Chapter 28 Taera #2
My hope is swallowed anew. To never see the desert again, except from inside this prison of glass… to never return to Gramps, Ezran, my village—or even feel the sun… I can’t imagine a more terrifying fate.
I grasp for a non-book-related subject. “How am I supposed to know what we’re looking for?”
“Leave that to me. Left or right?”
I huff, incredulous. How can where we’re going not matter when he’s asking me to choose directions?
I take us around several random twists and turns, and our conversation fades.
I wonder what sort of secrets the book holds and shudder, deciding I don’t want to know.
I entertain the idea of asking Nikolai more questions about the Halls, while we’re stuck together in this maze, but I’m terrified of being abandoned in these narrow, twisting corridors. So I keep my mouth shut.
A glint of white catches my eye up ahead.
“What’s that?” I say.
“Let’s find out.” Nikolai strides forward until the hallway opens into a small, circular room. In the center stands a clouded-glass statue of a stern-faced man holding out his hand.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“A puzzle,” he murmurs.
“It doesn’t look like a puzzle.” I glance at Nikolai.
He rolls his eyes. “What’s a puzzle supposed to look like?”
“Not like this.” I cross my arms over my chest.
“Want to shake the nice man’s hand?”
I scowl at him. “No.”
“Scared?”
“No.” It might be a lie.
It’s as though Nikolai can see inside my mind. “Glass itself can’t hurt you, only the magic etched into it.”
“How am I supposed to tell what magic is etched into this?” I wave at the glass figure.
“Study.” He shrugs. “This statue looks safe.”
When I don’t make a move to approach the figure, Nikolai steps forth. He clasps the man’s hand as though to shake hands—which is exactly what he does.
I’m stunned, blinking and trying to decipher whether I just imagined the statue moving, when the glass figure points to a blank section of wall.
“This way,” Nikolai says.
“There’s nothing there,” I mutter.
“Maybe not,” he says, lifting a hand to the wall. When he reaches forward, his arm fades into it and out of sight. Nikolai takes another step and disappears completely.
My breath hitches. Glancing over my shoulder, I find the statue watching me, and my heart starts to gallop. I’m alone with it now.
“Nikolai!” I call out, but the wall remains a wall and I get no answer. Fine. If he can walk through it, so can I. Gritting my teeth, I reach out. When I touch what should be the surface of the wall, my hand disappears. It’s like dipping my fingers into cool water. It sends a shiver up my arm.
I hold my breath and lunge my whole body through.
Another hallway immediately appears on the other side, and I gasp for breath. My mouth tastes coppery.
“You followed.” Nikolai smirks.
“Of course I did.” I shake out my hands, trying to rid them of the residual tremors.
“You’re braver than before,” he says.
Caught off guard, I narrow my eyes. “Or stupid, to be following you.”
His insufferable smirk widens. “Need another cuddle?”
“For the last time, I did not cuddle you,” I hiss, stopping in place.
“Whatever you want to call it, fondling my elbow…”
“I was pretending to be a magician, that’s all.” My stubbornness is undermined by Nikolai continuing down the hallway without me, forcing me to jog to catch up.
“What are the Halls made of, anyway?” I demand.
“Your own imagination.” Nikolai’s eyes glint at something up ahead. “What’s this?”
Directly ahead of us floats a glass sphere the size of my fist, suspended just above head height. It floats toward me.
My eyes widen and I retreat.
“Don’t worry.” He grins. “It’s a prize.”
“We won?”
“Not the whole glass games. It’s just a trinket.” He reaches out for the orb, and it pops like a bubble. A couple of tiny, shimmering pearls emerge from inside, hovering.
“Earrings,” he says. “What do you think, do they suit me?”
He takes the pearls between his fingers, lifting them below his earlobes, where they hover and swing as though attached to a clasp. I just stare.
“No? Here.” He takes a step toward me, and his gloved knuckles brush the sides of my neck. “They look good on you.”
I can’t stop my cheeks from reddening. Tentatively, I lift a hand to my ears and touch the little orbs.
I should be terrified, or angry, but something thrills me about the unearthly jewelry.
The tingling excitement takes me by surprise.
I shouldn’t be feeling it—not here, and especially not when I’m with Nikolai, who forcibly dragged me to the Halls of Glass.
I clamp down on my delight and crush the feeling immediately.
“I don’t want these,” I say.
Nikolai shrugs. “Then take them off.”
I do, and they come away from my ears as easily as he placed them there. But I can’t bring myself to hurl them away and smash them, so I just leave the pearls hanging in the air behind us.
We walk on in silence. I don’t look at Nikolai, turning my focus on everything and anything else. The glass wall beside us—I notice for the first time—is carved with tiny, intricate flowers. Swooping, speckled petals curl open from the glass, each one smaller than my thumb.
“Lilies,” I murmur. The impossibly thin, layered petals are exquisite. Beautiful, even.
Nikolai goes very still. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
He eyes me. “You said lilies.”
“What does it matter?” I frown at the crazy magician.
When he steps close to me, my body hums with tension, with fear. But he reaches past me, tracing the petals I was admiring.
“What other flowers do you recognize?” he asks me, his brilliant-green eyes sharp with an intensity I don’t understand. It sets me on edge.
I glance around, and my years in the apothecary flood back to me. “Aster, honeysuckle.”
“Do you know the names of the birds?”
I blink. “Yes.”
Nikolai stares, serious in a way that confuses me. “What are they?”
“You want my help?” I half-laugh. Of all the things Nikolai could want from me, naming flowers is not what I expected. An idea comes to mind. “If I do help you… I won’t owe you any more favors?”
He smirks. “Sure. We can call it even.”
I don’t trust him for a second, but I start naming every species that flutters and flowers up the glass walls.
Nikolai listens to every word I say. When I’ve covered every embellishment of this wall, he asks about the one on the other side.
His lips purse as he listens, and there’s a puzzled crease between his brows.
“They’re all here,” he murmurs.
I frown at him. “What?”
“The flowers. The birds.” He stares at me, blinking quickly like he’s trying to figure something out in his head. “Which way do you think we should go?”
I look down the two identical paths that split the corridor.
Shrugging, I point down the left passage. It’s not my fault if we get lost. This is all crazy.
We barely make it a dozen steps before the corridor ends. I shake my head. This is ridiculous.
I’m turning back around when Nikolai mutters, “Wait.”
He trails his hand over the end of the corridor, clearing a mirror across the surface. I glimpse my own sandy-brown hair, and—
Nikolai grasps my arm, hard, and jerks me away. He drags me back down the hallway, and then another, before finally releasing me.
“Wha—” I gasp.
“What did you see?” he snarls.
I stare, my heart still pounding. “Just a mirror.”
He exhales, like he’d been holding his breath, and runs a hand through his hair.
“What was that?” I demand.
“A sick joke.”
“A joke?” That doesn’t explain the intensity of his reaction.
His jaw clenches. “It’s a corridor where all illusions fall away.”
What would Nikolai look like without illusions? I try to recall if I saw his reflection and wish I had paid more attention.
“Can we go back?” I blurt.
“No.” Nikolai chooses the next several turns, and we don’t run into any more mirrored dead ends. So much for letting me choose directions. We do, however, find another glowing bubble-orb floating down in the corridor.
“Would you like another prize?” he asks, his voice still a little tense.
I shake my head.
He reaches up and pops the glassy bubble with one finger. A cloud of green glitter rains down over us, smelling of grass.
Nikolai groans. “What is it? A mustache? Birds nesting in my hair?”
Fuzzy black cat ears poke out from between his layers of golden hair, quirking toward me as I speak, then twitching when he frowns.
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face, and I have to stifle laughter.
“They’re cute.” I grin. “Cat ears.”
“Fabulous.” Nikolai chuckles and continues down the hall.
I catch myself still smiling, and my stomach twists with guilt.
I should be thinking about trying to find a way out, not smiling about magic.
Enjoying myself feels a lot like betraying the people I love, even though I’m starting to doubt whether I’ll find anything useful in the labyrinth.
I’m just accompanying a fluffy-cat-eared magician through a magic maze and apparently finding it amusing.
“Oh, no.” Nikolai stops, and I pause at his side; he holds an arm out to stop me from going any further.
My body goes taut. “What is it?”
“Chasers,” he whispers. “Stay quiet.”
When I hold my breath, I hear it: the slap of footsteps on marble, followed by an eager shout.
Adrenaline floods my body. This is just a game, but the idea of being caught by another magician sends bolts of terror spasming through my chest.
“Run?” I whisper.
His furry ears angle forward, and he shakes his head.
“Then what—”
Nikolai tugs me back into the corner, at the juncture where the passage bends. We’re in the crook of the turn, easily visible to anyone who comes from either direction.
“This is in plain sight,” I whisper.
“Not if you stay still,” he whispers back. “Trust me?”
I scowl. “Not even a bit.”