Chapter 47 Bryony
brYONY
ALEXIOS’ MAZE REMINDS me of the Void. The depth, the darkness, the way it pulls you in. There’s clarity at first as every sense sharpens. Then, when you’re yanked deeper, it seems eternal. Endless.
The Void never wanted to give me back when I died. I would float in the dark spaces, wondering if it would keep me. I’d spin and spin with no sense of time.
Like in a labyrinth.
The twisted branches loom overhead, forming a canopy so dense that daylight barely filters through. As the hours pass, the silver-veined leaves seem to shift and elongate. But maybe that’s just in my mind.
Focus. Don’t let it get to you.
But it’s already there. Like the Void, the maze deliberately misleads me deeper. The path ahead of me splits, then converges. Then splits again in a pattern I swear wasn’t there ten seconds ago.
How long have I been walking? Hours? I can’t tell anymore.
The sun’s position isn’t clear through the branches, but the shadows keep growing longer.
Nothing makes sense in this place. A corridor I passed through minutes ago now leads somewhere else entirely.
I endlessly loop and loop, never knowing if I’m closer to the center or right back where I started.
“Just go to the center,” I mutter, pressing my palm against a trunk for balance.
The bark shifts under my touch. Before I can pull away, something slices across my cheek. I reel back with a yelp, my hand flying to my face. My fingers come away wet and red.
What the—?
The thorn jutting from the branch glistens with my blood, and I watch as a drop slides down the barb and falls to the ground.
Then the soil ripples like something beneath it just tasted me.
When the stars come out, the labyrinth changes. And even your Wolf’s mark won’t save you then.
Oh gods. It’s alive. And it’s woken up hungry.
Fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck.
I stumble back. The thorns now look like teeth—or claws. The branches extend and reach for me.
My heart slams against my ribs as I break into a run.
The paths narrow. Branches bend inward and grasp at my clothes. I duck under one, leap over another. The air thickens. Sweat trickles down my spine.
Something wraps around my ankle, and I hit the ground hard. More tendrils snake around my calves, my thighs, my waist.
“No—”
They start to pull.
The vines constrict, each thorn pushing deep into my skin. I scream and struggle against it. My blood soaks into the soil, and that only makes the vines dig harder. I thrash and kick. The tendrils constrict around my chest.
Think. Think think think. There has to be a way out—
The vines wrap more snugly around my middle and squeeze. A sudden, sickening snap echoes through my body as my rib gives way. I try to scream again, but there’s barely any air left in my lungs.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think through the pain. My whimpers sound like they’re coming from someone else—some pathetic, broken thing I don’t recognize.
I’m jerked sideways. My nails scrape against the dirt as I claw for purchase, for anything to hold on to.
The thorns drag me deeper.
So this is how it ends. After all the deaths I’ve endured, I thought I knew the particular cadence of this unmaking, the way a body fails by degrees.
But this? This is different. This death crawls.
It savors. The ceremonial knife back home seems almost kind now.
What a luxury it was to be broken quickly—
The Claim on my wrist flares.
A heartbeat that’s not my own thunders through me. The ghost of breath across my lips, comforting and achingly familiar.
I latch on to Evander’s pulse, the only solid thing in the shifting dark. Warm. Kind. I pour myself into the unsteady connection, into the scent of him, something to wrap my fists around and haul myself to the surface. To air.
To him.
Because I understand now—love is the thing with teeth. It will take a bite out of you and dare you to bleed. To carve yourself open and cut a vital piece of who you are. When it’s right, the pain becomes something else, something necessary. Like breaking a bone to set it properly.
But it’s worth it. Every bite, every scar, every lesson that got me here.
The memory floods through me—the heat of his skin, the low rumble of his voice. Evander and I crouched among the roses at his tower.
If you want to understand a thing, you have to learn its nature. What makes it feel.
My next exhale shudders out, and I grasp the memory, letting it wash through me and over me.
Breathe out the anger. All it will get you here is bled dry.
I can almost feel the way his body had bracketed mine, the heat and solidity of him. Those hands caging my own.
Prove you’re not a threat, and it might surprise you how eagerly they open up.
The vines contract again, but instead of fighting, I let my muscles go slack and surrender.
Not because I’ve given up.
Because I’ve finally understood.
I focus on the give of the soil beneath my hands. The vines still squirm, slicing into my flesh with every little shift, but I hold myself pliant and passive. Yielding.
I don’t know how long I drift like that. Like I’m in the Void, just waiting to be pulled out. The dark pressing in. Time tick-tick-ticking past as I surrender.
Then something changes. The thorns that punctured my skin begin to ease, then gentle, as if they can sense the fight draining out of me, giving way to something calmer. More centered. Each small breath is a little easier than the last.
“I’m not your enemy,” I murmur. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
For a moment, the vines go still as if they’re listening—and maybe they are. Evander said he spoke to his roses.
“I’m just trying to reach him.” My voice breaks, but I force the words out anyway. “I know you probably don’t give a shit about my tragic little love story, but he’s my—”
The confession lodges behind my teeth. Too small, too feeble a word for this immensity clawing beneath my ribs.
“Everything,” I manage. “He’s everything. And if I have to let you take pieces out of me to get to him, that’s what I’ll do. That’s the bargain.” A shaky inhale. Exhale. Breathe, Bryony. “So do it. Use me up until there’s nothing left. I won’t fight you.”
Nothing happens, just the slow drip of my blood into the hungry soil. I’m sure the maze will swallow me down after all, digest me slowly. But then…
One tendril loosens around my ankle. Another uncoils from my wrist. The sharp points withdraw from my flesh—first my legs, then my arms. The thorns that dug deepest come last, sliding free with reluctance, like they’ll miss the taste of me.
I blink up at the lattice of desiccated branches, sucking in air.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I manage to lever myself to my hands and knees. Some functioning part of my brain notes the way my arms shake, threatening to give out at any moment. Shock, probably. Blood loss. I don’t have time to catalog the extent of the damage or assess what hurts.
Instead, I claw my way forward because fuck letting Alexios win. I’m so close to the end. Evander is waiting for me in his cell.
I promised I would come back.
You didn’t survive all that to give up now, I snarl at myself. Just a little further. Crawl if you have to.
I’ve earned this.
Ten steps. Twenty. Each inch feels like a mile. My blood leaves a dark trail behind me—proof I was here, proof I didn’t give up. The edges of my vision flicker, but I grit my teeth and shove it back because—
Something glows ahead. It’s such an incongruous sight that I stumble, certain that I’m hallucinating. But no, a wooden box sits nestled among the roots with pale sigils pulsing along its edges.
I all but fall on it. It takes me three tries to flip the latch, my fingers shaking too badly to grip it properly. But finally, finally, the lid creaks open. And there, nestled in a bed of velvet, is a heavy iron key.
I curl my fist around it and shut my eyes in exhaustion.
“Alexios. It’s done.”
For a long moment, there is only the creak of branches and the rustling of the leaves.
Then, a whisper of feathers. A familiar thrum of ancient power.
When I force my eyes open, Alexios towers over me, his wings spread wide and blocking out what little light filters through the skeletal canopy. That burning stare fixes on me.
“Up,” he tells me. Quiet, inexorable.
And gods help me, I obey. I lock my knees and shove to my feet because he commanded it. Because the alternative is the Void.
I choke down the bile at the back of my throat. When the gray recedes and my vision clears, Alexios is still standing there watching me.
“You look like something even the crows wouldn’t pick over. Like a carcass left to bloat in a ditch.”
I spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground. “I hate you. With everything… in me.”
“Good.” He smiles. “That hatred will keep your heart beating when your body wants to quit.”
Alexios scoops me into his arms. The movement jars my injured ribs, and I bite my tongue against a scream. His massive crimson and black wings unfurl with a snap.
The flight passes in a blur of agony and half-consciousness. When we land in the gardens, he sets me down on the palace steps, but keeps one hand on my arm to steady me.
“You’re not done,” he says.
Something in his voice makes me go cold. I struggle to focus on his face. “What… do you mean?”
“You thought finding that key was your test?” His laugh is cruel. “Oh no. That was the prelude. This is the real trial.”
Dread pools in my gut. “What—”
“I want you to walk through my palace, past every single courtier tortured by your family. Every demi whose parents, children, family, and lovers were slaughtered.”
My stomach lurches. “You want everyone to see me broken.”
He grabs my chin, forcing me to meet that burning gaze. “I want them to have a good, long look at what it takes to earn the Wolf.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’m practical.” His thumb traces my jawline. “You’re a Devaliant who tied your soul to a future god-king of Scillari. Everything has a price, Princess. Time to pay up.”
I try to pull away, but his grip is implacable. “Is that all? Or do you want to kick me while I’m down, too?”
“Oh, I want countless things from you, Bryony Devaliant. But right now, I’ll settle for watching you drag yourself through a palace full of gods who would gladly wear your skin as a trophy.
They can’t touch you—this Claim forbids it.
” He brushes his thumb over Evander’s glowing mark.
“But if you fall, you’ll stay down. If you crawl, they’ll watch.
And if you’re strong enough to reach the dungeons and turn that key, maybe the Wolf will piece what’s left of you back together if your heart doesn’t give out first.”
He releases me, head cocked. Waiting.
Asshole.
I swallow down every foul insult I’m thinking and jerk my chin in a nod.
“Remember,” he says, “you chose this. Begged for it, even. So don’t you dare waste my time by collapsing in the front hall. Make every step count.”
Then he’s gone in a whisper of dark feathers, leaving me alone and bleeding on his doorstep.
Go. Finish it.
The first step nearly kills me. My legs buckle, and my vision blurs from the pain. The second isn’t much better. But I force my ravaged body forward because I refuse to lose.
The runes on the massive door flare and it swings open on silent hinges. And I’m pathetically grateful I’m spared the indignity of trying to work the handles with my mangled hands.
The entry hall stretches before me, packed with courtiers. Every head turns. They focus on me with varying degrees of disgust and fascination.
I let them look. Let them drink in every laceration, every broken bone. All the fractured parts of me laid bare for their entertainment. Because I’ve made a study of unmaking and contorting myself into whatever grotesque shape is required of me. To be broken on the altar of someone else’s need.
What’s one more flaying, after all this?
Drip. Drip.
My blood makes perfect circles on the white marble. I count steps and breaths. The thud of my heart, the distance to the dungeon stairs. I shut out the whispers, the laughter, the delicate gags, the snide comments. All of it.
Because this is a thing I’ve learned. Sometimes, the only way through a moment is to put your head down and endure it. No one’s coming to help you.
Sometimes, all you can do is keep moving.
“Filthy Devaliant bitch,” someone hisses from my right.
Not Vartenan. Not human. They hate my family name more than anything.
A wet glob of spit lands on my cheek. Then another. And another. Flecking my hair, my shoulders. I keep my eyes forward, jaw clenched, and I keep moving.
The whispers grow to a roar. More spit. More taunts.
“Ten gold pieces says she doesn’t make it to the dungeons,” someone calls out.
No one can touch you, Alexios had said.
Another glob of saliva lands on my neck.
I don’t look. Don’t flinch. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me crack. My vision narrows to the floor in front of me, the next doorway, the next hall, down another corridor. Past more and more eyes burning with hatred.
My legs give out at the top of the spiral staircase leading down to the dungeons. A guard watches me, leaning against the wall, his face bored.
“He won’t want what’s left of you,” he calls after me as I descend.
Fuck. You.
Because I promised. I promised I’d come back.
I collapse and crawl. My hands leave bloody prints on each step. Halfway down, I manage to stand again, and I keep going because the alternative isn’t an option. When I finally reach the bottom, the corridor stretches ahead. Just a few more steps. I can see the door to his cell now.
Ten steps. Five. Three more. One—
“Devaliant.”
I crumple just outside the cell.
“Devaliant.”
Through my unsteady vision, I see his golden wings straining against chains, those amber eyes burning with fury and desperation.
“Bryony. Open it. Open it now.”
Yes. The key. Have to… Have to unlock it.
My fingers shake so badly that it takes three tries to find the keyhole. Metal shrieks as the bolt slides free, and I use the last of my strength to push the door open and crawl inside.
All I hear is the rattle of his chains as consciousness slips away.