Corbin stared at me in confusion before he tried to leave the maze with the same result that left him crashing back into a wall of corn. Limbs and leaves wildly thrashing and stalks snapping.
Scrambling to my feet, I got as close to the barrier that locked us inside the maze’s walls as I could.
“Dammit!” I cursed in frustration. “Harlow!” I shouted to grab her attention.
She came jogging back from the corn pit in a simple evergreen colored dress. Running over to the gap where I stood, she reached out for me, only to hiss as she withdrew her hand like something had burned her.
“Bale, what’s going on?!” She stared at me in horror at the realization that she couldn’t reach us as much as we couldn’t reach her. The divide was a cruel trick on the eyes and the heart.
Angrily shaking pieces of corn leaves from his hair, Corbin came up to the exit.
“No, no, no, no, no. There has to be a way out. This isn’t part of the curse.” The fear crept into his words. His hands pushed at the stalks next to the exit, only to find they were unyielding.
Harlow’s hands covered her gaping mouth, looking as lost as we felt.
The three of us stood there staring at one another, realizing that breaking this curse may have come at a cost none of us had been prepared to pay.
I dropped to my knees, sitting back on my heels as defeat pressed down on my shoulders. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. We were all supposed to be together.
We were supposed to have our forever.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
“What do we do now?” I asked. We had wasted the last hour on nothing but trial and error to try and get both guys out of the maze.
Brute force hadn’t worked. Backtracking to the entrance had failed. Corbin even tried taking flight in his crow form, only to still be under the same invisible shield that kept them trapped within the maze’s boundaries.
Corbin sat there on the ground, arms draped over the tops of his knees. “We can’t very well go running to the Council and ask them for their help,” he said, noting the obvious.
As for Bale, he had been mostly silent the whole time. He looked like a man who had spent his life looking for the key to unlock a chest only to discover that the treasure had never been inside it to begin with.
I frowned as I racked my brains for some ideas. Whenan idea finally sparked, I glanced toward town and then back at where they stood beyond the first row of corn.
“Maybe when I light the bonfire, it will unlock whatever is keeping you both inside the maze,” I offered hopefully.
Sullenly, Bale muttered, “Or maybe we’re doomed to suffer here for all we’ve done.”
Stomping over to the opening, being careful not to get too close, I glared at him. My words came out stern and irritable.
“Listen here, Bale Halloway, and listen good. Who you start the fall festival with is who you end it with, right? So, pull your straw from your damn ass, and tap into that smug attitude of yours.”
Both men stared at me, genuinely taken aback.
Cricke—
The chirp of the cricket was squashed, literally, by Corbin’s hand.
“Sorry,” he muttered sheepishly. “Crow instinct.”
Deep in thought, I paced, tapping my fingernail against my front teeth.
Glancing up at the moon, it was past its highest point now, with dawn approaching at a breakneck speed.
What would Aunt Laurel say about all this?
She’d say that magic has a sense of humor. It sure as hell did, and I didn’t find it all that fucking funny right now.
