Chapter 15 #3
“You were stupid enough to challenge the maze,” said the evil little boy.
“We have so much more you and Aelloven need to know,” the woman said when Mon hesitated. “But we need your help. That’s the exchange.” Her mouth pulled at the side. “If you don’t come, they’ll kill you anyway, and then you’ll be trapped here, just like all of us.”
Jesstin rolled his eyes to the side in disbelief. “I’d like to see them try.”
“There’s already a plan underway, by Acheron and Estelar.
They think you’re the reason Aelloven fell from the sky, that she was too distracted after a tiff with you,” Mon said.
“They’ll kill you, and they’ll bond Aelloven to Taven.
It will happen quicker than you’ll have time to react.
But if you come here first, they can’t sunder the bond, not until you return to the living. ”
“Then when I return, they’ll, what, lop my head off?”
“We don’t know.”
“How reassuring.”
“Ari is right. If you do not come soon, you will not have another chance. You will be sent here, trapped here. And Aelloven...” Mon’s head shook. “Her bond to Taven would be catastrophic. For her, yes, but mostly for everyone else of the blood.”
“But you won’t tell me why unless I do what you want me to do? And you don’t even know what that is. You just want me to show up and hope for the best?” Jesstin snorted. “Solid plan, mate. Ingenious.”
The irritated woman, Ari, started to rebut, but Mon stayed her.
“I know how it seems. I would question in the same way you are now,” he said.
“All of us simply want to move on to our next lives, to not be trapped in a place we were never meant to stay in, but it needs to happen the right way. Can you say the motives of Ryquin or Acheron or Estelar seem so pure?”
“You’ve already taken too much time. You always do,” Ari snapped. “Twilight is nearly spent, Mon.”
“Yes, yes—” Mon was cut off. Or, more simply, he was no longer there.
None of them were.
The cushions were gone. Jesstin’s as well. Instead of a great open space, he was standing in front of an arch. The sign above read Freedom.
The exit.
He looked around. No ghosts. No traps. Just rows of perfectly trimmed hedges. Just a maze.
Was it another trick? He hadn’t agreed to help them. He hadn’t even decided what to do before they’d left him there with nothing but questions.
Unless he wanted to fight the vines and leaves again, he only had one way out, and that was through.
Jesstin closed his eyes when he stepped under the arch, expecting something else to jump out and grab him. But when he opened his eyes, he was out. A golden, dusky light bathed the earth. It was the first real light he’d seen in Rivenholde, though it was on its way out.
“I knew you could do it!” It was Ryquin’s enthusiastic tenor that greeted him first. He slapped an arm over his shoulder with a rough, congratulatory tug. “I knew you were the one, Jesstin. I knew it in my bones.”
The man who had announced Jesstin’s doom was next, Estelar right behind. A woman draped something heavy over his shoulders. He reached back and found it was some sort of fur-covered cape. He flinched when she stretched to place a thorny circle around his head, but the sharp edges had been blunted.
“Our first winner in seasons. Many seasons.” The announcer shook his head. Ryquin might have expected him to win, but the man was clearly stymied.
Estelar was just as shocked, but his eyes were clouded with suspicion. “And by someone not of the blood. A first for us. In all our history.”
Jesstin swelled with self-righteous pride. Served them right, seeing an outsider win. “I’m full of surprises,” Jesstin said with an ingratiating smile at the man who’d threatened to murder him only a few hours ago. He looked past Estelar, searching for Sesto. Elloven. “That it then?”
“Your prize?” The announcer’s astonishment grew. Jesstin had forgotten all about that.
“Indeed,” Estelar said. He crossed his arms. “Is that not why you challenged the labyrinth, to ask for something you could never otherwise have?”
You can ask for whatever you want. They can deny you nothing. Wasn’t that what the girl had said to him, before patting his shoulder and offering the pitying look of someone sending them off to their death?
Before he’d started, he’d known exactly what to ask for. The bond broken, leaving him beholden to no one... leaving him free to turn his back on the cursed place, her, all of it.
On the other end of his ordeal, that no longer felt like the right answer.
“I...” His request would not be popular with Estelar, but they could deny him nothing, right? “I would like Taven Considine banished from Rivenholde and Elloven’s life. Forever.”
Estelar was at a loss for a moment, and in those seconds between reaction and response, he’d never looked more menacing. “That’s your ask? You don’t want something for yourself? You can have anything, you know. Anything at all.”
“That’s what I want.”
Ryquin grinned. “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, Father, compared to what past winners have asked for. It’s a simple laying of magic.” His eyes challenged Estelar, adding an interesting layer to the exchange.
Estelar breathed in through his teeth, his eyes cast away. “We’ll prepare everything, and it will be done at evening meal.”
“Why not now?” Jesstin asked. “What if I want it done now?”
“The rules do not specify immediacy,” Estelar said testily.
“We need two different individuals, one to bind Taven from Rivenholde’s borders, the other to bind him from her.
It’s unreasonable to expect them to drop everything and come.
You’ll have what you ask at evening meal and not a moment sooner. ”
Estelar broke away without excusing himself. Ryquin’s amusement followed him.
“You have really upset the establishment tonight, Jesstin. An outsider, winning full stripes? And now you request the one thing he doesn’t want to give.” He slapped his shoulder again, and not lightly. “You’re a special man. Come see me after your reward, and we’ll discuss what happens next.”
Then he, too, disappeared, swaggering away with the confidence his command would be obeyed.
Jesstin unclipped the ungainly cloak and let it fall to the ground, ignoring the insulted gasp of the announcer and the girl who’d pinned it on him.
Enjoying that, he removed the “crown” next and sent it flying into the gardens like a saucer in a game he and Gennady used to play.
That was even more satisfying, until he heard someone cry, “It’s mine! I caught it!”
Fuck whoever had caught the crown. Fuck them all.
He’d find Sesto later. He needed space to think. Alone.
He limped along a side path, trying to remember the way. When he reached the top of the hill, he could see most of the valley. The village, the sept. It wasn’t long before he had his bearings and was following the road down toward the row of crofts.
“Jesstin!” Elloven’s yell came from somewhere behind him. He’d secured a way out for both of them, and he didn’t want to see her, not then... maybe not ever again. “Jesstin, wait!”
Jesstin sped up to lose her, but she kept on, calling for him like he hadn’t heard her. He raised a hand so she knew he had, knew he wanted her to fall back. The next time she called his name, it was with less enthusiasm, and eventually her voice disappeared.
He was winded by the time he reached the croft, but the door was half open. He went to draw his sword, then remembered he wasn’t wearing it anymore. He’d left it, and the rest of his clothes, at the tent.
Sesto stepped forward and threw his arms around Jesstin’s neck.
“You stupid, foolish boy.” Then he reared back and slapped him.
Jesstin’s jaw slackened in amazement, and Sesto slapped him again.
“You would have had me return to Rhiain and Asterin with news of their brother’s demise?
” He squinted out tears. “You would leave me without good-bye?”
Jesstin clamped his hands over Sesto’s shoulders. “Forgive me. It was impulsive, even for me.”
Sesto scoffed and spun away, his arms crossed. “I’ll consider it.” He turned back. “But what were you thinking? You couldn’t possibly...” His eyes fluttered upward. “You’re far too rash, Jess, and that is not a trait that should be indulged in a place like this.”
Jesstin rubbed his face and hissed at the connection with so many tiny cuts.
“What did this to you?” Sesto’s hands floated in the air. “Dear goodness me, this is diabolical. Are you in pain?”
Jesstin shrugged. He watched the brief light of day fade in the window. He brushed off Sesto’s fussiness. “I need to be alone for a while. To think.”
“Think about what? Whether you’re going to throw yourself off a cliff next? Perhaps a walk through fire is more to your liking?”
“Don’t be an ass.” Jesstin pointed an arm toward the village.
“Everyone here wants something from me. Well, I’m not fucking doing it, Ses.
They can all sit on pikes.” Mon’s words about Acheron and Estelar plotting his death weren’t far from his thoughts when he said, “Something bigger is happening here, and I don’t know what it is.
I don’t care either. I’m leaving, and Elloven needs to leave too, and I need you to take her. ”
“Me? What do you... You’re not saying you aren’t coming?”
“Look.” Jesstin cupped Sesto’s cheek. “I may not know what they all want, but I know what most of them don’t want. Me near her.”
“But they put you in a croft together!”
“The bond forced their hand. It’s Taven they need. They’ll kill me and bond him to her, and...” He brought his hands to his temples, massaging them. “I need to think, Sesto. Can you please get her somewhere safe?”
“But... how? You’re bonded. You cannot be too far apart.”
The insight came together like the final wedges of a puzzle.
He wasn’t worried about the bond because it wouldn’t matter where he was going.
He needed to know what else the dead weren’t telling him, not because he trusted them but because he trusted the others even less.
Estelar and the others couldn’t follow him to the netherworld, which would give him time to put an actual, workable plan together.
If he stayed, he was dead anyway. “Don’t worry about the bond.
I need you to get her out of here safely and then I need you to tell Rhiain and As—”
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.” Sesto’s finger wagged with each word.
“Do not finish that thought, not even in your head. I will not send weepy final messages to your family so you can throw yourself in front of a sword. No. If you have something to say, tell them yourself.” He pulled back with a defiant huff.
“Will you take her then?”
“You’re not listening—”
“I heard you. I’ll bring my own messages home. Will you take her?”
“You’re assuming she’d even leave with me!”
“Will you take her, Sesto?’”
“I... I’ll do what I can.” He sighed deeply. “You are so maddening, Jess, do you know that? You don’t know what you’re doing. What game you’re playing.”
Jesstin leaned down and kissed the top of Sesto’s head. “I love you. Please, go, so I can think. I won’t die here. It would kill me to give them the satisfaction.”
Sesto shook his head through more tears. “If you’re not behind me in a day...”
“Go.”
Jesstin closed the door and sank to the ground. His head was a pounding mess. Did he really intend to do this? Had Mon or Ari or one of the others planted the idea in his head? Had Lexsea?
“Jess.” Gennady sat beside him on the floor, staring ahead with mirrored exhaustion. “You weren’t always so daft.”
“And you weren’t always a cretin,” Jesstin retorted, too tired for whatever argument Gennady had been whipping up. “But people change, don’t they?”
Gennady didn’t rise to the attack. “You’ve changed since the labyrinth.”
“How observant. The dead seem to think you’re omnipotent.”
“What did they say about me?”
Jesstin wasn’t going to answer, but Gennady asked again, and he was too tired to go back and forth. “They said Esme isn’t your mother, and that you already know it.”
Gennady was eerily quiet. “I didn’t know in life, but I can see so much more in death, and...” He trailed off and disappeared but returned a few seconds later.
Jesstin angled sideways. “How... What? It’s true?”
“I don’t think you should go to the netherworld. I don’t think you should do what any of them are asking, whatever they’re asking.”
He slammed his head back against the door and laughed. “But I should listen to you?”
“I can’t stay long, not here.” He flickered again. “You and Ellie need to get out of here.”
“Me and Ellie... of course.” Jesstin banged his head against the door. “Always fucking Elloven.”
“I’m not omnipotent, but I have a terrible, terrible feeling something really bad is coming, and I think you and Elloven both need to leave before you can’t.”
“And what is your fetid imagination spinning—” Jesstin’s words cut off.
Gennady was gone.