Chapter 28
RHI
Within the flicker of a heartbeat, I leap to my feet, yanking my dagger from the ground as I straighten.
Poised to strike, I never take my eyes from Isadora.
Her steps eat up the distance between us, that small throwing dagger still within her grasp.
I really didn’t want it to come to this.
In fact, I thought maybe we were making some headway towards a delicate friendship.
But either Isadora is really pissed at me for ruining her plans, or she just really wants to win the Harrowing.
Either way, if I have to kill her, I’m going to be disgruntled.
Between one blink and the next, the throwing dagger flies from her fingers.
Monster reflexes aside, she is really fucking fast. I barely have time to dodge the throw before I realize there is no need.
The dagger sails past me, so close to my cheek, I feel a slight breeze as it passes, embedding itself into something behind me.
I whirl, seeing the attacker who followed me across the stones only inches from me.
His black eyes are stunned, mouth parted, a trickle of crimson running down the center of his forehead where the dagger lies.
She nailed him right between the fucking eyes.
He stumbles back a few steps. I pluck the dagger from his forehead before his limp body topples backwards over the cliff. I don’t wait to hear it crashing at the bottom, because I know I won’t.
I face Isadora, handing her the small dagger. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She nods, wiping the thin blade on her leathers before sheathing it.
“You’ve got some fucking aim,” I praise. “You could pitch for the New York Yankees.”
She blinks. “Who?”
Of course, she wouldn’t have a clue who the New York Yankees are. I wave her off as I walk toward her. “Never mind.”
“Are they a fearsome battle legion?”
My lips twist in a smile as we walk together. “Something like that. Anyway, it looks like you weren’t as defenseless as we thought.”
“I’ve trained with throwing daggers since I could walk,” she explains, shrugging her hair off her shoulder. “But I don’t know how to fight, not the way you do.”
“Still, you saved my life,” I argue, watching her push more hair away from her face. “I had no idea he was behind me. Truthfully, I forgot about him, because I thought you were aiming for me.”
Isadora stops in her tracks. “Why?”
“Why not? I upended all your plans. Nick has his memories back because of me.”
She sighs, somehow finding more hair to push from her shoulders. Does she not have something to tie it back with? What, Hell has plumbing but no hair ties? Or maybe they disappear in the black hole where most of mine go to die, along with my socks.
“This may be hard to believe, but I don’t hate you, though I completely understand if you hate me.
Raph…” She clears her throat. “Nick was a means to an end. I wanted protection, and perhaps I thought he could love me and I could love him at some point but…” Isadora shakes her head, her eyes glassy when they again meet mine.
“He was only ever yours, Rhi. Even when he didn’t remember, he always had this haunted look about him.
I could handle not being loved by him, but I didn’t want to spend eternity battling a ghost.”
“You hated me when I first arrived, though,” I point out.
At that, she grins. “Of course, I did. I did not know you were, well, you. All I saw was this beautiful woman who ensnared the attention of the man I had been trying to seduce for months with no effort. It didn’t help everyone at Court noticed his infatuation with you, which didn’t bode well for my situation regarding my father. ”
I swallow roughly. “And how is that situation?”
Her grin widens. “Argos has not spoken to me or looked in my direction, let alone put his hands on me, since Raph—sorry, I mean Nick—took his tongue.”
The smile on my face matches hers. “I’m glad to hear that.” We both start walking again in unison. “You can call him Raph, by the way. It’s what you knew him as, so it’s natural you would want to call him that.”
“He asked me to call him Nick, so I’d like to respect his wishes.”
“Fair enough.”
Silence ensues for a beat before I catch Isadora swatting more hair away.
For fuck’s sake. I tug at the leather ties around my wrist and hand one to her. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She throws her hair into a haphazard bun at the nape of her neck.
“My hair was tied back at first, but during my first battle, he sliced his sword toward the back of my neck and nicked the leather tie.” She runs her hand over the crown of her head, frowning as she wipes her palm down her side.
“Took some of my hair with it too, it seems.”
“How many people have you killed so far?”
“Two,” she replies mundanely, as though I merely asked her how many people she’s slept with in her lifetime. “You?”
“Same. So that leaves just one more, besides you and me.”
“Another woman, then.”
I grin again, catching her eye. “That seems to be the pattern with you and me.” She chuckles in response, and I take a moment to pause, looking ahead towards what appears to be a never-ending stretch of the same stone-walls and dirt path. I glance behind me, a gasp pouring from my lips.
“It’s gone.”
Isadora follows suit, eyes widening when she sees the cliff I leapt across has now disappeared, the land as flat and even as the path ahead.
“It changes,” she murmurs.
“Fuck.”
“RHI!” Nick’s voice bellows in my mind like it had when I first woke up.
I squeeze my eyes shut and press my fingers to my temples.
“Are you okay?” Isadora asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I’m here, Nick. I’m fine, I answer him then verbally address Isadora: “Yeah…just got a bit of headache.”
You said ten minutes. It’s been fifteen. Someone else died, Rhi. I panicked.
As I said, I’m fine. Just ran into a bit of trouble.
Good. I hear him sigh in my mind.
Isadora is fine too, I add.
A pause. How do you know that?
Because she is with me right now. She saved my life.
Rhi, he starts, his voice strained, listen to me carefully. I expect you to return to me, do you hear?
I frown, earning a confused stare from Isadora. What’s that supposed to mean?
Another sigh, this one a bit panicked. I know you, Rhi. You are overly protective. My concern is you will sacrifice yourself to protect her, and as much as I respect Isa, it’s you I need. You must come back to me, whatever the cost. Understood?
I meet Isadora’s concerned stare, marveling how, not that long ago, had I been given the choice between my life and hers, it would have been a no brainer.
Now, however, I’m not so sure I could leave her to die.
Still, the desire to return to Nick is so strong, I fear that will trump even my annoying hero complex, as my friends love to call it.
Rhi, do you understand?
I blink, wondering if I should outright lie to appease him.
Yes, I finally reply, though my heart stutters and a gnawing feeling churns in the pit of my stomach.
Nick doesn’t respond, and I have a feeling even though he can’t see me, he knows I am not being entirely truthful.
“Let’s keep going,” I tell Isadora. “There can be more than one winner, so what do you say you and I look out for each other and be the first to win this thing?”
Isadora smiles. “I’d like that very much.”
We walk along the same, unchanging path through the labyrinth for what seems close to another hour.
A right here, a left there, but we otherwise seem to be going in circles.
Frustration weighs heavy between us both, the suns now at the highest point in the sky, beating down on us with unyielding heat.
Scorching red blooms across Isadora’s neck and shoulders, and all I can think is I hope we find some shade soon, because that is going to be one hell of a sunburn.
The next right turn has me pause. I grab Isadora to halt her from going further.
“What is it?” she asks.
My keen eyesight picks up on a subtle difference in the stone walls of this particular pathway. To the naked eye, it really doesn’t appear much different at all. But the stones within the walls are less smooth than their counterparts, and instinct tells me that doesn’t bode well for us.
“Something isn’t right.”
Isadora glances around, scrunching her face in confusion. “It looks the same as the rest of the labyrinth we’ve gone through so far.”
“So it would seem,” I murmur, scanning my surroundings for anything else amiss.
A small bushel of greens gather against the left side of the wall, and I bend down to take a closer look.
I’m immediately hit with the scent of salt—it’s faint, but I recognize it, nonetheless.
Peering down, my gaze catches on something caked on a few of the leaves closer to the ground.
From this angle, it looks like dirt, though a bit darker, but when I lean down further, I recognize the substance.
Blood.
“Isadora, don’t—”
All it takes is a single step of her ahead of me, and another stone wall closes off the path behind us, trapping us within the corridor.
Isadora whips around, eyes widening as I straighten. The ground shakes, and both of us wobble. The ground then shifts, continuing to quake beneath my boots as the stone walls start closing in.
“Run!” I yell. Isadora wastes no time darting down the corridor, me close on her heels.
The walls are closing in, and my heart nearly falls to my stomach when I spot those uneven marks widening, large steel spikes protruding from the openings. A cutting, buzzing sound pierces the air, and that’s when I realize said spikes are fucking spinning.
“Faster, Isadora!” The girl is already tiring, and I know I can sail past her, but I won’t leave her behind.
You must come back to me, whatever the cost. Understood? I almost cringe at the memory of Nick’s voice in my head.
I’ll make it back to him. Maybe not unscathed, but I’ll make it.
The twirling spikes inch closer, and despite how hard our feet pound on the pavement, how intensely our lungs burn for air that evaporates almost as soon as we inhale, the corridor seems endless.
Isadora lags, slows. I grab her elbow and growl at her, the sound anything but human. “Keep fucking running!”
Her face is an alarming shade of tomato, but her dark eyes turn fearful in hearing what escapes my mouth. Still, it works, and Isadora gathers more speed, though I can see it’s not going to last long.
Fuck.
Finally, I see where the pathway ends, beaconing us towards safety. Just a few more feet.
The spikes are too close, about five seconds away from piercing our clothes, then our skin. And safety looks about six seconds away.
Isadora slows down again, and I know this time, she won’t come back from it.
So, I give her hard shove, complete with some monstrous strength, through the rest of the corridor.
Her body sails forward and clears the closing walls.
I’d sigh with relief, but I’m about two seconds away from being impaled, so I leap, throwing my arms in front of me to break my fall.
My upper body makes it through without injury, but my right leg catches on the sharp tip of one of the spikes, slicing through flesh. I release a strained fuck as I fall hard toward the floor, and the walls behind me slam shut with an ominous boom, sealing the corridor of horrors behind us.
I push up on my elbows, finding Isadora sitting on the floor, forearms resting on her knees as she pants heavily.
“You okay?” I ask through my own stuttering breaths.
She nods. “You’re hurt though.”
“I’m fine.” I turn myself around to sit, finding a pool of blood on the ground beneath my right leg. Yet, I know if I pull up my pants, no such injury will exist. I already feel my skin stitching together and the pain fading.
But Isadora isn’t convinced. She’s crouching by my right ankle, reaching for the hem of the black leathers.
“Don’t—”
I’m too late to stop her. She yanks up the hem in one swift movement, black eyes narrowing as she runs her hand over smooth skin. Her gaze bounces between my clearly uninjured leg to the ground stained crimson beneath it.
“Guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” I push to stand, leaving a stunned Isadora at my feet. “Let’s go.” I start to walk. “Who knows what sort of shit this labyrinth will try to pull next.”
My feet cement themselves to the floor when I feel the small, pointed tip of a blade at my back. Slowly, my fingers inch toward the hilt of my own dagger.
“Don’t,” Isadora warns, her voice cold and cautionary. “Turn around. Slowly.”
I raise my hands in surrender and turn towards her as she instructed, the small blade now resting at the hollow of my throat.
“I’m going to ask only once,” she says, pressing the blade into my skin. “And if I don’t like your answer, you are going to find out just how adept I am with these blades.”
A glimmer in her left hand catches my eye, and I note a second blade dancing within her fingertips.
“Ask,” I tell her, my voice unwavering.
Her eyes narrow. “Who are you really?”
I tsk. “Wrong question.”
Isadora opens her mouth, but I interrupt. “The real question is: what am I?”
Isadora swallows, her earlier bravado dimming. “What are you?”
I smile, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth. Isadora releases a startled gasp and steps back. “Your…your eyes,” she stutters then repeats: “what are you?”
Sharp-toothed grin widening, I answer: “Scylla.”