Chapter 34
THE COLLECTOR GRABS my wrist. I drop my pencil as they take off running and yank me after them. Somehow, I keep hold of my notebook.
My boots slap on the stone, a loud signal of where we are compared to the Collector’s fae silence as they move. I glance over my shoulder but see nothing. Maybe they’re mistaken. “What are we running from?”
“The Devourer.” Like that explains everything.
“And that is?” I pant as we round a corner.
“Not like the creature that wanted to eat your friend.” Their head turns left and right as we stop at a crossroads, giving me a moment to catch my breath.
They throw a fearful glance over their shoulder, then drag me left.
“This is a monster. Can’t be bargained with.
It kills anything it sees. Mindless. Violent.
” Only the slithering voice speaks, soft, urgent.
The others have kept quiet since we heard the shriek.
That alone puts me on edge.
But there haven’t been any more shrieks. Just that one. Maybe it doesn’t know we’re here and now—
The air tears apart again. Louder. Closer. Harsher in my ears.
The Collector whimpers and speeds up. I can barely keep up, stumbling, breathless, trying to listen for the sound of pursuit, despite my ringing ears. My joints complain, but they’re quiet compared to the Devourer’s cries.
Left. Right. Another left.
We reach another crossroads and somehow the creature’s shriek comes from our right. “Are there two—?”
The Collector drags me ahead and down the next long corridor; the sky is blocked out.
For a second, I think it’s the monster. My stomach drops.
Then I register the glittering black cliff that marks the line between the third tier and the fourth. Looming, higher and higher, consuming the sky. Cracked. Chipped. Sharp and smooth. Unscalable.
And yet close enough I can see all this detail, including the little, scrubby trees that somehow gain purchase on the sheer rock.
The thought gives me a burst of energy, and I keep to the Collector’s heels.
Another shriek cuts through the air, just as the corridor opens up to left and right.
We spill into a small square at the cliff’s base. There’s a clattering sound behind us. Claws? Hooves? A weapon?
“No.” The Collector’s shoulders slump as all their voices speak. “No.”
Hands on knees, I fight to catch my breath. “What’s wr—?”
I step around them and see exactly what’s wrong.
A staircase rises from this little square, hugging the cliff face—an unmistakable route to the next level.
Except, around forty feet up, they drop away.
A dead end.
Higher up, hidden in the shadows—sunlight gleams on the edge of more stairs. Some sideways. Some upside down. Narrow platforms stud the way in between.
There was once a continuous structure here, but it’s slumped over time—a cliff face falling, its footing eroded by the sea.
I squint into the shadows, trying to pick out a clear path. “Maybe there’s a way?”
Eyes rolling in fear, the Collector looks back.
There are no other corridors off this square. The clattering comes closer.
Their eyes narrow. “No way back,” the slithering voice whispers.
“Come on,” the deep one bites out as they grab my wrist.
I’m dragged up the stairs, less than half-running, mostly stumbling.
Sheets and shards of obsidian litter the way. The Collector sweeps much of it out of the way with their stringy hair, but I still have to pick my route.
We reach a flat landing at the top of the stairs and the dead end.
Still very much a dead end. The shadows hide no narrow ridge we can creep along. There’s a small outcrop around a dozen feet away, not even big enough for me and the Collector to stand on together, then another sheer drop between it and a half-slumped section of staircase.
The Collector makes a low keening sound that nips at my own fear, sharpening it to terror that claws at my throat and makes my eyes dart.
“There has to be something,” I mutter. “Something.” If I die here, Lowen will never know. He’ll keep holding on, waiting for me, feeling guilty about that damn mirror. Or is it that I’ll die guilty if I don’t apologize?
That’s a puzzle for later. Right now all that matters is not getting devoured.
I look up at the sheer, black rock. “Please?” I don’t know who I’m asking. The universe? The labyrinth? Any god who’s listening—or demi-god.
The air shifts. My ears hover on the edge of popping. Every hair on my body raises.
I swallow down the thing trying to climb out of my throat and turn.
Down in the square. The Devourer.
No mistaking it.
In a way, it looks like a stag. Four legs. A wedge-shaped head. Huge, spreading antlers.
But that’s where the similarity ends. This is the perverse idea of what a stag might look like, drawn from a nightmare.
White eyes. Black fur that seems to constantly move. Its legs bend in strange ways, not like any creature I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and it has fangs.
From here, as it hurtles toward the stairs and takes them half a dozen at a time, I can tell it’s fucking massive. Big enough that it could get its jaws around my leg with ease.
My heart hammers harder than it does with belladonna. My stomach cramps around the food we ate earlier.
That thing is going to kill us.
The Collector grabs my wrist, muttering, “It looks different.”
“I don’t want a closer look.”
We run. There’s nothing at the end of this broken staircase.
Ahead and above, there’s another fractured set of stairs. But it’s so far. Even the Collector, tall as they are, wouldn’t be able to reach.
I look back.
It’s so close. My pace falters.
The Collector grabs me.
Then I’m in the air.
I’m falling.
No. Wait.
The fractured stairs come closer. I’m going up. The Collector threw me.
Threw me.
I reach out, arms windmilling, legs kicking like somehow this is going to help. It’s too far. I’m not going to make it.
All the air rushes out of me as I land on the bottom steps.
Wheezing, I scramble into the shade of one of the scrubby trees, almost crying to feel solid rock under me.
Behind me, the Collector is still running, eating up the last feet of the platform below.
Too far away, though. They can’t jump all this way. Not quite.
I can’t catch them—they’re too big, too heavy.
They compress. Spring. Reach.
My throat burns, desperation a raw, wordless cry. Time stretches out as I count down the moments before the Collector stops surging up and starts falling.
It starts too soon. Fingers so close to the steps I’m on. I reach out uselessly.
Their grip closes around the bottom step. Eyes wide, they stare up at me.
Arms heaving, they try to pull themselves up, but they only have a fingertip grip, and the rock is so smooth. There’s nothing below for their feet to purchase on.
“Can’t get… up.” All their voices sound as one.
I grab their arm. Heave.
But they weigh many times more than I do.
My eyes burn as I search for anything that might help. There has to be—
My hand closes on something that isn’t cold stone. Something warm. Tough but pliable.
A loose root. It isn’t much. But…
Almost as thick as my wrist. I give it a tug. It holds.
The Devourer clatters across the platform the Collector leapt from. One side of its antlers gouge the rock with a tooth-splintering screech.
I bend the root toward the Collector’s slipping fingers. “Try this.”
They reach, grab and by some fucking miracle, it holds their weight as hand over hand over hand, they climb up.
For a second, we’re a panting pile of relief.
Then the Devourer shrieks once more.
Its hooves pick through the debris, finding a clear path with ease. As surefooted as a goat.
It doesn’t even take the same path as us. It leaps to a tiny outcrop no wider than my hand, then leaps again.
I don’t see where it lands—we’re already running.
The way to the top is a blur of gasping breaths and heaving muscles, the Collector’s wiry arms and many hands helping, pushing me ahead, pulling me after, shoving whippy saplings out of the way. Their softly terrified whimpering.
Somehow, we’re halfway. My chest squeezes, agonizing.
I don’t even know how I keep moving, but I do.
The Devourer nips at our heels and tries to cut us off. We change course, swerve out of reach, feel the thunder of its hooves right behind us and somehow barely miss it a dozen times.
Three quarters of the way.
I run, stumble, run. Up, up, up.
And then there’s no more up.
I can see the top.
The ground rumbles. Dirt chokes me. Grit gets in my eyes, burns.
I’m falling.
Really falling this time.
The staircase crumbles beneath my feet.
I’m one, two, three feet from the top and getting further.
The Collector looks back. Their eyes go wide. They reach.
I reach.
Stretch.
Cry out with the agony of my cramping muscles giving in.
Their fingertips brush mine.
The Devourer shrieks, piercing my ears. Too close. Much too close.
Hot breath brushes my ankle. The stink of rotten flesh roils into my lungs, my gut.
Eyes streaming, one blurred, I look back.
The Devourer is an inch away, springing up the falling rocks, its mouth open, blackened teeth bared.
Its fur stretches for me, every part strained and ready for my death. The death I’m falling to.
A strong grip closes on my wrist.
I stop.
The air whooshes out of me.
The Devourer runs out of falling rock. It’s a foot away. Two. Three. Further. Falling.
I look up. The Collector has me—one of their hands fastened around my wrist, the other three clinging to the straining trunk of a young tree.
We lie at the top of the broken stairs, catching our breath, taking in the sun and the miracle that we survived. Somehow.
The Collector threw themselves across that gap for me. Their feet were in the air, their entire weight trusted to that sapling, all to save me. They were already at the top. They could’ve kept going.
As I lie there panting, trying to take all that in, they start to laugh.
It’s a wild sound, giddy with relief.
I find myself doing the same, tears streaming down my temples.
I’m alive.
For once I don’t care how much longer that may be. A month. Six. A year. Ten.
All that matters is for this moment, with this strange, many-personed friend, I am alive.