Chapter 19
Milos claps as Aminta leads me back into the throne room. He sits lazily on the throne. Not far away, Henri stands, shoulders stiff, while Cary refuses to make eye contact as he waits by the elevator.
I focus on Milos. His grin cuts like a razor. The floating hourglass has run out of sand.
I’ve run out of time.
Milos leans forward. “Beautiful August, are you ready to make a deal?”
My gaze flits to his neck. The faded rouge climbing the side. Aminta wears a matching shade on her lips.
I do not want your heart. I want your power.
“No,” I say.
His head tilts. “No, you are not ready? Or no, you do not want to make a deal?”
I lift my chin, clinging to whatever bravery I can find. “The second one.”
A relieved sigh comes from somewhere in the room. Henri, maybe. In the corner of my eye, Cary is as still as a statue.
Milos slides a finger over his mouth, considering me. “Are you sure?”
“I wish things would’ve ended differently for me and London,” I answer. “There’s so much I want to tell him. But I’m done chasing the what-ifs. I can’t change what happened.”
Carefully, my eyes cheat back to Cary. He doesn’t react. Not out loud. But that muscle in his jaw moves. Just slightly.
“I trust London is safe,” I say to Milos. “And one day I’ll see him again. Tell him everything. Now I’d like to go home. Give my life another chance.”
Silence descends on the room. Milos’s stare is unwavering. I do my best to look like I’m confident in my decision.
He licks out a smooth smile. “How very sentimental. So mature. I knew you were special.” He stands. It only takes five steps to reach me. “It is also too late.”
My face falls.
Was I supposed to be here sooner? How long ago did the sand run out?
Milos’s grin turns cruel. “This is your fifth trip to Aides. You know what that means.”
I pull in a painful breath. Cary warned me. Right after Milos invited me to the ball. My head snaps in Henri’s direction. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Henri tries to respond, but Milos cuts him off.
“How could he possibly know you had already visited a fourth time? That you snuck here with my brother for some”—his eyebrows wiggle suggestively—“private time?”
A pit opens up in my stomach.
Milos circles me, snorting. “Hmm. Our dear ferrier is not the only one who loves secrets.”
In the half light, Cary’s eyes are hollow. His lips flat. I hear his voice in my head, the last thing he said to me in my apartment:
Do not return to Aides. Until it is your time.
He was trying to stop me. To keep me safe from this fate. And, like a fool, I didn’t listen.
“I can’t stay here,” I rush out. What about my parents? Max?
“You had a choice,” Milos notes. “You turned down my offer, remember?”
His offer. Of course. He said it himself, right here in this room.
My power.
I square my shoulders. “I’m the descendant of a Deathless, right? That means I can still come and go. I’m not bound to Aides. Like you are. I have her power.”
Milos’s lip curls. “That you do.”
Pride vibrates through me, my chest puffed. Milos treats everything and everyone like a game that he always wins. But I can play too.
“I’m leaving,” I declare.
Stepping backward, Milos throws his arms wide dramatically. “Please, show us your power! Leave! You are free to go.” Gold slithers around his eyes. “If you can do it on your own, that is.”
On my own…How do I do that?
Two hours ago, I didn’t even know any power existed somewhere in my bloodline. That it was passed down from a Deathless. Now I’m just supposed to use it?
I look around for help. Henri lowers his eyes. Aminta turns away. Cary offers me a long, unyielding stare. I’ve only seen him travel between my world and Aides through water.
But there’s none of that here and I’m not him. I’m not a ferrier.
I don’t know what I am.
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. My fingers spread. I reach for a thread of something I’ve never knowingly had access to. An outlet. A well waiting to be filled.
Seconds drift by. Then a minute.
Finally…nothing. I’m as empty as when I came here. There’s no buried power inside me.
And I’m never going home.
Next to me, I hear Milos snort arrogantly. “Pathetic. You will make a nice addition to my collection of—”
“There is another way.”
My eyes fly open. It takes me a moment to recognize where the voice comes from. But I know it as sure as my heartbeat.
Cary strides forward, his stare pointed at Milos. “The labyrinth.”
“The labyrinth,” he echoes, incredulous.
“What if he solves it? He can leave Aides, right?” Cary proposes. “Is that not one of the bargains you make with souls who want a second chance?”
Milos glares at him, then lets out another short laugh. “No one has ever escaped my labyrinth.”
I look between them. A moment slips by before recognition sets in. They’re talking about the garden’s maze.
“He can do it,” Cary announces. He avoids my eyes while adding, “August is so much more than any of us thinks he is. Including you, brother.”
A burst of warmth spreads unexpectedly through my chest. It radiates with the same bright confidence in Cary’s voice. He believes in me.
The feeling is short-lived. Milos waves a dismissive hand above his head.
“Fine. Let him try.” His wolfish smile is all teeth. “Either way, he is never leaving Aides.”
“How does it work?”
Henri flinches, surprised I’m speaking to him. I am too. His betrayal still stings. But I’m alone here, minutes from doing something I’m not even sure I can. And he’s the closest I’ve had to a friend in Aides.
Eventually, he asks, “How does what work?”
I gesture widely at the elevator. It’s only us inside. Milos insisted on a personal escort to the labyrinth. Someone other than him. I wasn’t shocked when Aminta didn’t volunteer.
Cary didn’t either, which both relieved and amplified my anxiety.
“Oh.” Henri leans against one of the brass walls. “It’s ma—”
“Don’t you dare say magic.”
“Would you prefer I lie?”
I thump the back of my head against the opposite wall. There’s so much unexplainable power running through Aides. Running through me too, apparently, even though I can’t feel it.
My mind drifts back to the throne room. When I thought I could just call upon something that was never there before. The delight in Milos’s eyes after I failed.
I examine the inside of my forearm. Right under my tattoo. I search for a trail of gold. Something sparkling in my veins. Maybe a hint of fire or the tingle of strength.
Anything to help me get out of here.
“The elevator is enchanted,” Henri explains. “It takes you where you need to go.”
“Can it take me home?” I tease.
He smiles sadly. “Where you need to go within Aides.”
I remember the masquerade ball. When I ran out of the ballroom to look for London. But the elevator took me to the gardens instead. Was it trying to keep me safe? Out of trouble?
Did it know Cary would find me there? That we’d end up kissing?
That he was what I nee—
The doors glide open. I push aside any more thoughts of Cary.
Guards wait inside the great hall for us. Henri gives them a brief nod. I don’t make eye contact. They trail at a short distance as we walk. My lungs fill with bright floral notes.
It’s not long before Henri breaks our silence. “I was like you once.”
“What, a prisoner?”
“No.” He pauses. “A mortal.”
Those two words bring me to a cold stop. I scan his face for the lie. But it’s not there. Henri smiles as he always does—carefree, bold as the moon.
“I don’t remember much,” he continues. The skin between his brows pinches. “It was so long ago.”
I squint at him. It’s hard to imagine a mortal Henri. What was he like? Still loud and spectacular? Did he look the same then?
“Then how did you become a Deathless?” Soon after, another question bubbles up, hope singing in my marrow. “Are you also a descendant?”
Tell me I’m not alone.
With sympathetic eyes, he says, “No. I was a soul. Chosen by the last messenger Deathless.” He motions grandly at himself. “Obviously, she was not as fashionable as I am.”
My heart skips. Henri was a soul. Which means he died. I trace the boyishness in his cheeks, those adorable dimples. How young was he when it happened?
Something he said at the pizzeria comes back to me:
We are chosen. But some are born from other Deathless. The rest…come from elsewhere.
Henri was talking about himself. Elsewhere is the mortal realm.
“How many Deathless used to be souls?”
“Not many,” he replies.
I run through all the faces from the masquerade ball. Gorgeous, breathtaking. The kind of beauty I rarely see in Santa Barbara. How much of that is the power of Aides? And at what price?
Now Poppy’s in my head: Nothing comes without a cost. Even in the afterlife.
Henri stops in front of the two statues at the room’s center. The ones I admired before. The woman with a crown of asphodels and the other holding a bouquet of daffodils.
“Narcissus,” I whisper.
“Cora,” Henri says of the one cradling the flowers. He gives me a sidelong stare. “Deathless of—”
“Life,” I finish for him.
I couldn’t see it before. Didn’t know what to look for. But something about her pulls ever so slightly on my chest. A thin string tied between us.
I wonder which of my parents she’s related to. We don’t look alike. Mostly because she’s a statue. But is that where my dad gets his intense love of helping kids from? Or is she the reason my mom is so gifted with plants and flowers?
My gaze shifts to the other woman. “And she is?”
“Death.”
“Cary’s mom,” I breathe out.
“And Milos’s,” Henri reminds me. I don’t want to think about him. Either of them.
Turning away, I follow Henri toward the end of the hall. “Why are you telling me this?”
Henri’s face smooths into soft lines. “I’m loyal to Aides and Milos. But I haven’t forgotten who I was before. There’s still a part of me that”—he exhales, touching his chest—“feels a connection to mortals. I help where I can.”
The soaring walls of the labyrinth loom over us. Tangled foliage hides the stone beneath. The entrance is an open mouth. Waiting to swallow me. Heady spice from the saffron crocus scents the breeze.