Persephone,I realize in the next beat.
But the image of Delos vanishes into a very panicked Pip. He’s still telling me to turn around. However, my feet refuse my mind all over again. I want to listen. I want toobey.
The world fades once more into a lush green garden, the bushes around me too tall to see around. It’s beautiful, the flowers blossoming, the sun shining overhead.
Everything stills inside me, my lungs seeming to work for the first time ineons.
I close my eyes for one blissful second, indulging in thebeauty of life. The glory ofexisting. It’s an allure I can’t deny, a call I long to answer.
“Come home,” a soft voice whispers into my ear. “I miss you, sweetheart…”
I shiver, the nickname one that was recently uttered in a very different voice.
A masculine one.
Morpheus.
My world turns, and I’m back in the maze, the thought of him seeming to return me to the present.
Where Pip is whirling around in front of me like a pissed-off tornado.
Though, he’s not alone now. Athena, the owl I’ve only briefly met, is hovering above him, her wings spread wide as she flaps them at me.
Air rushes over my being, forcing me back several paces.
Agony ripples up my legs, the sensation stirred by my need to pushforward, not gobackward.
But another burst of energy from Athena’s feathers shoves me in the direction of the cabin. Or where I think it is, anyway.
A yelp escapes me as jaws close around my thighs. However, a quick glance downward shows the familiar heads of Howl and Mort, their teeth gentle despite being huge and aggressively holding on to my legs.
They start to walk backward, causing me to stumble along with them. Only for a flourish of mist to whip around us all, stirring us up into a magical cyclone.
Another scream tries to escape me, but I’m lost. Flying.Suddenly alone…
All the familiars are gone.
Even Pip.
And I’m… I’m in that dark space again. The one where I have no body. No corporeal form. Noanything.
Just my thoughts.
No, no, no!
I amnotgoing to fall into this vapid nothingness again.
I refuse.
I shove against the mental constraints, locking into my imagination andenvisioninga door.
It opens to reveal that maze of bushes again. Fire lilies.Delos…
But instead of staring straight at him, he’s looking at a dark-haired woman with big brown eyes set in an oval-shaped face. She’s stunning. Petite. And commanding the life around her.
Except she appears to be moving against her will, being dragged down the lively corridor by an invisible force. Her lips are parting on a scream she can’t release. And Delos is desperately trying to grab her with his jaws, to tug her back.
But an arrow sails from out of the darkness ahead, spearing the beast right in the heart.
