Nothing but the muffled echo of his own voice.
“Alette, if you can hear us, be careful. Ashton, protect her with your life.”
I can’t stand the sound of helplessness, so I pull my sword and jam it into the hedge, using all my weight. The blade shears through three inches, then stops dead. When I try to pull it out, the branches tighten, trapping it like teeth. I wrench and wrench until the metal groans, but the hedge doesn’t let go, almost as if it’s mocking me.
Cassius tilts his head. “Nice plan.”
I ignore him and decide to turn to fire. “Step back,” I bark, and make a circle with my hands. There’s a flicker of heat in my gut, that old familiar hunger for combustion, but it’s weak. The spark catches, but the second the flame touches the hedge, it snuffs. Like the green is drinking it. The smoke twists and vanishes, leaving behind nothing but the sharp, chemical stink of failure.
Sylvian is watching me with something like pity. “Our powers don’t work unless we’re near her. Remember?”
I want to hit him. I want to hit anything. Instead, I yank on my sword until the hedge finally releases it, and I fall backward on my ass. Cursing, I get back to my feet and sheath it, then pace a tight loop, my heart racing, sweat crawling down my spine.
Cassius starts probing the base of the hedge, looking for weak spots. As if I hadn’t already done as much, even if it was in a less subtle way. “Maybe we can get through underneath,” he says. “If it grows like a normal plant, the roots should be thinner near the surface.”
Except, there’s no space under the hedges like there had been in other areas. It was just plant and earth.How do we get around that?
Sylvian drops to his knees, clawing at the dirt with his bare hands, but he can’t manipulate the earth, not with Alettenowhere near us. He’s stronger than he looks as he rips out whole handfuls, nails going black with mud. I join in, digging with the point of my dagger, the way I would if I needed to build a fire pit or a grave. Finally, Cassius joins us too, but with less enthusiasm, like he doesn’t actually think this plan will work. To be fair, I don’t think it’ll work either.
The earth is hard and cold, packed with old roots. The deeper we go, the denser it gets, until even Sylvian’s fingers can’t break the tangle. The hedge must run twenty feet deep.It’s a prison more than a maze.
We keep at it, all three of us, until our hands are raw and the pit is wide enough to bury a man. By then, my shirt is sticking to my skin and my knuckles are leaking blood. Cassius is the first to admit defeat. “It’s useless,” he says, wiping his face. “It’s not letting us through.”
“Maybe if we wait,” Sylvian pants, out of breath for once. “Maybe if we just?—”
“Wait for what?” I bark. “For her to die? For Ashton to seduce her into some idiotic suicide mission?” I’m shaking, but not from fear. “She needs us. Now.”
Cassius stands, calm as ever. “Maybe the labyrinth wants us to move forward.”
“Wants?” I challenge.
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “You know the goddess controls this. Not just this. Everything. Every trap. Every turn of the labyrinth. So if she arranged this, and made it impossible to reach Alette through the hedge, then we must be meant to go forward.”
I can’t take it. The idea of leaving her behind, even for a second is like biting down on glass. Her bravery, mixed with her fragility, is one of the many things I respect about her, and also the thing that makes me want to break every bone in the world for her sake.
I plant my feet and stare at the spot where she disappeared. “We stay. She’ll come back. The hedge has to open again sometime.”
Sylvian wipes a dirty arm across his forehead, smearing the mud. “Why are you so worked up? We’ll find her again, and even though you don’t like Ashton, he’s a fae king. She’ll be safe with him.”
“I think Ashton cares more about his own survival than anyone else’s,” I mutter.
“And he needs her to survive,” Sylvian says, giving me a look.
Cassius nods toward the dirt hole. “The pit we dug here will be easy to recognize if we need to come back and try again to enter where they went through. We’re not giving up on the possibility of getting through here, we’re just trying something different.”
Sylvian gives me a look that’s both helpless and angry. “Something other than sitting here doing nothing sounds great.”
I grunt. “Fine.”
So, we start walking. And walking. And walking. As time passes, my annoyance only grows. I’m sick of the color green. Here, green is not a color. It's a disease, crawling up your nose, pushing in under your fingernails, sweating out of your skin.
And then there’s the gray.
Every time I look up, the labyrinth shows me the same dull-colored sky. No sun. No weather. No difference between morning and night except that my brothers-in-hell start to stink more the longer we march.
“Keep your eyes on the path ahead, Oberon,” Cassius mutters behind me, like I’m not already scouting every angle.
I want to turn and smash his face in, see the water fae bleed, but I keep walking. Cassius is impossible to surprise in battle. It’s one of the annoying things about him. The bastard probablysaw me clench my fist three paces ago and was already prepared for my punch.
