I felt safer than I had since the Rift reopened.
That knowledge alone unsettled me.
The Badlands rolled past in grim, predatory beauty, the ground still bearing the scars of petrified death, twisted roots gripping ancient bones, stone shaped by what had once been living things. Yet with the Gorgon King’s guard riding alongside us, the land felt…subdued.As though it recognized the authority moving through it and chose, for once, not to bear its teeth.
The rhythm of my horse’s gait lulled me into thought despite my nerves. My mind was drifting no matter how desperately I tried to keep it fixed on the present. I kept seeing Theron’sface when he handed me the torch. Kept hearing his calm voice echoing in my head.
Our bargain is absolute.
I had never imagined that meeting the Gorgon King would end with anything resembling friendship. If anything, I had expected to leave his lands terrified, scarred, and desperate to forget him altogether. Instead, I rode away carrying something far heavier than the Way Weaver’s Torch.
Respect.
Affection.
And the unsettling certainty that our paths were not finished with one another.
It was foolish, I knew that. Kings like him did not become entangled in the lives of mortals without reason. And yet I could not shake the sense that something had changed between us, something quiet but lasting.
I glanced sideways at Aster as he rode beside me, his jaw tight, eyes fixed ahead. Every line of his body coiled with the same urgency that twisted through my own chest. He had barely spoken since we left the hidden treasury, but I could feel his eagerness like heat radiating from him. Home was close now. Atlas was close. Or at least closer than we ever had been before.
Please don’t let us be too late.
The escort slowed as the land ahead began to change, showing us the presence of the darkness that the Badlands didn’t experience. My heart kicked hard against my ribs as stone walls came into view.
The Labyrinth.
Even from afar, it felt alive, its presence pressing against my senses.
Aster let out a breath that sounded almost like a growl of relief. The soldier leading the escort raised a hand to signal a halt, then turned to Aster and dipped his head respectfully.
“Our duty ends here,” he said. “You have the King’s protection no further than this threshold.”
“Thank you,” Aster replied without hesitation, sincerity roughening his voice. “For all of it.”
The soldiers turned as one, wheeling their horses and riding back the way they had come, their presence dissolving in the distance on their way back to the Badlands until it was as though they had never been there at all.
The space they left behind felt abruptly hollow, as though something vital had been stripped from us.
I exhaled shakily, and Aster shifted beside me, his horse stamping once as he rolled his shoulders, tension tightening his frame like a drawn bowstring ready to be released.
“They kept their word,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
“They did,” I agreed, though my gaze lingered on the horizon long after the last shadow vanished. “I didn’t think… I don’t know… I didn’t think I’d feel this way when we left him.”
Aster glanced at me then, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face.
“The King?”
I nodded, fingers tightening on the reins.
“I thought I’d be relieved. Or terrified. Or angry. I didn’t expect to feel safer riding through the Badlands or Theïkós, because his soldiers were beside us.”
Aster huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.
“You’re not the only one. I don’t trust easily, Alex. You know that. But he did not need to protect us. That was never part of the deal. He chose to.”
“That’s what scares me,” I admitted. “How easily that choice mattered to him.”
