Chapter 19
I’m hungry. So hungry my stomach feels like it’s turning inside-out.
I swat aside a magenta sparkle and glance at my bracelet again. I’ve managed to keep myself alive for most of the day without the Shadow’s help, but my time has dwindled to less than a third. And still, the castle hovers on its distant pinnacle, out of my reach. Forever out of reach.
I can’t even say with certainty that I’ve gotten closer. I can barely think over the sharp gnaw in my belly. Meanwhile, my tongue has glued itself to the roof of my mouth, despite my best efforts to swallow.
I’d give anything for a sip from the golden vial right now. For a biscuit, or even a mouthful of water. My throat spasms at the thought, my midsection cramping around nothing.
But in the hourglass, the sands continue to fall, so I force myself forward, striding across the moss.
This part of the Wildwood should prove relatively safe, considering I’ve just navigated a bog full of quicksand—using my trusty pebbles, of course—and haven’t yet found a door to my next challenge. But—
Ah. There.
I swerve toward a painted red door set into a sturdy oak. The frame is barely wide enough for me to slip through, but it should get me closer to the castle, at least.
I open the door, then back out and close it again. I do that a dozen more times, littering as much of the labyrinth with my scent as I can. Which seems to be working—the Shadow hasn’t found me yet.
When I turn the knob again, the door opens to some kind of hole in the ground. A rough-hewn wooden ladder leads upward, and I crane my neck, trying to see where it ends. Light pours in from the opening above, obscuring my view.
Huh. This is new.
With a shrug, I slip inside and start up the ladder, the wooden rungs coarse beneath my fingertips.
At the top, I emerge into a circular field enclosed by a high stone wall, too smooth to climb, too tall to jump over.
A dozen holes like the one I just emerged from sink into the earth.
Identical wooden ladders jut from each one, offering me access to who-knows-where.
I survey the scene, knowing I have to deal with it, that I can’t go back.
Which would have intimidated me a day or two ago, but something has been building in me since I parted ways with the Shadow.
Anger, maybe, or frustration. Exasperation at being made to endure these endless trials for the sake of a jilted woman’s jealousy.
Because really, why am I being punished for Alanna’s bruised pride?
I’m not the one who rejected her. And what kind of woman uses her own great-great-great-granddaughter as a pawn in a two-hundred-year-long game of revenge, anyway?
I shake my head, swallowing the acid burbling up from my stomach. No use in raging at a dead woman. I might as well channel my anger into getting myself out of here.
Making my way toward the nearest hole, I peer in, but don’t see much. Mostly shadows and a dirt floor, far below. The sun beats down against my neck, and I run the back of my hand across my forehead, not surprised when it comes away smeared with sweat and dirt and flecks of troll blood.
Goddess, I must look wretched, and smell even worse. Dreams of my bathtub in Velindra float across my mind, but I shove them away, digging a pebble from my pocket and dropping it down the hole.
It plinks into the dirt, which prompts a flurry of activity. A horde of furry white creatures with obscenely large teeth swarm the bottom of the ladder, fighting with one another, their snarls echoing up through the hole.
I sigh. Not going that way.
I try three more holes, eventually finding one where my pebble-drop goes unanswered. Good enough for me. I shimmy down the ladder, which deposits me into some kind of musty, underground burrow where I have another half-dozen holes to choose from.
I try the pebble method again, shuddering when a whole new set of monsters—hairless, wrinkled, catlike things—fight over one dropped stone after another.
When another hole proves safe, I make my way down, deeper into the earth, then deeper still.
With every level I descend, the light fades, the air growing damper, heavier. I briefly consider contacting Amriel, letting light from my bracelet flood the darkening space, but…
My stomach swoops. No, I’m still mad at him. He almost got himself killed right in front of me. Almost got both his halves killed.
Which I can hardly bear to think about, so I continue alone, dropping pebbles down holes and listening for snarls, only proceeding when met with silence.
Until I reach the bottom of a particularly narrow hole and my boots hit something…hollow? I frown, toeing my way through the dark. My foot encounters something solid, and I crouch to find a doorknob sprouting from the ground beneath me.
As if I’m standing on a door. One that opens directly into the earth.
My frown deepens. This is my only way out, the only hole not populated with things that want to eat me.
But if I open this door, it will dump me into…
wherever. I won’t have the option of climbing out again if I don’t like what’s on the other side.
I’ll simply drop into some brand-new landscape. Maybe even into the shadow forest.
I crouch there, pondering, my hand on the knob while darkness presses down.
In the quiet, I can almost hear the distant hiss of sand through the hourglass.
Or is that water flowing, somewhere? I can’t tell, but I need to keep moving, so I dig my gyre from my pocket and fold it into my palm, careful to insulate it from my skin with my fingerless gloves.
If need be, I can close my grip and transport myself at a moment’s notice.
I hold my breath and turn the knob. The door falls out from underneath me.
I plummet, the knob smacking my thigh on the way down. A second of free-fall, then I thud into soft ground among tufts of silky black grass. Dead grass.
I lay there for a moment, my thigh smarting, my eyes slitted against the sudden influx of light.
Except the light washing over me is gray, straggling down through dense, low-lying clouds.
When I raise my head, I find myself on a tiny island perched over a marsh.
Thick yellow ooze burbles below, and I press a fist to my nose to stifle the sulfurous stench.
Whatever waits below, it isn’t water.
I roll onto my belly and crawl to the edge. Fumes waft into my face, searing my throat and stinging my eyes. Noxious clouds of yellow vapor swirl across the marsh, occasionally parting to reveal solid ground in the distance.
I just have no way to reach it.
My grip on the gyre tightens. I’m trapped here, surrounded by a sea of treacherous goo, or acid, or whatever is down there, with no way to reach the shore.
I push back from the edge and take in my options.
No door dangles overhead. Only leaden clouds, a gloomy gray blanket that presses down from above.
Aside from that, a single dead tree sprouts from the far edge of my island, perfectly straight and nearly limbless.
The shore curves a little closer on that side, but it’s still too far to jump.
That’s it. Nothing else. No obvious way off.
My stomach flip-flops. I could transport back to the castle by gyre, but my shoulders knit just thinking about it.
I don’t trust myself there. Not around Amriel. I only barely stopped myself from letting his Shadow deflower me in the forest last night, and I’m not na?ve enough to think I’ll survive another encounter unscathed. Which means I need to find a way off this island on my own.
Somehow.
I take a seat at the base of the tree, surveying the burbling yellow marsh, coughing each time the wind delivers another cloud of stinging vapor into my face.
A hopeless laugh bubbles up from my depths, devoid of mirth.
“Well.” I reach for my pendant. “I guess you and I are overdue for a chat, anyway.”
The metal doesn’t warm, doesn’t respond, but why would it?
Ishanna hasn’t answered me in days. Or…weeks?
I can’t remember the last time true heat graced my fingertips.
Maybe last night in the shadow wood, but maybe I only imagined that.
Maybe I talked myself out of doing something that both tantalizes and terrifies me in equal measure.
I swipe at my burning eyes, my gaze turning briefly skyward.
“Goddess,” I croak, fumes swarming my throat and roughening my voice.
I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore, who I’m invoking, whether I’m simply begging the universe at large.
“Can you hear me? Are you there? Because I could really use your help right now.”
Nothing answers except the belch of the swamp below.
Tears rush up my throat, and I swear they’re trying to fill an absence.
Not only of Ishanna, but of my certainty.
Because someone has cut it out of me at some point, so skillfully I didn’t even notice.
Now I simply feel its lack, a chasm as deep as the bottomless pit churning in my belly.
“I’ve tried to be good,” I rasp. “All my life, I’ve tried to be good.
I’ve listened to you. Honored you, worshipped you.
I’ve offered you everything. My obedience, my thoughts, my future.
” The words pour from my tongue, welling up from some shadowy place inside me before vanishing into the bilious clouds of vapor.
“But I don’t know if you even want that.
If you want me. Because you skipped over me when you gave Carina her Grace.
You’ve ignored me all my life, let the fae king Claim me.
You let me end up in this horrible maze, and get tied to a wheel, and haven’t bothered to help me.
You haven’t saved me from a single thing. But…but…”