Chapter 4
Oberon
I drag myself through the narrow tunnel, careful not to brush the stone too hard. Every move I make feels too loud. The scrape of my sleeve against the rock sounds like a shout in the silence.
Pain follows every inch.
My back burns where the blades carved into me, the wounds pulling tight and wet with each shift of muscle. My legs aren’t much better. Every movement sends a sharp, tearing protest up through me, the kind that tries to slow me down, tries to make me stop.
I don’t.
I pause halfway through, holding still. Listening.
My breath is too loud. My pulse worse, pounding hard enough I’m sure it’ll give me away.
There’s nothing. No footsteps. No voices. No distant roar.
That doesn’t mean they’re gone.
I keep moving.
The tunnel opens slowly into the main cave, and I stop just before the edge, pressing myself flat against the stone. My hand tightens against the ground, steadying myself as I force myself upright, pain flaring down my spine as the torn skin stretches.
Ignoring it, I lean out just enough to see. It looks dark and empty except for the guttering torches. But shadows often lie. There could be a cyclops in any dark corner, just waiting to set the alarm and bring death down upon all of us.
I refuse to be reckless with Alette ever again, so I creep forward carefully. Silently. Hoping against hope that having two eyes means I’ll see the cyclops before they see me.
A drop of water echoes somewhere deeper inside, sharp and hollow, and my entire body tenses. My heart beats harder. I force myself to breathe slower, even as every instinct tells me to retreat.
If they’re here, if even one of them stayed behind… I don’t finish the thought. I can’t.
Shifting again, just enough to scan the far side, my gaze sweeps to the center of the room. The carved stone. The basin. The place where they had us laid out like animals.
My jaw tightens. For a second, I can see that moment again. The blades rising. The blood. The sound of the mechanism.
I shut it down. The fae kings are alive. All of us. That should be enough. But somehow it isn’t, because it’d been close. Too close.
I inch forward, then crouch in the dark, listening again. The silence stretches, heavy but real. No shifting shadows. No breath that isn’t mine.
By now, I’d have seen evidence of someone if they were here. I think they’re gone. All of them.
But I have to be sure.
Creeping around the entire room, I check every dark corner, but still, find nothing. I don’t walk through the center of the room though. Through our blood. Through the flaring torchlight. Not because I’m incapable, but because I choose not to.
Honestly? I want to destroy every drop of our blood, so they can’t use it in their sick rituals.
But destroying it would take time, effort, and create noise, and we can’t afford to do any of those things right now.
Plus, I’d want to burn the blood away, but I can’t do that this near to all the iron.
I just have to see that the cyclops are gone and then lead the others the hell out of here.
When I’m done making sure the room is empty, I let out a slow breath and push myself back into the tunnel, moving faster this time, but still careful, still controlled.
The dark closes in immediately, thick and suffocating, the walls too tight, the air too still.
It drags something old to the surface. Something buried but never gone.
The memory of stone pressing in, of time stretching in the dark with no end, claws up my spine. I force it down hard and keep moving.
I haven’t liked tight spaces. Not in a long time. Not since… I don’t want to think about that now.
At first, I’m feeling my way through, fingers trailing along the rough wall, counting each shift in the stone, each narrow stretch beneath my palm.
Then I call my fire. A flame blooms in my hand, controlled and bright, carving out just enough space from the dark to breathe.
The torchlight dances along the narrow passage, shadows writhing with every step, and I keep going.
Faster now. Not in a panic, but close. Because I know what’s waiting at the end of it. Alette.
The thought lands heavier than it should, settling somewhere deep in my chest and dragging everything else down with it. I don’t like being away from her. The space feels wrong without her in it, like something important has been pulled out and left everything hollow behind.
And that’s a problem.
Because when this is over, if we survive this, she gets to choose. She could walk away from all of this. From us. From me. She could decide where she goes. Who she goes to.
My grip tightens slightly, the flame in my hand flaring with it.
That choice won’t be me. It shouldn’t be me.
If she has any sense at all, she’ll pick one of them.
Someone easier. Someone better. Someone who knows how to be something other than this.
Someone who wasn’t raised to be a weapon, who doesn’t still feel the ghost of chains when the dark presses too close.
Hell, I wouldn’t choose me.
My jaw clenches as something painful lodges deep in my gut, unfamiliar enough to unsettle me. No one has ever chosen me. Not my father. Not my brother. Not my court. I was useful. Necessary. Something to be pointed at a problem until it burned.
Never chosen.
So why would this be any different? Why would she be different?
The tunnel stretches on, but I barely feel it anymore. My body moves on instinct while my mind drifts somewhere worse, somewhere heavier. By the time the tunnel starts to open up a little, I’m already braced for something I can’t name.
I push through the last stretch and drop back into the small chamber.
They’re where I left them. Slumped against the walls. Breathing and alive.
I just crouch there, the flame in my hand casting uneven light across all of them, over the blood and the exhaustion and the simple fact that they’re still here. My gaze moves from one to the next.
Sylvian. Ashton. Cassius. The three men I was supposed to hate. The three men I thought I did hate.
I remember the sound of the blades cutting into them when we were being tortured by the cyclops. The way their bodies jerked. The way the blood ran. The way they cried out. I remember the moment it hit me, sharp and immediate. Not them. Anyone else. Not them.
My throat tightens unexpectedly. I had almost lost them.
And the thought of it now sits wrong. Deep and ugly and impossible to ignore. I drag a hand down my face, rough, like I can scrub the feeling out of me, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
Because it’s real. I don’t just tolerate them anymore. I don’t just fight beside them because I have to. I care if they live. I care if they die.
Gods.
I actually like them.
The realization lands like a blow, and I don’t sit with it long.
I can’t. Because then I see her. Alette is still awake.
She’s curled in on herself, arms wrapped tight like she’s holding something together that’s already starting to come apart.
Her eyes are open, fixed on nothing, too full of thoughts she shouldn’t have to carry.
A sudden ache pulls deep inside me. I move toward her before I can stop myself. Not thinking. Just drawn to her. Because staying away from her suddenly feels worse than anything waiting for me in the dark.
She looks up as I get close, her expression guarded, searching.
“You shouldn’t be awake,” I mutter, dropping down beside her.
“You were gone,” she says quietly.
A painful tension gathers inside me once more.
“I checked,” I say. “It’s clear. For now.”
She nods, but her gaze doesn’t leave mine. She’s waiting. For something. I don’t know what. I don’t know how to give it to her.
I reach for her, my hand sliding to the back of her neck, pulling her toward me before I can second guess it.
The kiss isn’t gentle. It isn’t careful.
It’s everything I didn’t say, everything I don’t know how to say, poured into something physical because it’s the only language I’ve ever been good at.
She makes a soft sound against my mouth, surprised for half a second before she responds, her hands coming up to grip my shirt, pulling me closer instead of away.
That’s all it takes.
I deepen the kiss immediately, angling my head, extinguishing my flame and then slide my other hand to her waist, tightening there as I press her back against the stone. The cold wall behind her makes the heat between us sharper, more real.
She opens for me, and I take it, my tongue sliding against hers, rough and unpracticed in anything soft, but certain in what I want. Her fingers curl into me like she’s afraid I’ll pull away.
I don’t.
I can’t.
Not now. Not when she’s here. Not when she’s alive. Not when I’ve almost lost her over and over again.
I break the kiss, breathing hard, my forehead pressing against hers.
“You don’t go anywhere alone,” I mutter, my voice low, rough. “Not again. Not where I can’t reach you.”
It’s not pretty or gentle. But it’s the closest thing to a promise I know how to give. And then I kiss her again.
Her hands come up to grip my shoulders, and it feels like the rest of the world has fallen away. It’s just us, here in this dark cave, and nothing else matters.
When we finally pull apart, we’re both breathing heavily.
I ignite my flame once more so I can look at her.
Her eyes are wide, and her lips are slightly parted, as if she’s about to say something but can’t find the words.
I brush a strand of hair out of her face, my thumb lingering on her cheek.
The faint glow from my hand reflects in her eyes, turning them into starlight.
“Oberon,” she whispers, her voice trembling slightly. “I…”
Before she can finish, the sound of movement breaks the spell. One of the guys stirs in their sleep, and we quickly pull apart. My heart is pounding, and I can see the faint blush on her cheeks even in the dim light. She looks away, and I can’t help but smile. She’s beautiful.
“Is it time?” Ashton’s voice cuts through the quiet, and I glance over to see him rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His gaze flicks between us, and I can tell he’s noticed something, but he doesn’t comment.
“It is,” I say, my voice firm. “It’s time for us to escape.”
“Finally,” Ashton mutters, stretching. “I was starting to think we’d die of boredom before we got out of here.”
“You’ll wish for boredom when we’re facing whatever’s out there,” Sylvian says, his voice groggy but laced with a hint of amusement. He sits up, running a hand through his long black hair. “What’s the plan, Oberon?”
“Survive,” Cassius remarks, eyes cracking open.
The tension in the air shifts, and I can feel the gravity of our situation weighing down on us. My mind races through the possibilities, the dangers that await us just beyond the cave. Will we face the cyclopes again? Or perhaps something worse? I shake my head, forcing myself to focus.
“We stick together,” I say, my voice low but unyielding as I look at each of them in turn. “No matter what happens, we don’t split up. We move as one.”
Cassius inclines his head, looking pale but unshaken. “Agreed.”
No one argues. Not this time.
The plan forms quickly between us, delicate as glass, but enough to hold onto.
It has to be. We all sit quietly, listening, measuring the silence, preparing.
The memory of that chamber presses in whether I want it to or not.
Stone. Chains. The slow, grinding turn of the mechanism.
Blades cutting into flesh, inch by inch, while we could do nothing but endure it.
My jaw tightens. I can still feel it. The helplessness. The fury. The moment I realized we might not walk out of that place alive.
And worse than that, the realization that if things had gone differently, if they had found her first, Alette would have been there too. Strapped down. Bleeding. Breaking under something she was never meant to survive.
A slow death we could be facing yet again, if the cyclops find us. If they catch us with Alette.
I drag in a slow breath, forcing the thoughts down, forcing my fear into something useful.
We get out of this cave without being seen.
We make it back into the labyrinth. We keep moving until there’s nothing left chasing us.
Until the cyclopes are behind us and the maze is the only thing trying to kill us again.
It used to be about the end. About what waited for us beyond all of this. My people. My court. The power I was supposed to reclaim. The burden I’ve carried for years, the failure that has followed me like a shadow I could never outrun.
I thought that was everything.
I thought if I could fix that, if I could bring their power back, it would mean something. That I would finally be something more than the second son who survived when he wasn’t supposed to.
Now, sitting here in the dim light of a cave that nearly became our grave, that goal feels… distant. Hollow in a way it never has before.
Because none of my people were there for me.
Not when I needed them. Not when I bled for them. Not when I came back to a throne I never wanted, expected to lead people who only ever saw me as a weapon.
My gaze shifts, drawn back to the others without thinking.
Sylvian, focused despite the exhaustion dragging at him, studying the shadows like he’s already solving problems the rest of us haven’t noticed.
Ashton, rolling his shoulders despite the pain, forcing life back into his limbs with stubborn defiance.
Cassius, pale but conscious, his eyes sharp again even after everything he just endured.
And Alette.
She sits close to them, close to me, like she belongs with us, which she does, even if she doesn’t realize it yet. Human. Fragile in ways we are not. Stronger in ways that matter more. The only one who chose us without hesitation as just ourselves, not as kings, not as leaders, just as ourselves.
A heavy certainty roots itself deep inside me. This is what matters. Not the court. Not the power. Not the expectations I’ve been carrying since the moment my brother died in my arms.
This.
Them.
Keeping them alive. Getting them out of this labyrinth. Making sure she never ends up on a stone floor with blades rising beneath her. Everything else can burn.
I flex my hand, the fire in my palm flaring slightly before I rein it back in. “Time to go,” I say quietly.
Not as a command this time, or as a king. Just as one of them. Because for the first time in my life, I’m not alone. And I am not fighting for a throne, or a title, or people who never chose me. I am fighting for them.
And I will not lose them.
Not here. Not like this. Not ever again.