Chapter 45
MY ENTIRE BEING freezes. The Collector flinches.
The Devourer?
“I thought it fell.” My voice comes out breathless.
“That doesn’t mean it died,” the Collector whispers, darting toward the corridor we entered through. They scent the air, and the way their eyes gleam when they turn, I know they can smell the creature.
I swallow and glance at the doors. A one in five chance isn’t great, and getting it wrong means we’ll be stuck in this courtyard sitting prey for the Devourer.
No guessing.
Shit.
The Collector seethes in fear at the entrance, hands clasping, hair swinging as it paces.
“All right,” I say brightly. “I’ll just… find the right path.” Sounds so easy.
I peer into the water. Slow my breaths. See nothing.
I’ve only ever managed this with ink before, not with water alone. “I need something I can pour in the water. I normally use ink, but…” I shrug and search for a suitable liquid.
A blister of black ooze throbs in one corner of the courtyard. It’s surface falls apart. Just before it slops to the ground, it folds back in on itself, shard-like filaments flipping upward, where the blister reforms in its original position.
I could use the ooze.
But…
I don’t trust it. And it’s so viscous, it probably wouldn’t move in the water.
Only one option left. Nothing else will show. I draw a small, folding knife from my belt and slice it over the back of my hand. Blood wells up along with pain. But it’s a shallow kind of pain—one I can breathe through. One I can certainly suffer to get us out of the Devourer’s path.
Crimson drips into the bowl. One drop. Two. Three.
They take so long.
Four. My pulse speeds with each drop. Hurry up.
Five.
A thin stream of crimson. Enough to work with.
“What have you—?” Gasping, the Collector rears up over the plinth eyes wide. “No. You’ve given him your blood.”
I don’t have the heart to tell them the master of the labyrinth has already tasted my blood—and more. “Drystan isn’t so bad,” I mutter, bending over the bowl.
“I don’t mean—”
The Devourer’s broken roar rends the air, splitting my ears, making the Collector cower.
My heart bucks. I try to slow my breaths. But my lungs want to work like bellows, suck in, blast out, ready to run, to fight—ready.
We are not doing that. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five.
The bowl’s surface ripples with my breath and the aftermath of the Devourer’s cry. My blood hangs there, suspended in the water, dispersing. Not forming any useful shapes.
On the edge of my vision, the Collector paces between the plinth and the corridor, jerky and frantic.
I shut them out.
This is for them. For me. For Lowen.
I need to see.
“Which way?” I whisper. “Which way?”
My blood coalesces into a thin, thin thread.
Is that the ground trembling? The clack of hooves?
Focus, Annon. Focus.
Slow breaths. Racing heart.
The thread twists back on itself.
Another high, ear-splitting cry. Closer. Much, much closer.
“Which way?” My voice trembles. My eyes burn, but I don’t dare blink. I can’t miss it.
The thread of blood twists toward the first door. Still clutching the edge of the plinth, I take half a step back, ready to turn and run.
But the thread turns, swims toward the second door. The third. The fourth. The fifth. Testing them? Questioning. Questing.
The Collector backs from the corridor. Cowering. Their whimpers punctuated by the roaring thunder of the Devourer’s hooves.
“It’s here,” all their voices rise in chorus.
The thread twists at the center of the bowl as if thinking.
“Which one?” I whisper to the scrying bowl—beg my blood. “Please.”
It shoots toward one door. An unmistakable answer.
“Three,” I shout, stumbling backward as rot enters the courtyard.
The air is thick with it.
I pull my scarf over my face, groping for the wall.
The Devourer rears in the doorway. Flesh hangs off it in strips. I catch glimpses of bone—rib and skull, femur and jaw.
It’s deteriorated so much in just four days. There’s something profoundly wrong with the creature.
Its eyes lock on me.
It kills anything it sees.
They aren’t white, I realize, but clouded over like the eyes of a dead thing.
I trip over my own feet, trying to get away, heart slamming against my ribs, back slamming into the wall as the monster surges forward.
“Go.” The Collector looks up, hunkers down, and, shoulders squaring, they leap.
Right into the Devourer’s path.
They’re shoved back five feet, claws shrieking against stone. Hands close around antlers. Muscles strain against flesh.
It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.
And the worst.
All their voices rise in a scream. “Go!”
All in agreement.
It cuts through my shock.
I blink, take in where I am—right next to the third door—and fling myself against it. The metal handle, cold under my palm, turns.
Thunk. Thu-thunk. Movement chases through the mechanism. The ground shakes as four bolts thunder shut.
“Come on,” I call to the Collector, as I push the door. It doesn’t move. Shit. No. Is this the wrong one? I set my teeth, dig my toes into any purchase I can find and heave.
Movement. An inch. Two.
It needs my full body weight, but eventually it rumbles open and I stagger through.
Ahead, a path leads upward. The next tier. The penultimate tier. I chose the correct door. This is it. Our way out.
“We did it! Come—”
I turn back to the Collector. It takes a moment to understand the black lines slicing through the scene before me.
Bars.
Blocking my way into the courtyard.
Blocking the Collector’s way out.
I tug. They don’t so much as rattle.
Beyond, the Collector wrestles the Devourer’s antlers, battling to keep its ripping teeth inches from their soft belly.
Heart in my throat, I try to lift the bars, twist them, get them to shift just a damn inch. I reach through like, somehow, I can help.
If the Collector kills it, we can work out the bars together.
The Devourer roars and tosses its head. The black stuff crawling over it sheds, revealing bone and shredded muscle, disappearing before it hits the ground as more forms and creeps over its fragmenting body.
With one hand, the Collector grabs its throat, choking out its shrieks. My hands tighten on the bars. Yes. “Come on,” I whisper.
Eyes roll. Teeth gnash. Black filaments squirm over the Collector’s hand. Up their wrist. They flinch.
The Devourer breaks free. Rears. Its hoof hits the Collector clean in the chest, dragging a groan from deep inside.
My breath stops as they fall. I throw myself at the bars as hooves slam down.
The snap of bone. The agonized scream of many voices. My ears ring with it.
The Devourer calms like it knows it’s over. Head lifting, it regards the Collector.
My friend.
I stare. Frozen. Cracked open. Chest scoured and raw.
The Collector wheezes, blood bubbling on to their lips on the outward breath. “Thank you.” The only sound in the sudden silence.
For a second, I think they’re thanking the monster.
Then they turn their head to me. A distant smile edges their mouth, lighting the glassy pain in their eyes. “Thank you… for being the first one in so long to see us as people. For giving us back ourselves.”
I slump into the bars, shake my head, try to form words, but there is no voice save for the Collector’s as the Devourer opens its maw and bends down.
“Look away, friend.” The Collector’s smile solidifies as they give this tiny nod that must be agony and yet is done to reassure me. “Look away.”
I touch my chest and incline my head in return, hoping that says all the things my tongue can’t. Then, throat burning, I turn my back to the bars and slide down them to the hard ground.
The noises from the Devourer are unspeakable. Indelible.
But the Collector, brave to the end, uses the last of their voices, the dissenter, to say one final word. “Friend.”
Only then do I shut my eyes and let the hot tears spill for my fallen friend.