I need to focus. I squeeze my eyes shut and do my best to tune it out.
“Day and night!” I answer the riddle, and the hedge splits open, revealing yet another closed chamber.
The incessant pounding in my ears is tearing me apart from the inside out, thrumming through my bones with a force strong enough to splinter them.
What three numbers, none of which is zero, give the same result whether they’re added or multiplied?
Shit.I’ve always been rotten at maths.
“Anyone there?” I call. No answer.
The walls inch inward. “Help!” Still nothing.
If I don’t move, I’ll soon be crushed. I do the only thing I can think of and begin to climb.
The hedges are covered in razor-sharp thorns, and it is nearly impossible to get a firm hold on them. My hands and feet are slick with blood; it drips all over the leaves and into the dirt below.
I’m halfway up the hedge when a vine lashes out and snakes around my ankle like the loop of a lasso. It yanks me hard, and I fall to the ground, sputtering, wheezing as I crawl my way back upright.
The riddle has disappeared and in its place are the wordsTell me a secret.
I think of all the secrets I am keeping, so many they may burst out of me at any moment. Emmett’s face pops into my mind, but not the night alone in his room, the particular way he chewed on his bottom lip at the ball.
I think of my sister and all the stinging, awful ways I still resent her.
I think of the queen and how I hate her.
I think of Emmett’s rebel father.
I look down at my blood-soaked nightdress and say the truest words I can think of, the words I wouldn’t say to anyone.
“I am afraid.”
The hedge opens, and I sprint down the corridor. A snake slithers in front of me with a hiss, and I drive my sword into the top of its head and try to not vomit at the crunch.
I turn and find another dead end. The hedge behind me knits together, and I’m trapped once more.
In front of me sits a table with seven glass jars atop it. Six of the jars are marked with our names,Ivy,Olive,Greer,Emmy,Marion,Faith. The seventh is full of sea glass marbles.
There are a few scattered marbles already in the other jars. One in mine. Two in Faith’s. One in Marion’s.
I don’t know what it means, but I have a vague notion of what I’m meant to do. I pick a marble from the jar and run my fingers over the smooth glass surface. I plink it into Olive’s jar at random, and as soon as it hits the bottom, there is a shrieking scream of pure pain from somewhere in the maze.
My blood turns to ice, and I think of the blinding pain I experienced minutes ago, seemingly from nowhere.
Steeling myself, too curious to resist, I pick up another marble and drop it into my own jar.
The pain is so complete I can’t hold myself upright. It runs down each of my limbs like I’m being stabbed in a thousand places at once. My knees hit the ground as I collapse in on myself like a dying star.
Then, as soon as it started, it is over, and I can breathe again.
I look at the jars in horror, then pick up the jar of marbles and shatter it on the ground. They roll everywhere, and I step over them and the broken glass and continue on my way.
The blood, both mine and the swan’s, has dried in big, sticky patches, and I’m shivering under the thin fabric of my ruined nightdress. My knuckles are white around the hilt of the sword.
Then, like a miracle, I round another corner and see a perfectly square crossroad and, in the middle, a golden goblet on a mirror-glass table.
I sprint for it, more desperate for this to be over than to win. My feet, having gone numb ages ago, slide in the spring-damp earth.
