We stop only once, to water the horses and check our packs. I take the opportunity to stretch my legs, pacing the clearing while the others bicker over the best route to take. The forest here is impossibly dense, the trees growing so close together that only slivers of sunlight reach the ground. I can hear something moving in the brush, but when I look, there’s nothing there. The whole place is unsettling. The air tastes of metal, and I constantly feel like I’m being watched.
I walk over to where King Cassius is checking his saddle, just to get away from the other three. “Are we getting close?”
“We are.”
That sick feeling turns my gut. “Do you think we’ll really make it through the labyrinth?” I hate how small my voice sounds.
He glances up, pale blue eyes unreadable. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But if anyone can, it’ll be us. You, especially.”
“Why me?” The question comes out sharper than I mean it to.
He straightens, regarding me for a long time before answering. “Because you’re the only one the goddess isn’t trying to punish.”
He doesn’t explain, and I don’t ask. But I think about it as we mount up again.
Hours pass. After what feels like forever, the woods start to thin, the light growing stronger. We climb a low ridge, and I realize that the whole world has been sloping upward. The trail gets rockier, the air colder, and my hands ache on the reins.
Finally, we crest the last hill and stop.
No one says a word.
The world falls away before us, and we get a bird’s eye view of a valley so deep and wide it’s like staring into the mouth of a monster. The labyrinth fills the whole space, packed tight as a city. The walls are made of living green, some kind of vine or moss that writhes and pulses as I watch. It stretches for miles—no, farther than that, because the far edge is lost in a swirling gray cloud that hangs low over the ground, churning like a thunderhead about to split open.
The cloud covers most of the view but you can still see through it to the labyrinth below. Only the entrance is totally visible, a simple stone archway at the closest edge, so far away it looks like a child’s toy. But I know, like the way the air changes before lightning finds the ground, that there is nothing simple about this place.
King Oberon points with his chin. “That’s it. The labyrinth.”
I swallow, the taste of fear heavy in my mouth. “How are we supposed to get through that?”
King Cassius stares at the maze, his face unreadable. “We don’t have a choice. Our people have been cursed to be cut off from their magic… and the faeneedto be connected to their magic. The only way to free them, to get our magic back, is to make it through the labyrinth.”
King Ashton vaults off his horse gracefully, stretches, and wipes sweat from his brow. “It’s not such a bad thing. I’d rather die having an adventure than rot in that castle. Besides, we can be the first to survive the labyrinth. That’s something…”
“Or just another group that goes in and doesn’t come back out,” King Sylvian says softly.
I can’t help but ask, “Why did other people even try if the goddess said you needed your chosen one to make it through?”
King Cassius sighs. “Because there are… consequences if the fae are cut off from their magic for too long. So, as time passed with no chosen one, brave warriors risked their lives, thinking they were strong enough to beat the goddess at her own game.”
“They were wrong.” King Sylvian looks saddened.
“None of them even made it back out through the beginning?”
“None,” the water fae tells me quietly.
King Oberon dismounts and strides to the edge of the ridge, surveying the whole thing like a warlord planning a siege. “This won’t be that hard for a great king.”
“Four great kings,” King Ashton says, lifting a brow. Then, glancing at me, he adds, “And a little human.”
There's silence. I wonder if they’re thinking of the same thing I am: that none of us have any idea what’s inside. That none of us knows that we’ll survive this. There are five of us now. How many will there be when we reach the end of this maze?
King Oberon catches my gaze, and for the first time, I see something besides anger or contempt in his eyes. He looks tired. Maybe just resigned. “Get some rest,” he says. “It’ll take a few hours to reach the entrance, so we’ll spend the night here. We enter at dawn.”
They release all the horses in a small clearing just off the ridge, so they can make their way back to the castle. King Oberon builds a fire, King Sylvian and King Ashton gather wood, and King Cassius checks the perimeter. I unpack my few belongings and sit by myself, staring down at the maze, trying not to imagine what’s waiting inside.
No one speaks. We eat in silence, the food tasteless, King Oberon building the fire until it blazes.
When I finally crawl into my blankets and close my eyes, I see the labyrinth waiting for me, its heart pulsing like a wound. I want to cry, but I don’t.
