I don’t run. I leap through the curtain of vines straight toward him, intending to—I don’t know—rip his mask off or something. My logic still hasn’t returned. But he’s already scaling the wall. He crests the top, pivots, and crouches. I can’t see his eyes beneath the hood anymore, but he stares for a beat longer and then melts into the shadows.
The blood moon breaks free from storm clouds and sheds light on the carnage he left behind. It was a massacre. Limbs were ripped from bodies. Bowels eviscerated. A single rose grows from the cracks between flagstones.
Gasping, I touch the fragile petals with trembling fingers. Drayven once tried to take a rose, a piece of me left behind, but the Huntsman trampled over it. Did I bleed that much, or is this from something else? Why would he leave a rose standing? Why would he keep me safe when he’s never cared before?
It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. He’s Kasaros’s servant and likely just messing with me. If he has obsessive feelings for me, I know how to handle it.
I pluck the rose and fit it into my hair. If the Huntsman wants to play games, fine. But let’s see how well he handles being played.
Chapter 5
Drayven
When hunting in the Labyrinth, remember, you are never the only predator.”
—THE HUNTER’S PLAYBOOK, A CHAMPION’S MEMOIR
Istalk the Labyrinth’s jagged wall tops, impervious to the rain running down my spine. I am a shadow, a phantom carved from hunger and regret, watching the one person I swore I would never touch again. Yet here I am, hunting her. Guarding her. Drowning in the torment of wanting her.
Florienne moves through the maze below, oblivious to how I orbit her, our steps in tune. The wet silk of her gown clings to her skin and molds to curves I have no right to crave. But I do. Gods, I do. Kasaros’s cursed mask makes it unbearable, but I felt this way before. It’s in my veins, my heart, my soul. I think I felt like this before I existed. I’m sure of it. The mask only amplifies what is already here.
Raw, insatiable need claws at my control, demanding that I take and claim. The God doesn’t want Flori to win her freedom.He’d rather lose me as a servant—let me be king—than have her triumph over him. I see that now, otherwise he’d have extended the mask’s servitude requirement beyond the Labyrinth. No—only while I’m inside here I am bound to him.
Lightning splits the sky. I see her hesitate at a fork in the maze. She should have run when I warned her. My muscles tighten with the effort of restraint, every inch of me burning with violent want. But she never listens. Stubborn girl. Foolish girl. Brave girl.
This was supposed to be simple. Protect her from the shadows. Guide her unseen. Let her win her freedom. But then I kissed her, and now parts of me have awakened that I thought were dead, buried along with that innocent, vulnerable little boy.
I’m remembering things I forced myself to forget.
Things like how she squealed when I chased her. How she smelled when I stood close to her. The crooked smile when she hatched trouble. The fire in her eyes when someone told her to behave like a lady. How independent she aspired to be, yet how she refused to be separated from me.
My lips curve as I recall the time I wedged a slice of apple between her teeth to stop her—I can’t even remember her point, but it vexed me. She was so smart—is so smart—that I wonder what she ever saw in an orphan boy like me, one without nobility or means, who tagged along and only wanted to be a part of her dreams.
That she still defends my death.
I hate you, she said. But first, she said she loved me.
Him. She loved him.
Frowning, I touch my lips through the mask. I want to rip it to shreds and be done with the barrier between us, but at the same time, it’s because of this mask that I know I’ll taste her again. It’s inevitable. The thought makes me hard, aching, throbbing. I adjust myself to ease the discomfort.
I should have pulled away earlier. But when she pulled me closer, I became the boy who swore he’d follow her anywhere. I remember the game we played in the snow when she darted through the market, her laughter trailing like a siren’s call. She had been younger, wild and untamed, her blue hair a streak of defiance against the white drifts. When I caught her—pinned her to the ground—I felt it. That this was it. My moment.
Mine, something in me whispered.
Even then, I had known.
She thinks I am the faceless monster who took everything from her. She doesn’t know the same hands she fears once traced her laughter in the dark. The voice she curses in her prayers is the same one that whispered promises of forever.
The Huntsman murdered Drayven. That’s the lie I let her believe. Because the truth is worse—I killed the part of me with a soul, the part of me she loved, so that nothing stood in the way of her safety. Not even love.
Now I am this thing of blood and death, unworthy of the girl who once invited me into her dreams.
I should go.
Leave her to the game, to her own cunning and skill. She doesn’t need me. She never did. I’m sure she’d have had those hunters eating from the palm of her hands if I didn’t kill them.
But then she stops. Turns her head, as if sensing me here in the dark. And then?—
