She smiled lazily. “You were barely out of Skalgard before you started playing house with your fae lover. Did his kiss make you forget about me? Or was it all the pretty dresses?”
“I never forgot you.”
“Really? I’m rotting in a cage while you’re being coddled.”
“I’m trying to save you!”
She laughed bitterly. “It looks like you’re having the time of your life. A king wrapped around your finger, sleeping in silk sheets while I’m chained inthe dark.”
My chest tightened. “That’s not fair.”
But was it wrong? I’d been sleeping in Kairos’s castle, eating at his table, letting him carry me to bed.
“Fair?” She stepped closer, and the pain in her eyes destroyed me. “You’ve always been like this. Desperate for any scrap of affection. You latched onto Vaeris, and when that fell apart, you found someone new withindays.”
“I did not!”
Her smile turned cruel. “Do you have any shame? Is there a part of you that isn’t borrowed from a male?”
A lump lodged in my throat. Was she right? Had I lost myself so completely in Vaeris, and then Kairos, that I didn’t know who I was without them? Would she act like this when I showed up with Kairos and demand why I chose him over her?
A memory surfaced of Rheya, over a year ago, when I’d rushed home after my first kiss with Vaeris. I’d been giddy, gushing over the prince, and she’d gripped my shoulders hard.
“Don’t you dare forget who you are.”
I sucked in a shaking breath. “No. You’re wrong.”
Rheya’s grin faltered.
“The real Rheya knows me better.” I wiped my cheeks. “She’d be angry, yeah. She’d probably hit me for taking so long. But she wouldn’t use Vaeris to hurt me.”
The illusion flickered.
“And she sure as hell wouldn’t want me to give up and die in a fucking maze. She’d tell me to quit being dramatic and go save her ass already.”
“Aelie.”
“You’re not her. You’re just the worst things I think about myself.”
Rheya’s form shattered like glass.
The courtyard, the guests—all of it collapsed into darkness. I staggered as the maze solidified around me again, black stone walls pressing close.
I dropped to my knees.
My hands shook. Rheya trapped, suffering, thinking I’d abandoned her. Maybe she was right. I’d been selfish and I’d gotten distracted by Kairos when I should have been?—
Stop.
I pressed my palms to my eyes.
The rune wanted me frozen in guilt, paralyzed by all the impossible choices until I gave up and became another hollow-eyed wanderer shuffling through these corridors. I dragged in a shuddering breath. Then another.
Rheya was alive, and I would get her out. But first, I had to break this rune. I wiped my face and pushed myself to standing on trembling legs.
The purple veins pulsing through the stone converged somewhere. I just had to follow them. Ahead, a ball of light hovered in the air like a tangled heart of magic. Blinding. Threads of it snaked outward, weaving into the surroundings.
The closer I got, the more it hurt. Looking at it was like shoving needles into my eyes. Heat blistered my skin and my knees buckled.
