Chapter 38
The door looked carved by magic.
It was entirely black, embedded in the cave like a portal to another world. It towered above their heads, as tall as the Citadel. Ezer had to crane her neck back to see its rounded top, where more symbols arched over it, but they were so high up she couldn’t read them.
‘This is it,’ Kinlear breathed. ‘The entrance to his domain.’
‘Six found it,’ Ezer said.
The raphon’s tail twitched, yes. She lifted her head as if she were quite proud of herself.
Kinlear slid down from Six’s back, his hands trembling. Ezer didn’t want to leave Six’s warmth, her comfort.
But Kinlear was already limping towards the door, and her heart squeezed at the sight of him.
So she pressed her hand to Six’s neck. Stay.
‘Wait,’ Ezer whispered after Kinlear. She caught up and laced her arm through his, because suddenly she couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone.
He needed this. He wanted to do this, to be the one to make his mark on Lordach. He wasn’t a warrior like his father or Arawn. But now, if he made it inside and his dagger found the Acolyte … he would become a hero.
The savior of so many lives, and he’d go down in history for doing it.
‘Careful,’ Ezer whispered, as they stopped just before the door. ‘We don’t know if there are traps guarding it.’
‘Why would there be?’ Kinlear asked. He smelled like the liquid in his vial, sickly sweet as crushed flowers.
‘This is all as the intel promised it would be. A black door, an entrance, and … how else would the defectors make it inside, if not by this door?’ He glanced back over his shoulder, at the fading light of the outside world.
‘That door is ancient,’ Ezer said, because anyone would be able to sense the strangeness of this place.
The sort of holy feeling that came with it, as if even the air they breathed was filled with the sighs of spirits long lost to time.
The closer they got, the more her head spun, almost as if she’d drunk winterwine. ‘What if it’s cursed or—’
Kinlear lifted a dark brow. ‘That’s why it isn’t you who’s going to risk it, Ezer.’
‘Don’t touch it,’ Ezer hissed, but before she could stop him …
The prince placed his hand on the door.
She held her breath, waiting for something terrible to happen.
The Citadel’s wards could sense who was pure of heart and who was not. The shadowstorm too.
Surely this would be the same.
She waited for the ground to shake, or shadow wolves to come pouring out of the darkness behind them, or for the raphons to turn on them and attack, an ambush well played. But nothing happened.
There were no traps, no monsters.
And when Ezer glanced back, Six just sat there preening, her beak nipping at her paws, like she hadn’t a care in the world.
‘See?’ Kinlear whispered. ‘Nothing to worry about, Raphonminder.’
But the door did not move. And Ezer felt it again, that pull towards it.
Like the door itself was intoxicating.
‘Do you feel it, too?’ Kinlear frowned. ‘The … strange power?’
And then he frowned, as if in pain. Another cough left his lungs. The sound was wet, far worse than it had been before. He tried to grab his vial, but his hands were shaking too much.
‘Here,’ Ezer uncorked it and held it to his lips.
He drank the foul liquid like it was water in a desert.
And as Ezer recorked the vial, she realized …
It was empty.
‘How much do you have left?’ Ezer asked, her eyes meeting his.
He shrugged. ‘Enough.’
And then he let out a small chuckle.
She echoed it, like they were both drunk, indeed.
The door … what was it doing to them?
She felt like the shadows had grown eyes now. Like the darkness was swimming around them. She placed a hand on Kinlear’s chest to steady herself.
‘We have to find a way inside,’ she said. ‘Before we pass out, or—’
‘Or what?’ he said and grinned haphazardly. ‘It feels lovely. Like the sun on my face.’
The door was definitely making her head swim. Because he was warm, and she could stay here forever in the darkness, comfortable in this strange, shadowed haze.
She suddenly couldn’t remember why they were here.
Or where here even was.
She focused on the closest thing to her.
A prince, she thought. I am here with a prince.
She giggled.
‘I love the sound of it,’ Kinlear breathed, and he wobbled where he stood. ‘Your laugh. Your joy.’
His face was so handsome. It was so much like …
She couldn’t remember, suddenly.
She saw only Kinlear Laroux.
Something was whispering in her mind. A voice she knew, as wind tousled her curls, but it was muffled. She could barely hear it as she stared at her hand on his chest.
The world around her began to swim.
But he was solid. He was … intoxicating.
She leaned forward, and breathed him in.
Six huffed in the background and turned her back to them.
‘You gave her to me, Kinlear,’ Ezer whispered. Her words … were they slurring? ‘You are the reason she is free.’
No one else had ever believed in her like he had.
No one else had ever given her as sweet a gift.
‘Ezer …’ He grinned down at her as his hand slid atop hers. She could feel his beating heart, and in the back of her mind, she knew that soon … it would go still. She pressed closer to him. ‘A lifetime in the Citadel… and you are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Do you know that?’
She shook her head as he coughed again.
As his outline blurred, and she had to blink to resettle herself again.
‘All the waiting, all the hoping, the prayers for true healing that did not come.’ He nodded. ‘It was all worth it. Because of you.’
She could have sworn his skin was glowing, that his eyes had become stars, that his dark curls would be so soft if she just reached up and ran her fingers through them.
That strange voice called to her again, but she shut it out.
Because she was melting into a puddle of warmth, and … and through the veil, she knew, by the way he was looking at her …
He loved her.
‘Ezer,’ he whispered.
A strange little shiver ran up and down her spine.
She did not back away.
‘There’s something I want you to know, before I …’
She was floating. Perhaps she was dead.
But her heart wouldn’t be pounding this hard if she were dead. And that feeling in her bones …
She licked her lips, and noticed his gaze dropped to them.
Something powerful, unexpected, shot through her.
Desire.
‘Ezer,’ Kinlear breathed.
‘Yes, Kinlear?’ Ezer whispered.
And he stepped even closer, and lifted a hand to her cheek, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
He was her mystery.
And suddenly she wanted to solve him.
‘I think … I have known for a while now,’ he whispered.
He smiled, his eyes glassy as the dark power pulsed from the door.
‘When I look at you … when I am near you … it becomes so much clearer.’ His hand drew lazy circles around hers, and it set her on fire.
‘I need you to know, Ezer. I think … I think I am falling—’
She couldn’t bear it any longer.
Gods, she was ravenous for a taste of his lips.
So she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. A gentle thing, just a peck, but …
It only made the wave of desire surge.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, because he wasn’t kissing her back. And—
‘Don’t,’ he whispered against her lips, and she’d never seen that look in his eyes before, with a hunger that made her toes curl.
‘Don’t you dare apologize. I want to experience you.
’ Her heart roared in her ears. Or maybe that was the pulsing power of the door.
‘I want … I want to live, Ezer. Before I die.’
He kissed her this time.
He was passion incarnate, and suddenly she wanted to drown in him.
He washed away everything else, and even as he broke the kiss, gasping for breath as he fought away a cough … she found herself reaching for him.
And pulling him back towards her.
‘Ezer,’ he breathed, and then their lips were meeting again, and he tasted sweet, and he felt warm and safe and for just one moment, she could imagine the way his body would feel against hers when—
A growl sounded.
And something nudged her, so hard she fell backwards, and landed on the stones.
She looked up, gasping, to find …
Six.
The raphon clicked her beak and breathed into Ezer’s face, warm and stinking … and suddenly enough to push the desire away.
A vision entered her mind.
Ezer, standing on a snowy cliffside … with a different man.
Arawn.
Gods.
Shame washed over her. How had she forgotten him?
And then she remembered where she was. The mission. The timeline.
The Acolyte.
She’d lost herself to the pull of dark power, what had to be some sort of strange protection set in place, like a test for weak minds, those not capable of carrying on. And … Ezer stood and wiped dust from her cloak.
She had almost failed it.
‘That … shouldn’t have happened,’ Ezer said, and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘It was the door. It was the power.’
‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘Not all of it, at least.’
She paused, her lips parted in question.
He took her hands gently and held them against his beating heart.
‘You chose him,’ he said gently. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘I …’ She didn’t know what to say. So, the truth was what came out. ‘In another life … I might have chosen you.’
He squeezed her hands and leaned in close, so that his lips were a sigh away from hers. ‘And would you choose me still if he was standing right beside us?’
Her silence was answer enough.
‘In another life,’ he said, his hands cradling her face, ‘I would have proved to you just how well you and I could fit together, Ezer. How deeply I could love you, day and night … until the only Laroux brother on your mind was me.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she whispered.
And suddenly she was cold without him, as he backed a step away.
‘It is the truth. And I am man enough to admit that I cannot have you. Not … forever. Not the way he could.’
Her heart squeezed, full of guilt, but she did not regret it in full.
Because if the door hadn’t pushed her to kiss him … a part of her would always wonder what it would have been like. Even after he was gone.
So she took his hand and squeezed it. ‘You deserve to live, Kinlear,’ she said. ‘And you’ve plenty of life left. You have an Acolyte to kill. And you promised me a dance when this is all said and done.’
‘I could give you more than a dance,’ he said. ‘I’d give you anything you wanted, Raphon Rider. I’d give you my soul if you asked.’
His smile was playful. Devilish, as his thumb caressed her cheek, and it was almost her undoing. She didn’t know if it was from the intoxicating, dark power pulsing off the door …
Or her own feelings.
Her heart was a traitorous, wretched thing.
She could have stayed in this cave forever with him, if not to explore what they could have had together … then certainly to freeze time and keep him from facing his inevitable end.
But that tiny whisper in the back of her mind – her own conscience – told her that her choice was already made.
And it wasn’t him.
‘Would you help me open the door?’ Kinlear asked.
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
And together, they turned to it. But they could find no way to open it, no matter how they ran their hands across it, no matter how many places they tried to find a fold in the stones, a gap, a hidden handle.
‘Ezer.’
It surprised her, the whisper. She hadn’t known if her mother’s spirit was still with her.
‘Blood.’
Something seemed to shift inside of her, and she knew what her mother meant. She reached for the small blade on her hip. It glittered beautifully as she unsheathed it and held it to the purple torchlight.
‘What are you doing?’ Kinlear asked.
The power of the door threatened to pull her under again as he stepped closer, his hand on the small of her back.
‘I think we should try blood,’ she said, and stepped ever so slightly away. She could still feel heat where his fingers had just been. ‘It’s what called Six to me at first. If it worked with one of his raphons, perhaps it will work with this door too.’
She looked at Six, who stood paces away.
The raphon twitched her tail once.
Her breathing went from steady to slightly hitched as she held out her right hand and poised the tip of her blade above it.
‘No,’ Kinlear said. ‘Use my blood.’
She didn’t listen. The pain was quick, and red soon ran from her skin like a river, dripping down the stones. Before it slowed, she turned and pressed her hand to the enormous door. She could feel its power, like the heartbeat of a great, slumbering beast.
She gasped as the door drank her blood hungrily. That overpowering feeling swam through her, begging her not to release her hand. To stay here and bleed herself dry, if only so the door could taste her for eternity.
But then Six let out a croak, and Ezer ripped her hand away.
The symbols suddenly flared to life, filling with dark tendrils of shadow that curled from the cave walls, as if they had indeed been hiding before. As if called by magic, they filled every symbol upon the door, undulating like snakes, until suddenly …
A great rumble, as enormous locks on the other side slid open. Dust rained down from the cave ceiling and, with a great groan … the door clicked open.
There was only darkness beyond.
A whoosh of frigid air swam outwards, kicking up eddies of dust around their ankles.
Kinlear looked at her the way she imagined she always looked at him.
Like she was his mystery, too.
‘What is it,’ he said aloud, ‘about you?’
He turned and pried one of the torches away from its clawed sconce. The purple flames flickered even as he held it out to the waiting dark.
It was thick, like it was swirling with real living shadows, the kind that would not be chased away by firelight.
But then Ezer noticed something on the side of the wall.
A groove, shining with dark liquid.
Something strange crawled up and down her spine, a feeling that was not quite right. She’d seen those grooves before.
She pried another torch off the wall, and leaned just over the threshold, dipping the purple flames into the groove.
It burst to life, with a tendril of fire that snaked away, down into the darkness until the entire rounded tunnel was lit.
Ezer’s heart felt like it stopped, and she sucked in a breath.
It was her labyrinth.