Chapter 45 The Maze
THE MAZE
My feet slammed into the ground, the impact rattling my teeth.
I pushed myself upright. I was outside, next to a towering wall under a colorless sky. Storm clouds churned like ink in water and lightning flashed, revealing silhouettes in the distance.
The earth trembled with another crash.
Behind me, Kairos staggered to his feet.
“You okay?” he grunted.
“Yeah. What happened?”
“You collapsed. I caught you, and now we’re here.” He lifted his hand, frowning at the landscape. “Did the rune portal us somewhere?”
“No. We’re inside the rune.”
“Inside it?”
The wrongness of this place crawled over my skin. The air tasted stale, like breathing in a crypt that had been sealed for centuries. No sound except our voices echoing off stone.
I swallowed, approaching the wall. “What do you know about time runes? Is this normal?”
“I’ve never heard of anybody getting sucked inside a rune. This is…very strange. I wish I knew more, but the subject is banned for a reason.”
I turned back to the wall. “This is like that wall that separates the slums from the merchant quarter in Skalgard.”
“Huh. It is.”
“Every rune has a point where all the magic converges.” I traced the wall, forcing my voice to steady. “If we find it and break it, this place should collapse.”
“And if we can’t?”
We die here. Trapped forever in this colorless void.
Movement flickered at the corner of my vision, and I whipped around. A vacant-eyed man shuffled, dragging his feet. Another female stumbled into view. She didn’t even notice us.
“Are those the villagers?”
“Probably.” Kairos stepped in front of me as more people emerged from the shadows. Dozens of them, wandering aimlessly. We could end up like them.
We edged along, and the shambling fae parted around us, their mouths moving soundlessly. The wall curved sharply, opening into a narrow archway.
I drew in a shaky breath and walked through.
Straight ahead, the path immediately forked, both corridors identical and stretching into darkness.
Three steps in, the trail split again. Then again.
Each corridor exactly like the last; endless gray stone, no markers, no way to tell which direction we’d come from.
My chest tightened. “It’s a maze.”
“We’ll find our way through.”
“What if we don’t?” My voice cracked. “What if we just wander in here forever?”
“Use your gift.” He gripped my shoulder. “Every time you sense a rune, you’re feeling where the magic is strongest. This is the same. Feel for it.”
I obeyed him, trying to block out my pounding heart.
Magic suffocated the air and crawled up the walls like vines, humming under our feet. It pressed against my skin. I rotated, reaching out with my mind.
There.
Heat baked my face, like standing too close to a forge. I opened my eyes and took the left path, Kairos on my heels.
The walls groaned—a deep sound that made my teeth ache. I glanced back and my blood chilled. The corridor was collapsing, stones sliding together, sealing the path behind us.
The passage forked again. Left or right?
I felt for that pull. I veered left and Kairos followed, the walls tightening. We broke into a run, but it was closing in too fast. My shoulders scraped stone on both sides. I stumbled through the opening, gasping. Kairos emerged a second later, and the walls behind him slammed shut.
I turned the corner and froze.
Steel gleamed in the sickly light. A troop of Skaldir soldiers blocked the way, blades raised, but their edges shimmered like a haze and their faces were blank.
“Constructs,” Kairos snarled. “The rune’s trying to stop us.”
My fingers itched for a weapon I didn’t have.
Steel met steel with a scream. The first soldier lunged, blade sweeping low. Kairos dropped his weight, blocking, and the impact rattled my teeth. He shoved hard, forcing the enemy back, then stabbed upward. The soldier burst apart like smoke.
Another construct swung high. Kairos pivoted, sparks showering as he parried. He smashed his shoulder into its chest, crushing it into the wall, then slashed. It dissolved with a sound like tearing fabric.
Kairos flung out his free hand, and white tendrils wrapped a soldier’s head. It clawed at its face, then crumbled. The male rushed him, and the mist coiled its legs. The construct folded in on itself and vanished.
Then the walls shuddered.
“Kairos!”
“I see it,” he barked.
I hustled past dissolving ash, toward that relentless heat that felt like a small sun, but the walls kept shrinking. Then a jagged seam split open ahead.
“This way!” I shouted.
Kairos’s blade clanged, and his opponent flung him against the wall, its sword sliding closer to his throat. His teeth bared, muscles straining.
I hurled a loose rock at the construct. It struck its face and the thing reeled. Kairos wrenched free and swept his blade through it. It burst into smoke.
“Run!” he bellowed.
I sprinted for the archway as cracks spider-webbed through the floor. The ground pitched and blocks tore from the walls, collapsing into the abyss opening under our boots.
Kairos lunged for me as the stone gave way.
Wind howled in my ears as the maze dropped, the void swallowing me whole, then I crashed into earth, grass cushioning my palms.
I gasped, staring up at a blue sky with drifting clouds. Breath sawing in and out, I sat up.
Soft pink light illuminated marble arches covered in ivy and white blooms, and fae walked through them in long shimmering gowns, sitting at tables that sparkled with crystal goblets. Delicate fiddle music drifted through the sweet air.
It was Ashvar Keep, cleaned up and perfect, a memory filtered through honey. Everyone was smiling. Laughing. I touched my chest and looked down.
Oh my gods.
A beautiful gown wrapped my body. The pale ivory silk shimmered like moonlight on water, so light that it floated and the bodice hugged my ribs, embroidered with tiny crystals. Gossamer sleeves draped my arms in lace and the skirt pooled around my feet in soft waves.
“What is this place?”
“Somewhere you don’t have to run.”
I spun around.
Kairos stood behind me, his hair tied back. He wore formal robes—black with a gorgeous silver brocade—and he beamed at me. His arms wrapped around me and I stiffened, my breath catching. He felt real. Solid muscle under silk, his breath ghosting across my hair.
The music swelled. Laughter rippled through the courtyard. Lanterns floated overhead like amber stars. His hand found mine, fingers lacing together. Every nerve in my body screamed to move, but I couldn’t. The weight of his arms around me was an intoxicating anchor.
This was all fake. The marble under my heels, the scent of ivy and roses in the air, but part of me wanted to sink into the safety of his arms without worrying about the next disaster.
I swallowed hard and pulled my hand from his.
His smile dimmed. “Aelie?”
“I can’t stay here,” I said, taking a step back.
I turned my back on him, the faceless guests blurring into a wash of light and laughter.
“Having fun?” said an angry voice.
I whirled around, and my sister stood there in a sleek purple dress, her hair twisted in a lazy braid. Alive. Whole. Here.
“Rheya?”
My throat closed so fast it hurt.
Rheya shifted. “You’re stepping on my gown.”
A sob cracked out of my lungs, and I threw my arms around her. She stiffened, patting my back the way she’d console a crying drunk girl outside a tavern.
“Get a grip,” she muttered.
I hugged her harder. She even smelled the same, like that soap we stole from market stalls.
“I’ve missed you so much.”
Rheya snorted. “For how long, an hour?”
I pulled away. “What?”
She smiled lazily. “You were barely out of Skalgard before you started playing house with your fae lover. Did his kiss make you forget about me? Or was it all the pretty dresses?”
“I never forgot you.”
“Really? I’m rotting in a cage while you’re being coddled.”
“I’m trying to save you!”
She laughed bitterly. “It looks like you’re having the time of your life. A king wrapped around your finger, sleeping in silk sheets while I’m chained in the dark.”
My chest tightened. “That’s not fair.”
But was it wrong? I’d been sleeping in Kairos’s castle, eating at his table, letting him carry me to bed.
“Fair?” She stepped closer, and the pain in her eyes destroyed me. “You’ve always been like this. Desperate for any scrap of affection. You latched onto Vaeris, and when that fell apart, you found someone new within days.”
“I did not!”
Her smile turned cruel. “Do you have any shame? Is there a part of you that isn’t borrowed from a male?”
A lump lodged in my throat. Was she right? Had I lost myself so completely in Vaeris, and then Kairos, that I didn’t know who I was without them? Would she act like this when I showed up with Kairos and demand why I chose him over her?
A memory surfaced of Rheya, over a year ago, when I’d rushed home after my first kiss with Vaeris. I’d been giddy, gushing over the prince, and she’d gripped my shoulders hard.
“Don’t you dare forget who you are.”
I sucked in a shaking breath. “No. You’re wrong.”
Rheya’s grin faltered.
“The real Rheya knows me better.” I wiped my cheeks. “She’d be angry, yeah. She’d probably hit me for taking so long. But she wouldn’t use Vaeris to hurt me.”
The illusion flickered.
“And she sure as hell wouldn’t want me to give up and die in a fucking maze. She’d tell me to quit being dramatic and go save her ass already.”
“Aelie.”
“You’re not her. You’re just the worst things I think about myself.”
Rheya’s form shattered like glass.
The courtyard, the guests—all of it collapsed into darkness. I staggered as the maze solidified around me again, black stone walls pressing close.
I dropped to my knees.
My hands shook. Rheya trapped, suffering, thinking I’d abandoned her. Maybe she was right. I’d been selfish and I’d gotten distracted by Kairos when I should have been—
Stop.
I pressed my palms to my eyes.
The rune wanted me frozen in guilt, paralyzed by all the impossible choices until I gave up and became another hollow-eyed wanderer shuffling through these corridors. I dragged in a shuddering breath. Then another.
Rheya was alive, and I would get her out. But first, I had to break this rune. I wiped my face and pushed myself to standing on trembling legs.
The purple veins pulsing through the stone converged somewhere. I just had to follow them. Ahead, a ball of light hovered in the air like a tangled heart of magic. Blinding. Threads of it snaked outward, weaving into the surroundings.
The closer I got, the more it hurt. Looking at it was like shoving needles into my eyes. Heat blistered my skin and my knees buckled.
Strong arms caught me before I hit the ground. “I’ve got you.”
I turned into Kairos, my face pressed against his armor.
“Don’t stop now,” he said quietly. “We’re going to get her back.”
I nodded, turning back to the core. The light seared straight through my gloves, crawling up my veins, and the stench of burned leather and flesh filled my nose. My bones felt like they were splintering.
I forced one step, then another. The light clawed into my mind, digging through every fear I’d ever tried to bury. Rheya’s face, pale and accusing. Kairos bleeding out. Dragons tearing the sky open while the world burned. All of it flickered behind my eyes.
By the time we reached the core, I was sobbing from the crushing weight of everything that could happen.
Kairos’s arm locked around my waist, carrying me forward. “Do it. Break the fucking thing.”
I pressed both palms against the core and screamed. Agony slivered up my arms as the rune’s core clawed into me, prying my ribs apart, trying to pull me inside.
Threads snapped, hissing like serpents as they recoiled. The light convulsed, thrashing. My scream joined its wail, my hands fused to the searing core as it split down the middle.
The light shattered in a thousand shards of brilliance, and a shockwave ripped through the maze, flattening us both, the sky tearing like a sheet of paper. The walls caved, folding into a void. I was falling again.
Wind screamed in my ears. I couldn’t tell which way was up, and I slammed into something solid. Pain burst through my shoulder, my hip, my skull. Cold bit into my cheek.
I lay there, stunned, unable to move. The air stank of rotting meat and fish, and the rock of the underground cavern loomed above me.
Back in the well.
Relief hit me so hard my vision blurred. We’d made it out. The villagers were free.
I tried to push myself up to tell Kairos, but my arms wouldn’t work. My whole body felt like it had been shattered. Metal and heat flooded my mouth. I coughed, and blood spattered across the stone beneath my face.
Kairos groaned beside me. “Aelie?”
Then darkness swallowed everything.