Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We left the throne room at once. Twenty-four of us filed out of the citadel and emerged into the daylight, where twenty-four horses waited for us. Servants held their reins, which were conferred to us when we approached.
How had the horses been brought around so quickly?
Of course—Rhiannon had known what the trial would be, and she had arranged for the horses to be here.
The whole of the Sylvanwild Court spilled into the gardens behind us. The lone child went on wailing, and the general murmur felt laden with trepidation, shock. The earlier anticipation, thrill, had gone.
The Eldermaze. I didn’t know the first thing about it. I had no recollection of any labyrinth in the book Dorian had given me.
I followed Dorian down the line of horses to the end. He picked the roan horse he had introduced me to earlier in the week. Beside that horse stood Pettifey, my filly.
He held the horse’s mane for me. “Get on.”
My chest felt tight as a drum. “You’d have me ride alone?”
“If you ride with me, we’d be slowed.”
I paused, breathing fast. This wasn’t the time to doubt myself.
And, after all, he was the shot-caller. Best not question our strategy the first time it was needed.
I stepped forward with a nod. I gripped Pettifey’s mane, stood alongside her, and with two quick steps I swung myself up onto her back. They were the steps I’d practiced, and they came to me with shocking ease.
I settled on her back, hands going straight to the reins. When I met Dorian’s eyes, he gave a nod. He stepped away, toward the roan horse, and mounted it in one effortless swing up.
He took hold of the reins and turned the horse toward me. “Galloping’s easier than cantering. You only need to stay low, keep your thighs tight, let the horse’s head out. Got it?”
Stay low, thighs tight, let the reins out. “Yes.”
So we had to move quickly—as fast as a horse could go. Around us, the other pairs were mounting. There seemed to be a general hurry, but all I could hear was that single child’s voice crying above everything else.
It sounded like a little girl. Like Elisabet, finding out her parents had died beyond the wall so many years ago.
“I’ll lead,” Dorian said as the horse danced beneath him. “Don’t worry about running her too hard—she’s trained for it. Just keep her close to me.”
Faun and her partner mounted two horses beside us. They spun the horses and disappeared from view, thundering toward the moat.
Dorian kept the horse dancing in place. “Ready?”
I found my hands tightening more on the reins. I nodded.
The roan horse’s head jerked as Dorian pulled the reins. The horse pivoted toward the forest, and with a press of Dorian’s heels, the creature fell straight into a canter. But I barely had time to register it.
I squeezed my heels against Pettifey’s sides, and she burst into a trot after the roan. It only took one more squeeze before she was cantering.
Dorian’s voice was a loud rasp ahead of me. “Secure your grip. Lean into it.”
I did so. As soon as we touched the bridge, Dorian leaned low on his roan’s neck. I leaned toward Pettifey’s mane as the horse broke from a canter into a gallop.
The trees moved by at a blur, and I nearly lost my hold on the filly. I held on, but barely; it wasn’t that the gait was not smooth, but that a canter to a gallop had been so sudden, such a burst of power, anything less than all my strength would have sent me flying.
I kept my eyes on the roan, on Dorian’s blown-out cloak. The Sylvanwild forest passed us in a haze of emerald green. The wind whipped my braid, desperate to take hold of it for good. Around us, other horses threaded through the trees.
“Where are we going?” I called out.
“To the edge of our territory,” Dorian said over his shoulder. “Where the autumn and winter courts meet.”
Sylvanwild and Noctere.
“We need the daylight,” he said. “As much of it as we can get.”
They all knew about the Eldermaze. Dorian, and every fae in this court. And daylight mattered, which meant…
“How long before we arrive?”
“An hour at this pace,” Dorian said, his voice carrying in an odd, clipped way on the wind. “No more questions now; guard your strength. You’ll need it once we arrive.”
My mind returned to that wailing child. Perhaps Dorian thought I’d throw myself from the horse if he answered all the questions swirling through me.
He knew about this place, so he should make the calls. I had agreed to that in his study.
We rode in silence for the next hour. I leaned low, gripped tight, and thought of everything I knew about mazes.
It was said that in the Kingdom of Storms, the king and queen had commissioned a maze of stone for their two eldest children. It was a series of corridors, most dead-ends or wrong turns. Only one proper sequence of turns led to the exit.
My mother had always called my mind a trap. An old memory floated to mind—me and twelve-year-old Theo on a rare sunny day.
“And what do you think is the logic?” I’d asked Theo.
Beside me, he’d stared into the sky as we lay on the ground in the shadow of the southern district’s spire. “What do you mean?”
“For getting to the other side of the king’s maze.”
“Logic? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s an oversized children’s toy. It’s just for fun.”
I hadn’t said anything else that day, but the question hadn’t left my mind. Perhaps there was a logic to it. My mother had told me there was a logic to nearly everything. But I’d never even seen the maze to find out.
We rode, we rode, we rode.
We rode until my thighs ached and I could feel the filly’s lungs moving beneath me like a bellows. Her breathing became audible, almost a cry, and I wanted to slow her, but Dorian had told me not to worry about running her.
I wondered if that were true, or if he simply didn’t care whether the horse lived or died.
I must have fallen deep into thought, because I jolted as the horse slowed to a trot. My attention crystallized on a desolate plain. No trees, no grass—only an endless stretch of brown.
This looked like my kingdom.
“We’re here,” Dorian said. His horse gave a great hacking cough as it slowed to a trot ahead of me. The coughing went on as Dorian patted the horse and murmured to it.
I sat upright and stroked Pettifey’s mane, willing the horse to calmness.
Ahead of us, left and right for as far as my eyes perceived, rose a dark hedge. At least twelve feet tall and so tightly grown, not even a single shaft of light penetrated through its leaves.
Some fifty feet off, several riderless horses milled, nosing at the dirt futilely for grass.
“We aren’t the first to arrive,” Dorian said. “But not the last, either.”
We reached the other horses and came to a stop. Dorian dismounted, led the roan back toward me, and helped me down. My thighs cried out with stiffness and ache; I hadn’t realized how hard I’d gripped the horse’s sides.
This close, the hedge wasn’t unbroken. An optical illusion of the light had made it seem so, but there was in fact a path in—an entrance.
“We move fast.” Dorian unhooked the horses’ bridles and threw the reins off the creatures.
The straps of leather landed on the ground beside them, and the horses stood there swaying and coughing.
As if sensing my next question, Dorian said, “The animals will be fine. They’ll gravitate naturally to the summer court’s lands. ”
Which meant this would be the last time I would see Pettifey.
I turned toward the horse, set one hand on her nose, and pressed my forehead to her face. She didn’t move, as though she understood the moment. Her breath was loud, fast, a testament to what she’d done for me.
When I stepped away, Dorian slapped the roan horse’s rear and sent it cantering down the hedge. He did the same with Pettifey. “That’s the best we can do for them.” He took hold of my hand. “Now we run, too.”
We passed into the Eldermaze, Dorian’s iron grip around my hand.
Before us, the path was three times as wide as a street in the Dip.
We ran together down the first path and veered right when the hedge forced a turn.
That led us to a longer path, just as wide as the first. It continued so far into the distance I couldn’t see the end.
This was no children’s maze. This was something else entirely.
“Tell me where we’re going,” I said, breathless. “Tell me the logic.”
“We have to get deep enough,” Dorian said. “If we see anyone else, it’ll mean a fight.”
He meant the other fae in the trial. If we were killed, that meant one less pairing to contend with. How many horses had milled in front of the maze? Eight, there were eight. At least eight other fae already lurked in this maze.
A break in the hedge appeared to our left. The path was short; the hedge forced another left turn not far in. “There’s an opening,” I said.
Dorian didn’t slow down, didn’t turn. “We can’t take the first break,” he said. “It’s the most obvious spot for an ambush.”
He was right. The regiment commander had taught us the same concept.
We continued on, and my lungs began to fatigue.
The maze was blistering, the sun hot on my scalp, the path bone-dry.
I knew Dorian could run faster and longer, but he stayed close.
Above us, the sun was a few hours past its apex; it was around three in the afternoon.
Beneath us, only pale dirt and rock. Nothing grew here except the hedge.
Another break appeared on the right, and I didn’t question it. If the first presented an ambush, then the second one would be the path everyone else took. If I understood Dorian at all, then we would take the third break.
Soon enough, the hedge broke a second time. Dorian said, “This one.”
We veered left. Here another path continued for some time before the hedge would force a turn. We kept running and came to a T. Dorian pulled me left again, and here the hedge became tighter, narrower, and twenty paces on we came to an almost perfectly circular alcove.
We rushed into it, and only then did Dorian let go of my hand.
My fingers ached from his grip, and I doubled over, breathing through white pinpricks in my sight.
I coughed and nearly retched. After the hour’s ride on the horses and our sprint, I could have dropped here. Only adrenaline kept me upright.
“Catch your breath,” he said. “We won’t stay long.”
When my stomach had settled and my vision wasn’t full of sprites, I eyed the alcove—and the walls that hemmed us in.
The hedge here wasn’t the soft, gardened kind I’d seen in drawings. It was made of brambles thick as my wrist, black-green and glossy with sap, their thorns long and sharp enough to pierce clean through bone.
Leaves clustered in dense spirals, veined in purple and shot through with faint, silvery mold.
They rustled even without wind, as if murmuring to one another.
At their roots, the soil steamed faintly, and I caught the smell of something damp and ancient.
The entire wall pulsed faintly with heat, like something alive was breathing just beyond the green.
I knew instinctively: this hedge could not be climbed through or up. Our only option was to navigate through to the other side.
“Don’t touch the hedge,” Dorian said beside me, almost in a murmur. His footsteps were light over the dirt as he paced to the alcove’s opening. “It’s razorleaf. Every part of it is designed to draw blood. And to poison.”
As if I longed to prick my fingers on that.
I straightened, wiping sweat from my brow. “Let’s go.”
We moved on, jogging down the path until we came to a sharp right turn. From there we continued down more paths, taking turns that followed no logic except to avoid being found by the others.
As we moved, Dorian explained the trial. “We have to find the maze’s end,” he said. “It’s the only way to pass the trial.”
“What about the center?”
He ventured a quick glance at me. “The center?”
“A maze’s center is said to be a special place.” I remembered that from the rumors of the royal maze in my kingdom. “What’s in the center of the Eldermaze?”
“There’s lore about this place. In it lies life and death,” he said. “Maybe at the center. The last time fae were sent into the Eldermaze was during the first trials hundreds of years ago, and none emerged.”
My chest constricted. “So how do you know there’s a way out?”
“I don’t.” His eyes met mine as we ran. “But it would be a pretty terrible maze if there wasn’t.”
I would take any sprig of hope right now.
“But to find out,” Dorian said, “we have to avoid the others. And anything else roaming this place. And…”
“Yes? Does the hedge come alive at night?”
He let out a one-note, bitter laugh. “Irin, I pray not.” Then, after a beat, “The Eldermaze is vast.”
“How vast?”
“Unfathomable. We’re as likely to die of thirst or hunger as we are to the other fae.”
As he said it, we came around a corner and nearly stumbled over a skeleton sprawled across our path. It had the appearance of a human, but it must be fae. Same bones as us. The death had occurred so long ago even the clothes were gone; only gleaming porcelain bones remained.
I paused, but Dorian stepped over it. “Get used to this.”
The weight of Dorian’s words settled over me as I stared down at the skeleton’s eyeholes. The back of its skull was missing. A searing realization heated my neck and face.
“This trial could last weeks.”
“If we’re fortunate,” he said ahead of me.
I stepped over the skeleton and caught up to him. “Nothing grows in here but the hedge. We can collect water, but food?”
He glanced over at me. “There’s no way to collect water.”
“Doesn’t it rain?”
“Of course.”
“So we can collect it.”
“We have no buckets, no containers.”
A tendril of pride wrapped around my heart and made its way onto my face. I set my hand on his forearm.
“This”—I swept out an arm toward the dirt and hedge—“is exactly like the Kingdom of Storms.” I stepped closer, gaze locked on his. “There’s always a way to collect water.”