Collector.”
“Do you think I would’ve let that happen?”
“I don’t know, those teeth were pretty damn close to my jugular.”
He huffs through his nose and waves off my concerns. His expression says, “They weren’t that close.”
I scowl at him, hand falling still on the cat’s soft fur. He might consider my brief, mortal life as unimportant, but… “Min could’ve died.”
“Why do you care so much?”
My gods, he is exasperating. Sometimes it’s like he isn’t a real person, but a mannequin that’s been enchanted to move like a person and talk like a person, but is missing something vital.
“Because friends care about each other.” I speak slowly, since this is a concept he seems to have difficulty understanding.
“They want to make each other happy. Keep each other alive.”
I could never admit it to Drystan, but this is why it’s easy to get past my parents’ deception. I’m happy I could play a part in saving my father’s life, albeit in a roundabout way.
With a little sound of annoyance, the cat twists in my lap, exposing his tummy. His little gray toes are so adorable, they ease my frustration at Drystan. Maybe that was part of his plan. The cat is a shield. A very cute one.
Lips pressed together, Drystan reaches forward and rubs the cat’s belly.
There’s more squirming and the purr turns into a deeper rumble.
“Is that why you invited Min on your ride with Astrid—to make her happy?” He doesn’t look at me while he asks the question, but I feel his attention, keen like a blade.
I don’t want to give away that Min is attracted to Astrid—that isn’t my secret to share. So I make a noncommittal sound. “It isn’t fun being cooped up in your fortress, you know—even if you’re not trapped here.”
“You alerted the labyrinth to the fact that you care for her. Its tendrils spread through the land. It knows.” With creases between his eyebrows, he looks up at me and I still under the full force of his attention, the solemnity of it.
The way he’s leaning forward to pet the cat, puts his face perhaps a foot from mine, making it all the harder to withstand his intensity.
“I told you emotions were weakness, and yet you’ve still shown affection for her. ”
I swallow but I can’t reply. I didn’t mean to endanger Min. And yet I can’t feel bad for appreciating her and trying to help her, not when I’ve seen how it makes her smile.
“The things we care for are always taken away.” The softness of his voice cuts into me.
There’s a story behind this warning. Something that’s carved its way into his chest, leaving him rough and raw.
The quiet between us stretches on.
His hand has fallen still on the cat’s belly, and tentatively, I cover it with mine. “What did you care for that was taken away?”
He flinches like I’ve hit him, hand snatching away as the cat bolts.
Spine straight, Drystan rises. The intensity of his gaze is still there, but where it was penetrating—a point that connected us—now it’s a barred door.
“Thanks to my mother’s deal with your incompetent father, I have been denied the only thing I ever wanted.
And for what?” He glares down at me. “All so I can marry some weak, magicless human who doesn’t even have a name. ”
I grind my teeth, then spit out, “My father isn’t—”
But the king is already gone, leaving only the door clicking shut.