Chapter 20 #2
A small smile twitches against his mouth. Like he’s remembering a different Milos. Maybe the one he ran through the Meadows with. Hid in dark corners with. The brother Cary had before he made a choice that changed them.
Empathy crowds into my chest.
I made a choice too, that changed everything. That left me alone, even when I was surrounded by people.
We’re not so different, Cary and me.
Idly picking at a vine, he asks, “What should we do?”
I fall back against the wall, rubbing my temples. The leaves shift around me. Flower petals brush my cheek in a gentle kiss.
“August, staying here is not an option.”
“I know,” I snap. In the distance, I hear the whispers, chants. Hollowed voices growing. Cary’s face says he hears them too.
Grimly, he says, “The souls who made a deal with Milos. For a second chance. They will do anything to escape.”
My shoulders quiver. “Can we help them?”
He shakes his head. “They are not who they once were. They have been here too long.”
Anger builds in me. How could anyone be loyal to Milos? All that charm and unnerving beauty is hiding how insidious he really is.
“Come on. We need to keep going.”
I hesitate. Underneath the buzzing, there’s a faint, almost recognizable noise. I close my eyes, concentrating.
Listen carefully. That’s what Henri told me.
I hear a song. The rhythmic sway of waves.
Water.
It was too quiet before. Buried by the blood roaring in my ears while running. My feet pounding the stone floor. Every thought in my head, incessantly loud. But it’s here now. As constant as my heartbeat.
“Down here.”
This time, it’s Cary who has to move fast to keep up. He’s sure-footed behind me. I lead us through a windier path, different from the previous one.
Fear made all my decisions before. Every left or right was influenced by anxiety. But now I’m clearheaded. Moving on instinct.
We slip past shrubs sculpted into animals I can’t even recognize. The mirrors change too. Gilded snowflakes. Crescent moons. Spiky asphodels. Their reflections call our names, demand our gaze.
We don’t look.
Something else changes in the maze. Or I hadn’t noticed it before. When I lean in the wrong direction, the flower petals on the walls close tight like fists. If I turn the other way, they bloom. Full and beautiful.
They’re directing me. Composing a song in step with the water.
At some point, Cary finds his way back to my side. He smells nice. Clean sweat and salt water. Our knuckles brush—steel meeting flint. The fire spreads to my lips.
“What do you know about Cora?”
His head turns a little. Shock briefly rings his eyes. “Only what I have read.”
Right. Cary, ferrier of souls and part-time bookworm. It makes me smile. Knowing more about him now.
“It was long ago. She loved what she did for souls.” His eyes lower. “But she did not have a love of her own.”
I guide us through another passage, listening.
“Then she fell for a mortal.” Cary keeps his gaze from mine. “And he fell for her too.”
We take a left. Then a right. It’s another two passages before Cary speaks again.
“Love is not promised to Deathless. We cannot neglect our obligations.”
He stops again. The tightness in his jaw tells me he’s fighting with himself. Deciding whether to reveal more.
I cautiously brush the back of his hand. His fingers flex. Finally, his dark gaze levels with mine.
“What happened?”
“She hated being away from him.” Behind his lashes, gold licks at the black. “So, she brought him to Aides.”
I slow my steps as reality catches up. “He was the last mortal to come here, wasn’t he? Before me.”
Reluctantly, Cary nods. “She broke the rules for him. Over and over. Until she was given a choice: our world or yours.”
Another piece falls into place. The rule of five visits. Cora is the reason it exists. Not to protect mortals. To protect the underworld’s secrets, its existence.
“She chose love,” I say.
“She chose mortality,” Cary counters. “To lose who she was.”
“For love,” I reiterate. His mouth purses.
The flowers direct us to a narrower corridor. Our shoulders graze. I say, “Then a Deathless can choose to be mortal.”
Cary looks up. “Yes. I mean, no one has since her. From what I read, it is…well, complicated.”
He doesn’t elaborate. We fall back into silence. Heavy, suffocating silence.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “That I used you.”
Despite the anger still churning in me, I have to say this. I kept secrets from him too. He deserves to hear why.
“I was so desperate to talk to London again. Tell him—” I catch my bottom lip between my teeth, hesitating.
Time to stop blaming yourself, Auggie.
London’s in my head. In my chest. He always has been.
“I needed closure. To say goodbye to him. The right way. And I let that desperation turn me into something I’m not.”
Cary gives me a blank stare, unresponsive.
My face scrunches. “I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning. I shouldn’t…You deserved better.”
After a beat, Cary looks away. The flowers and serenading water take us left. Then left again. Out of nowhere, he says, “You were right.”
When I stumble, his hand catches my elbow. Fast as lightning. He steadies me, then adds, “I did not understand mortals. I did not understand you, August.”
His gaze is back on me. I open my mouth, but I’m unsure what to say. So I listen instead.
“There are millions who will never know that kind of love. Who will never experience what it means to be loved in that way.”
I swallow, struggling to keep eye contact. His intense stare refuses to let me look away.
“Grief needs to be felt,” he says. “It is not a burden. It is a reminder. You were given the choice to love. To be loved. And you took it. You let it grow and become bigger than even you imagined.”
My eyes burn with fresh tears. I don’t blink.
Softly, seriously, he says, “That is a gift, August.”
I lose the war with tears. Only a couple fall. Cary’s fingers catch them.
He smiles. “But I did not understand how heavy that gift was until you. Until I saw the pain and guilt and loneliness that comes with it.”
We stop somewhere in the middle of a passageway. His thumbs brush my cheeks dry.
“Sorry I never stuck around to see what happens after.” He studies me. “I wish I had. I wish I had known sooner how that pain changes who you become.”
Cary stays like that. Gentle hands cupping my cheeks. His attentive stare following my reactions, reluctant to look anywhere else.
Feverish want gnaws at my heart.
I want him in ways that are dangerous. That hurt. Because I know what it means to lose someone.
Because I can’t have him.
Cary can never be mine, fully. He’s the ferrier of souls. They need him and he won’t leave them for…me.
I know it. In every bone. That doesn’t stop my heart from slamming into my sternum, begging me to say something.
Tell him.
We’ve kept too many secrets from each other. Left too many words unsaid in our silence. His mouth quirks like he’s reading my mind.
“Say it, Auggie.”
My breath catches when he says my name. When he calls me Auggie. It’s a new collection of notes, a forte that echoes through my head.
I reach up. My hands rest just under his ribs. He leans forward, exhales lowly. All I can think about is how that noise has unraveled me time after time.
“You give to all of them,” I manage, voice shaking. “Every single soul. Let me give to you, Cary.”
“Give what?”
I lick my lips.
“Wait.” His fingers freeze on my jaw, thumb to my lips. “Listen.”
It’s hard not to. The buzzing is hauntingly loud. A swarm of bees cutting across a field.
Cary grabs my hand. “We need to go. Which way?”
It’s hard to focus on the low ripple of water above the voices coming closer. I tune my ears. Pretend I’m on a crowded city bus with some kid dribbling his soccer ball. A baby crying. Some finance bro shouting into his phone.
I listen for the thing that calms me in the worst moments:
Music.
We run.
Around corners. Sliding through rights and lefts. The mirrors seem to glow brighter, reflecting light right into our eyes. I tug Cary with me, terror in my throat. Nightmares at our backs.
My hand tightens around his.
All Fate does is take from me. First London, which then snatched being able to call the house I grew up in my home. The city I love wasn’t mine anymore. Losing him meant losing my love for music. It frayed my friendship with Max to loose threads I can’t tie back together.
I know I can’t have Cary. But I’ll be damned if Fate yanks him from me too.
The light intensifies. It’s almost unbearable, especially with sweat falling into my eyes. Eventually the glare melts. Rays of gold soften into pinks and oranges. The stench of dread fades to the fresh scent of shore and water.
An opening. An exit.
“Come on!”
I pull and Cary trips without falling. He meets my every stride. We stumble through the wide mouth at the end of the passageway.
Free from the labyrinth’s jaws.