Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When I woke, the sun had risen; across from me, blood-hungry hedge thorns glinted in the light. I lifted my head.
The alcove was empty. Dorian’s cloak still hung from the thorns.
I sat up, my chest tightening. He was gone—
The cloak shifted, and a hand swept it aside. Dorian stepped through. “Thought I heard you wake.”
I let out a slow breath. “Where were you?”
“Scouting.”
“You shouldn’t have gone alone.”
His look said everything he didn’t: he wasn’t any less safe alone than he was with me. Mostly true. But also not.
“Did you see anything?”
“There’s something three right turns ahead you’ll want to see.”
I nodded, then turned toward my makeshift dew collector. On the flat of my sword, droplets gleamed in the early light. I knelt beside it and lifted the blade with care. “Hand me your canteen.”
Dorian extended it, already uncorked. I tilted the sword slowly, letting the water glide down the groove and into the mouth of the canteen, drop by drop.
When I looked up, his gaze met mine. There was something in it—soft, faintly amused.
“That right there is half a day’s water for you,” he said.
I rose and grabbed my cloak. “It’s more than that.”
“Three quarters, if you’re not greedy.”
I swung the cloak around my shoulders and clasped it. I replaced my weapons at my hips and over my shoulder. “Depends on whether today’s another sprint for our lives.”
“Shouldn’t be,” he said, unhooking his cloak from the thorns. As the hedge revealed itself, my stomach cinched tight. In this small, curtained space, I’d almost forgotten we were trapped in this hell.
“But you never know,” he said. “So drink now while you can.”
He handed me the canteen. I drank, then passed it back. “You drink, too.”
He made to tuck it away, and I didn’t speak. I just stared, my mouth a hard line.
At last, he relented. He tilted his head back and poured the water down in a gleaming arc.
He made a face and corked the canteen. “Tastes like hedge and dirt.”
I exhaled quick through my nose. He’d never know it tasted twice as good as the best well water in the southern district. “Let’s go.”
Three right turns later, we found what Dorian had scouted.
A male fae sat slumped against the hedge, throat torn out, his blood still wet under the sun. He’d died upright, propped like a forgotten statue. I recognized him as the red-haired fae who hadn’t given me his name.
“Stars and shadows,” I breathed. “And the partner?”
“Haven’t found her. But he’s dead, so she’s dead.”
Of course. That was the nature of the trials—if one half of a pair died, the other died with them. Which meant, at best, only twenty-two of us remained.
“What do you think it was killed him?” I asked.
Dorian crouched by the body. “He was strong. Good with a mace. Excellent ear—no one could ever sneak up on him. Not since we were children.”
That stopped me. Not the words, but the weight in them. For the first time, it struck me just how much a part of this court Dorian was. This corpse had once been a boy beside him. They had grown up together. He had probably grown up with all these fae.
They were, all of them, probably this young. Just grown.
“He was a fucking asshole,” Dorian said. “But no fae in these trials would’ve killed him.”
“Why?”
He looked up, sunlight flashing in his eyes. “Because it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble. He’d be hell to bring down.”
“What if it was a woman who killed him?” I asked. “They have a greater connection to magic.”
Dorian glanced back at the corpse. “They wouldn’t use the kind of magic it’d take to kill him. Not here.”
“Why not?”
“It’d take too much out of them.” He rose before I could press further, then pointed to the wound at the fae’s throat, viscera glinting in the sun. “Anyway, magic didn’t do this.”
It had happened so close to us. I realized with a hollow twist that I’d heard this man’s death cry in the night.
“Then what did?” I asked.
Dorian’s gaze slid down the path. “Something else.”
The path stretched on, empty in either direction. Even so, I stepped closer to him.
“Should I be ready?”
“I don’t sense anything nearby. But we don’t want to be moving after sundown.”
He started walking. I followed.
“There must be a trick to this place,” I said. The hedge flanked us in unbroken uniformity. “It can’t all be the same.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Dorian walked three paces ahead. “The question is whether we’ll figure it out before we die.”
That was the question. Whether it would be thirst, hunger, another competitor, or whatever had killed the fae, we were surrounded by death. Which meant our minds weren’t at their best for figuring out puzzles.
Maybe that was the point. Anyone who could solve it amidst all this wasn’t just clever—they were survivalists.
“What happens if only one pair finds the way out?” I asked. “Are they the only ones who pass the trial?”
“I’d assume so.” Dorian reached into his cloak and passed me the sack of rabbit meat. “Though I doubt there’s a time limit. And I suspect one pair escaping doesn’t stop the trial for everyone else.”
That made sense. Which meant even if we escaped tomorrow, we’d keep walking this hedge-bound hell until the others either passed… or died.
I chewed a piece of dried rabbit and mulled that over as we continued, always turning right. The sun climbed higher and beat down on our heads from the cloudless sky. Eventually, I flipped my cloak upside down and held it over my head like a crude parasol.
By late afternoon, Dorian’s steady walk had become something close to a jog. An edge ran through his every movement, shoulders tight, gaze flicking corners too fast. Anxiety radiated off him, and it stirred my own.
We hadn’t passed a single alcove. No new intersections. Nothing to mark one stretch of the maze from another. Just the same thorns, same dirt, same sun—and a growing sense of being hunted by time itself.
Dorian had started mumbling to himself in Faerish, too low for me to understand. From the tone, he was strategizing, likely trying to figure out what we’d do when the sun dipped and we had no shelter.
Which was probably why he missed the odd whorl in the hedge as we passed it.
But I didn’t.
We stood before the whorl in the hedge, just as we had for the past twenty minutes. I crouched, squinting at it while Dorian paced behind me like a caged animal.
“There’s nothing there, Eury,” he said—for the fourth time. “We’re wasting daylight.”
The sun had slipped from afternoon into early evening. Its light slanted long across the maze, gilding the thorns in gold. I used to love this hour, when everything turned soft and golden and alive.
Now it just meant time was running out.
“When the sun’s gone,” I said, “we won’t see what’s coming.”
“I don’t see anything now.”
“There’s something here. I’m certain of it.”
I wasn’t. Not truly. But after wasting twenty minutes, I needed to believe it. Otherwise, I’d dragged us into a dead end—and maybe to our deaths. Then again, some might say that fate was sealed the moment the spiritstag paired me with Dorian.
Which only made me more determined to prove I was worth the match.
I leaned in. Elsewhere in the Eldermaze, the hedge grew so thick you couldn’t glimpse its structure—just endless leaves and thorns.
But here… here the foliage curved strangely, as if shaped around something unseen.
I could almost make out the dark interior lattice of branches. Not random. Not natural.
My fingers hovered near the edge.
“Don’t touch it,” Dorian said, voice tight. “The last thing we need is you dripping blood.”
I tilted my face up toward him. “Come here. Please.”
He paced a few more steps, then let out a breath and dropped to a crouch beside me.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Leaves. Thorns. Branches—”
“Exactly,” I said. “Where else in this maze have you seen branches?”
He paused. His eyes narrowed on the hedge. “Nowhere.”
“And you’ve been studying the hedge, haven’t you? With your keen fae eyesight?”
His jaw twitched as he leaned closer, studying the latticework. “It’s an anomaly.”
“Which means it has to mean something.”
He didn’t respond, but I could feel his attention sharpening. His hand lifted. I nearly stopped him, just as he’d stopped me—but maybe blood was the price of seeking answers in this place. Maybe he knew that, too.
His fingers brushed the leaves. He inhaled sharply. Tiny cuts welled dark across his fingertips.
I caught his hand and pressed the edge of my cloak against it, squeezing to stanch the blood. “What’d that accomplish?”
His gaze met mine. “There’s magic here.”
“On the leaves?”
He nodded, leaning in so close I worried he might slice his cheek. “The leaves… they’re not random. They’ve grown to form letters.”
“Letters?”
“In Faerish.”
“What do they say?”
He squinted. “I-A-M-B-E-G-O-T…”
“I am begot?” I echoed.
He murmured, “I am begotten.”
A beat passed. “Is that all?”
He lifted a hand, signaling silence. I watched his mouth move as he read, breath shallow. At last, he said, low and reverent: “‘I am begotten through my opposite.’”
A riddle.
It was a riddle.
Fuck.
“Eury, I think this is one of the hollows,” Dorian said. “A riddle’s the key to entry.”
I hadn’t even solved Theo’s last riddle. I am you, but I am not you. Theo had loved them—he’d solve them before he finished reading them. And now he was dead. And the only way into this so-called refuge was by solving one.
Before I could bury my face in my hands, a low, guttural moan echoed nearby.
Dorian was already on his feet, his sword sliding free in the same motion. I hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten until I tore my gaze from the hedge.
The sky was purple. The first stars had begun to burn through.
“Fae?” I whispered.
He shook his head once. “No. Stay here.”
I grabbed his forearm before he could vanish. Our eyes met. I couldn’t let him go alone.
He leaned close, voice low in my ear. “You can’t help with this. Figure out the riddle.”
And then he was gone, slipping into the dark like smoke. I didn’t even see which path he took, only felt the absence when he disappeared.
I backed toward the hedge, heart thundering. A thud echoed somewhere ahead, followed by a drag across bramble. My eyes scanned the shadows, but there was nothing.
Not fae. Not human.
Figure out the riddle, Eury.
I am begotten through my opposite.
Even on my best day, even when I wasn’t hungry or tired, I’d spend an hour puzzling a riddle out. Usually I’d curse enough that Theo would laugh and hand me the answer. But this wasn’t my best day.
It was likely to be my last.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to ignore my heart’s birdlike thrashing in my chest. Trying to silence the buzz of panic rising in my ears. I was alone now. Alone and—
A grunt. A yell.
Dorian.
My eyes flew open. Night had fallen completely. I couldn’t see him, but I heard scrabbling and the clash of something solid striking something else.
“Eury!” His voice came from nowhere—and everywhere. “The word. The word!”
His cry ended in a roar and a returning growl.
Vaelen’s bleeding fucking sky. What was the word?
I am begotten through my opposite. Through my opposite.
Calm, Eury. Calm. Just think. You know this. Did I know it? I had to know it. Theo would know it. Why was I so godsdamn useless? Dorian was off fighting through his fear, and I was—
Fear.
Dorian was afraid, but he was fighting anyway. He was doing the opposite of what he felt.
That was it.
“Courage,” I whispered, my throat dry. Then louder: “Courage. Courage. Courage. It’s courage, you bastard. Open.”
My voice echoed off the hedges. If anything else lurked within a league in this godsdamn maze, it definitely knew I was here now.
Nothing happened.
And then everything did.
The hedge rustled. The whorl twisted outward, leaves peeling away as if obeying some ancient order. A hole appeared—small, then widening, wide enough to crawl through.
Darkness waited beyond.
I spun, just in time to catch the shape of something surging toward me. A shadow broke into motion—too fast, too close—
Hands slammed into my back. I was shoved forward, arms catching me. And then we were both tumbling into the blackness of the hedge.