Chapter 9 #2
He laughs, quiet and sharp. “No, but at least we have a door between us now.”
I glance around the cottage, looking for exits, weapons, anything. The place is a box, a trap. No windows, just one narrow chimney that probably leads nowhere. I spot a rusted knife stuck in the wood by the hearth, scratches by the door, and dark staining on the floor.
“What do you think happens now?” I whisper, because I feel like something bad is waiting for us.
Zomas had said it was time. Time for what? Our honeymoon? Sex? Another weird satyr thing?
Ashton stretches, then leans in, voice low. “We wait. When we’re sure they’re gone, we run for it.”
I nod, even though that sounds too easy.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my mind racing with dark thoughts.
What if the satyrs come back? What if the nymphs decide to play another trick?
What if Zomas never lets us leave? What if we’re stuck in this place forever, playing house for creatures who see us as things to entertain them rather than people?
Ashton climbs over and sits beside me, his leg pressed against mine. He puts his arm around my shoulder, not quite a hug, just enough to remind me I’m not alone. We sit in silence, listening to the wind get angrier outside, waiting for any sound from our merry captors.
I wonder what Sylvian would do, what Oberon would say, what Cassius would think, if they saw me now. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again. I wonder why I want to.
“Do you think the other kings are okay?”
“Who cares?”
I glance at him. “You do. I do.”
He sighs. “Yeah, I think they’re okay. Those three are tough, as much as I hate to admit it. You don’t watch everyone you love die, don’t reign over your volatile people, without learning to be strong.”
It’s the closest thing to a compliment that I’ve heard him say.
At some point, Ashton leans his head on my shoulder. I let him. I’m comfortable with him in my space, which is a strange realization.
We don’t speak for a long time. And I, strangely, realize that I don’t feel lonely like I did back home, which is also a surprise. I think… I think I like being in the fae kings’ company.
I feel… something. Something new. Something that could almost be hope. But I keep that realization to myself.
It takes me a second to work out my words. “I’m glad you’re here with me. I’m glad I’m not alone.”
He lifts his head from my shoulder, those deep brown eyes of his filled with merriment. “Why, Alette, I’m growing on you!”
I laugh, and I don’t remember the last time I did. “I didn’t say that!”
“You like me!”
My cheeks burn. “I don’t!”
He wiggles his brows and leans in. “You love me!”
“I basically said that being with you is better than being alone. That’s it! That’s all I said!”
He gets the smuggest look. “The Chosen One loves me.”
“You know you’re annoying.”
“Are you annoyed by how much you love me?”
“You’re crazy!”
“Or you’re crazy in love,” he offers, grinning.
I smack his chest. “You’re the worst!”
He leans in closer. “And you, Alette, have finally learned to flirt.”
I feel like my face is on fire. “I am not flirting with you.”
Grabbing me, he tosses me back on the furs and leaps on top of me. “Then, I demand that you do!”
I’m actually having a fit of laughter. I’ve never laughed this hard in all my life. “You have enough ladies to flirt with you.”
He leans over me. “Maybe I don’t want anyone else flirting with me.”
I’m still smiling when he brushes back the hair from my face, and his gaze grows intense. “You know, I don’t think anyone has ever made me feel this way before.”
My heart hammers. “What way?”
“Like… like I want to be better than I am. Like I’ll wake up tomorrow and actually have something to look forward to.”
A strange thing happens. I start to think.
I start to imagine every morning I woke up back home and started my chores.
Every conversation I had with my grandparents.
The loneliness. The back-breaking labor.
The fact that they were selling me to an awful older man, knowing how miserable a life with him would be.
Did I really want to go back there? Why?
“I just got up every day because I had to. There wasn’t any other choice,” I confess.
“Do you think you were happy?” he asks.
“I don’t think I’ve been happy a single day since my father died.” It hurts to say, hurts to even think, but it’s true. “But I think I convinced myself that I was. I mean,” I hesitate, thinking this might be too personal to say, “I don’t remember the last time I laughed before today. Before now.”
“It’s a shame. You have a really beautiful laugh.” He’s watching me closely, no falseness in his voice or his face.
I study his honest face, all his airs completely gone. “I feel like before I wasn’t really seeing you. I was seeing an actor.”
His entire body stiffens. It takes him a long minute to answer. “Maybe you were. Maybe before I wore the mask of the King of the Wind Fae. I did what was expected of me. What people wanted to see. But it’s always felt so… hollow. I always felt so hollow.”
“Are you going to keep playing that part when we go back?”
I can tell he’s working out something really important to say. “Will you be staying with us when we go back? Because, Alette, I–”
“Ashton!”
He goes rigid. “What?”
“Something’s wrong.”
He holds himself perfectly still, but for a long minute nothing happens. I start to imagine that the strange alarm that had started to ring inside of me out of nowhere was just my anxiety. But then, I feel it.
It starts with a shudder. A twitch, really, like the cottage is hiccupping.
Ashton and I freeze in place. It happens again, a sideways lurch that nearly throws me off the bed. The mugs on the breakfast tray rattle, then topple to the floor. He sits up fast, his expression wild. Then, we’re both on our feet.
“What the hell—” he starts, but the words vanish as the entire floor tilts and we both slide toward the hearth.
The shaking stops, but only for a heartbeat. Then a low, grinding rumble, like the world is clearing its throat, and the cottage pitches again, harder this time. I slam against the door. Splinters jab my shoulder.
“We’re moving,” I whisper, not trusting my voice to say more.
Ashton tries the door. It’s stuck, or locked, or welded shut by some magic or trick. He throws his weight against it, and the whole wall groans, but nothing gives. Without a word, we both grab our packs and pull them on, knowing that we’re going to need them now.
The next jolt slams us to the floor. I grab my dagger and, out of desperation or terror, it morphs in my hand, lengthening into the sword I used in the maze’s first trial. The blade lights the room in a raw, cold glow.
I start hacking at the door, every swing sending up a spray of woodchips and splinters. The room shakes, but I keep going. Ashton grabs the stump of a chair and smashes it against the frame, splintering the wood.
Another lurch. The ceiling splits, moss and debris raining down on us.
And then there’s a moment of stillness. The whole cottage settles, slow as a coffin being lowered, and then there’s nothing. No movement, no sound but our own breathing.
He gives me a look.
“Is it good we stopped?” I whisper.
It takes him a second, but he shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We need to get out of here.”
I swing the sword again. This time, the blade bites through, and the door groans open. But instead of the clearing, the sunrise, the nymphs passed out drunk on the lawn, there’s only black.
We step out and there’s… just dirt and darkness. My sword light reflects off a tall wall of dirt in front of me that seems to go on forever. I crane my head back, looking to the sky, and swear there’s an opening far far above, but I can’t be sure.
The tunnel walls look slick, pulsing with veins of some sick, wet green. The earth smells sweet and rotten, like old fruit under a barn. Nothing about this makes sense. Nothing except accepting that we’ve somehow been dragged far beneath the surface of the maze.
“Wh-what is this?” I ask.
“A trap,” Ashton says quietly.
“A trap?” I ask, confused.
He doesn’t look happy. “I think all of tonight was some kind of sick ceremony. A sacrifice. And we were the ones they were sacrificing to the ground, for reasons that are still unclear.”
I’m so shocked I almost laugh. The wedding, the cottage, the show of hospitality—it was just the appetizer. We were always the main course.
A sound rolls down the tunnel, a noise so deep I feel it in my molars. Then a scrape, like a million bones being raked through mud.
Something is coming.
“Whatever that is, it's expecting to find us in the cabin. We need to get the hell away from here,” Ashton whispers, eyes darting around the shadows.
We stumble away from the cottage, into the tunnel, following the faintest slope downhill away from the approaching noise. Ashton takes my hand. His palm is slick but steady.
Behind us, the sound gets closer. It’s a slithering, a pounding, a rhythm older than language.
I glance back… and my heart sputters to a stop as the light from my sword spills down the tunnel behind us.
The glow stretches far, farther than it should, racing through the darkness like a living thing, chasing the shadows deeper into the cavern.
What had been swallowed by blackness moments before is suddenly laid bare in stark silver light.
And what the light reveals makes my blood run cold.
The worm is the size of a mountain. Its skin is ringed with armored scales, wet and glistening, covered in scars. It moves in fits and starts, slamming its body forward, then coiling back, then lunging again. Its face is a mess of teeth and barbed feelers, all of it slick with spit and dirt.
When it reaches the cottage, it slows, then rears back, then crushes the whole building in its jaws. The building comes apart like cake. The worm grinds it down, shakes its head, then snorts dust and bits of bone across the tunnel.
I taste bile. My legs turn to water.
The creature pauses, its massive body going still. Then the barbed feelers around its mouth begin to sweep through the wreckage. They slide through the broken boards and crushed stone, pushing, prodding, digging. The worm’s head tilts slightly as if listening, though it has no eyes.
Searching.
One feeler hooks into the rubble and drags it aside. Another pushes into the splintered remains of the cabin, curling through the wreckage like a probing finger. It moves slowly, methodically, tearing apart what little remains of the cottage as it keeps checking… and checking… and checking.
Then it stops.
For a heartbeat, the cavern is silent.
The worm suddenly convulses, its enormous body thrashing violently against the stone.
A sound rips from it—an awful, shrieking roar that makes the tunnel tremble around us.
Its feelers lash wildly through the air, smashing what little rubble remains, tearing at the walls like it’s trying to rip the mountain itself apart.
Because it didn’t find us.
And it knows we’re still here.