I was a girl with blood on her hands and a fire she couldn’t understand.
And I was all alone.
“You’re not alone.”
The whisper didn’t originate from my memory this time. It came from here. From the maze itself or the thing inside it. A voice that carried something older than language.
I opened my eyes.
A luminous moth hovered just inches from my face, pulsing with gentle golden light.
Then another emerged from the thorns.
Then another one.
They moved ahead, not quickly or frantically, but as if waiting for me.
“Wait—where are you…?” I stumbled upright, catching my breath.
The moths fluttered once and flitted forward.
With my heart pounding, I followed.
The moths led me to a hollow in the earth, narrow and deep. A natural basin sat beneath the woven canopy of the thorn maze, where moonlight barely reached, but something older thrummed beneath the surface.
The brambles pulled away as I approached, though they kept watching. Roots like ribs overgrown in the clearing, all tangled and cracked.
At the center stood a stone altar.
Covered in moss and clawed vines, it looked older than anything I had ever seen—older than Wildervale itself. Its surface bore the same fire-etched markings I’d seen on the canyon stone. They faintly glowed when I stepped close, pulsing like embers beneath ash.
Something called out to me.
I trembled. My fingers curled at my sides. A sudden weaknessbuckledthe knees, an involuntary tremor that echoed the frantic tightening of the fingers at the sides.
“I don’t want this,” a desperate whisper escaped, aimed at the empty air or perhaps the unseen force that had delivered me here. “I didn’t ask for power. I didn’t ask for voices or visions.”
The thorn-covered altar pulsed once beneath my feet.
The air grew sultry.
Then I remembered the dream, the one I’d had after the Singing Stones. The fire curled around my hands. The words whispered like a secret prayer: You must give it freely. One must believe it.
My gaze shifted to my palm. I opened my hand. But it was empty.
Was that the price?
I stepped forward and placed my hand on the altar.
It burned cold.
A gust of wind twisted around me, and then the thorns shifted. Tighter coils, curling inward like claws. They didn’t block the path; they just watched, waiting.
“You want truth,” I breathed. “Fine.”
My voice shook.
“I’m terrified. I don’t understand what’s inside me. I don’t want to carry it. I want to go home. I want my life back. I want my mother to love me and my kingdom to be safe and…” My throat tightened, a tear forming in my eyelid. “And I want Erindor to look at me like I’m not a crown waiting to be given away.”
