Chapter 44
I NEED TO speak to Drystan, see if I can contact my brother. I’m sure he only refused before to be difficult, and things between us are different now. But after Kishel leaves, I barely have time to ready myself for the labyrinth before the sun rises.
Even as fragments of feather and shadow, I can’t stop thinking about Lowen’s face. I land in the obsidian corridors and he’s still there.
“I’ll keep my promise if it’s the last thing I do.”
No. Don’t. Stay on the surface where you’re safe. I find myself clutching my chest, silently begging him. If it wasn’t so awful, it would be funny—just as I start to believe staying away might be better for him, I find out it’s worse than ever now I’m gone.
The Collector, ready, waiting, must sense something’s wrong, because they keep touching my shoulder and stroking my hair.
But I march. Cut rests short. Ask them how sure they are about their turnings.
We can’t afford any backtracking. I need to get to Lowen and stop him from doing something foolish.
He put his life on hold for me, and I’ve been working to reach him…
to tell him the truth… to, I don’t know, give him the permission he needs to stop.
But his life was always there for him to reclaim. He still had a future.
But now? This? If he pours himself into keeping his promise… What lengths wouldn’t I go to for him? He would go even further for me.
It’s day eleven. We’re on the fourth tier. I can see the rise to the fifth, but no sign of the gateway between. If we make it up there today…
What about Min? And Asti? The cat?
Drystan?
They’ll survive without me. Lowen? He’d die trying to reach me.
And what about the surface? If it makes my symptoms worse again?
I have no answer for that.
With a long exhale, I push the thoughts out of my head. Or try to.
What I want, who will live or die and what I must do—they’re all academic if I can’t find the way to the next level of this place. And to do that, I need to focus on this, now, not possibilities.
The labyrinth is in worse shape here. The blooms of what look like furry black mold are more frequent, oozing that greasy substance.
At the center of the largest clusters, they’re thick, rounded.
Pulsing. They remind me of boils, and yet…
They’re unlike any living thing I’ve seen.
Like the juddering flicker on the stone’s surface, they work in patterns I can’t fathom, fracturing into black filaments, writhing, then reforming with a sickening soft squelch.
My stomach turns as I observe them, but I dutifully note all I see and even attempt a sketch. It isn’t anywhere near as good as Lowen’s work—
And then I spiral right back to the start of the thoughts I was trying to avoid.
His name a chant in my head, I press on.
We walk into the afternoon, and I’m pleased to see these short rests seem to be doing the trick.
I’m tired but only normal-level tired—nowhere near exhausted.
My muscles only ache dully, and my joints get stiff after a break, but soon loosen up.
This might feel like hell to someone not used to being ill, but for me, it’s a marked improvement.
The awakening of my magic must be giving me energy or fighting my illness somehow.
When I get out of here, I’ll have time to study it properly and work out what exactly is going on. I’ll ask Kishel—
Except when I get out of here, there will be no more Kishel. I’ll be on the surface. He’ll be down here. Never the twain shall meet.
And Min. Asti. The cat.
Drystan.
“Is that your brother’s name you keep saying?” the Collector asks with a light touch on my shoulder.
“Lowen.” I didn’t realize I’ve been keeping his name on my lips as well as in my heart. I nod. “I’m afraid for him, Collector. He looked…” I shake my head, throat tightening too much to finish.
“We know about fear.” They round a corner in this twisting corridor first. “It’s ridden us for a long, long time. Long as we remember.”
My eyes burn. Ridden by fear—I understand the feeling. The weight. The sense that it both directs you and drags on you, a careless rider yanking on the reins.
I nudge into the Collector, glad of their company. Glad I’m not alone.
“But we’ve been braver recently. We’ve faced things we fear. And we’ve learned something. The fear is worse than the monster.”
I’m not sure that’s the case when the monster is Death. But I smile and nod and squeeze their hand. “You’re braver than you realize.”
“So are you.”
I’m about to argue when we reach a round courtyard with a plinth at the center. A prickle of anticipation chases through me.
A challenge.
Aside from the corridor we entered through, five doors lead onward. Approaching the plinth, I find its top is dished, containing a shallow pool of water.
“A scrying bowl? Or a makeshift one, anyway.”
The Collector glances at it with a thoughtful sound, but they’re focused on the doors. Recessed into the wall, a mechanism runs from next to the handle and up, where it joins a channel connecting all five doors.
I’ve read a lot of books, but mechanics isn’t my strong suit. I squint at the slots and cogs. “I wonder what it does.”
The Collector mutters to themselves as they follow the mechanism from one door, up and across. Slowly, they nod. “When one door handle is turned, the others all lock.”
“So, we can only try one door?” I chew my lip. “What if I jam the mechanism further along the route, so it can’t lock the others?”
The slithering voice lets out a high peal of laughter. “Do you think fae mechanisms are so easily thwarted?”
The Collector shakes their head, and the dissenting voice goes on. “Not an option. We must choose the right door or this becomes a dead end. And there’s no other way to the next tier.”
My eyes widen from the mechanism to them. “How do you know that?”
“There’s only ever one way up.”
One staircase the Collector showed me to. One beyond the creature that wanted to eat Min. Even the broken stairs had no alternative.
With an inward groan, I turn to the plinth and its shallow pool of water. I’ve only ever been successful once, and that was with Kishel’s support. “I don’t suppose you’re any good at scrying?”
I’m still grinning at my own half-joke when a familiar screech splits the air.