Chapter 3
Alette
The muffled grumbling of the cyclopes grows louder, closer, their heavy footsteps echoing through the cave as they spread out to search.
The sound scrapes along the stone, uneven and relentless, making it impossible to tell exactly where they are.
My heart pounds so hard it feels like it might give us away, each beat loud in my ears as I press myself flatter against the rough wall of the narrow tunnel.
“Find them!” the king bellows, his voice shaking the cavern, fury ripping through every word. “They were here recently. I can smell them.”
The words send a fresh wave of panic through me, sharp and suffocating.
I don’t move, barely even breathe, every muscle locked tight as the sound of something massive scraping against stone echoes closer.
A shadow shifts across the narrow opening behind us, blotting out the faint light for a moment before passing on.
One of them is right there. So close I can feel the vibration of its steps through the ground beneath my hands.
Behind me, Ashton’s breathing hitches, and I reach blindly, finding his arm and squeezing hard. Stay quiet. Stay still.
“They cannot have gone far,” another cyclops rumbles, its voice lower but no less dangerous.
“They are wounded,” the king snarls. “They will not get far. Search every passage. Every crack.”
A heavy impact shakes the wall, dust sifting down from above, and I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself not to react. Not to move. If they look in here, if they so much as lean down and peer inside, it’s over.
We die here.
The thought sinks into me, cold and absolute.
“Nothing,” one of them calls after what feels like an eternity.
“Nothing here,” another answers from deeper in the cave.
Silence stretches, tense and brittle, before the king roars again, louder this time, the sound echoing so violently it makes my ears ring. “Then they have fled! Out into the maze like the cowards they are. Go. Find them. Tear the labyrinth apart if you must.”
The footsteps shift, turning away, the sound of them moving deeper through the cave and then out, one by one, their weight fading slowly but never quickly enough. I don’t trust it at first. I don’t trust the quiet that follows, thin and fragile, like it might shatter at any second.
“Keep moving,” Sylvian breathes, his voice barely there.
I nod even though he can’t see it and start crawling again, my hands slipping against the stone, my body shaking with leftover adrenaline.
The tunnel stretches on longer than I expect, twisting just enough to keep us blindly twisting and turning in the dark.
The air is stale and close, thick with the scent of earth and blood, and every movement sends pain shooting through my limbs.
Behind me, I can hear the others struggling to keep up, the quiet scrape of bodies against stone, the faint, uneven rhythm of their breathing. And I know, Cassius is still the same, too still, his weight dead and unresponsive as Sylvian carries him forward inch by inch.
We crawl until the walls finally begin to widen, the tight pressure easing just enough for us to lift our heads. The tunnel opens into a small chamber, barely larger than a roomy closet, but it feels like freedom after the crushing narrowness behind us.
Oberon’s fire leaps into existence, filling the darkness with light. I drag myself inside and turn immediately as the others file in, reaching for Cassius as Sylvian lowers him carefully to the ground.
None of us speak. We just listen. The cave beyond is still quiet. No footsteps. No voices. No shaking stone. Just the distant, empty silence of a place that has been abandoned.
“They’re definitely gone,” Ashton whispers, his voice raw.
I don’t answer right away. I can’t. My body is still braced for the sound of them returning, for the roar that will shatter this fragile calm.
But it doesn’t come.
“They’re gone,” I repeat, softer this time, the words almost disbelieving.
Relief doesn’t come all at once. It comes slowly, seeping in through the cracks in my fear, leaving behind something heavier. Exhaustion. Pain. The sharp, lingering awareness of how close we came to losing everything.
“We stay here,” I say, my voice hoarse. “For a while. We don’t move until we have to.”
No one argues. They don’t have the strength to, and we all know. That’s why I took the lead. Why I said the words. Otherwise, these cocky fools might have tried to rest for a short while and push on tonight. Something I don’t think we’d survive.
I drop to my knees beside Cassius, my hands already moving, brushing blood from his face, searching for the worst of his injuries.
Sylvian rolls him gently onto his stomach and lifts up his shirt.
Up close, it’s worse than I thought. The wounds are deep, too many of them, the blood loss far too much.
His skin is cold beneath my fingers, his breathing shallow and uneven.
“Cassius,” I whisper, my throat tightening as I press my hand lightly against his shoulder, as if I can somehow keep his heart beating through sheer will.
He doesn’t respond.
Panic rises again, quieter this time, but no less sharp.
“He’s breathing,” Sylvian says softly beside me, though there’s strain in his voice, like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me.
There’s dried blood streaked across Sylvian’s back and legs where the blades first caught him, the cuts shallow compared to the others but still enough to leave him pale and weakened.
He had been the first freed. The first pulled away from the knives before they could dig too deep.
Oberon crouches on Cassius’s other side, his jaw tight as he presses a hand against one of the deeper wounds, trying to slow the bleeding.
His movements are rough at first, then careful, controlled, like he’s forcing himself to be gentle.
Blood slicks his hands, fresh and dark, seeping steadily from the long, carved gashes along Cassius’s back and legs.
Oberon’s own injuries are worse than Sylvian’s, deeper cuts where the blades had risen higher before he was freed, but he ignores them completely.
Ashton sinks down against the wall with a quiet exhale, his head falling back for a second before he forces himself upright again, dragging himself closer.
His breathing is uneven, his body clearly giving him trouble, the fabric at his side torn and stained where one of the blades had bitten in deeper.
“What do you need?” he asks, his voice unwavering despite the weariness dragging at him.
“Cloth,” I say quickly. “Anything clean.”
He nods and starts tearing a piece of cloth from inside his bag without hesitation.
“And something to stitch him up?”
“I don’t think we have anything,” Sylvian says.
“Besides, he’s fae, his wounds will heal without it. They’d actually create more problems than help,” Oberon says, “We just need to clean the wounds and get them to stop bleeding. Then, his body will do the rest.”
For a moment, everything narrows to this. Blood. Hands. Pressure. The desperate, fragile work of keeping him alive.
The blades had reached him almost fully before we got there, rising slow and merciless, carving into him inch by inch.
The cuts are not wild or messy. They are precise.
Repeated. A series of deep, clean gashes that had only grown worse as the mechanism climbed higher, opening him up in multiple places, deeper and deeper, until there was more blood than skin left untouched.
His back is a map of those wounds, long lines cut deep enough to expose raw muscle beneath, and his legs are no better, the blades having pressed in until they nearly pierced through.
He is too still. Too quiet. I swallow hard and force my hands to move as I rummage through the scattered supplies in my pack until my fingers close around a ragged cloth and a small canteen of water. The cool metal steadies me just enough to keep going.
I set to work cleaning his injuries, my heart racing as I fight the urge to tremble.
The cloth comes away red almost immediately, the blood fresh and unrelenting, and I have to press harder, forcing it to slow.
The cuts along his back are deep, the edges swollen and angry, the flesh parted in places where the blades had lingered too long.
I move carefully, as gently as I can, though every touch makes my stomach twist.
Each wound feels like a countdown. Each breath he takes feels like something that could stop at any moment.
I clean what I can, pressing cloth into the worst of it, binding what I’m able even though it doesn’t feel like enough. It will never feel like enough.
Around the cave, Oberon’s flames cast uneven light as the three of them work silently on each other’s injuries, hands stained red as they press cloth to wounds and tighten rough bandages.
Sylvian’s cuts are already beginning to close, leaving him in the best condition, and he moves between the others helping where he can, calm and focused despite the blood still streaking his skin.
Ashton sits pale and tight-jawed while Oberon wraps a bandage hard around the worst gash along his ribs, Ashton hissing through his teeth but refusing to complain.
In return, Ashton helps secure the bindings across Oberon’s shoulder and back, his hands unsteady from pain and exhaustion.
None of them stop moving for long, too aware of how much blood they’ve already lost and how little room they have left for weakness.
Time stretches. Then Cassius stirs faintly beneath my hands.
It is barely anything at first, just the slightest shift, the smallest sign that he’s still there.
His eyelids flutter like fragile wings caught in a breeze, and a moment later, his pale blue eyes open, unfocused and clouded with confusion.
Relief crashes over me so hard it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.