A strange thing happens. I start to think. I start to imagine every morning I woke up back home and started my chores. Every conversation I had with my grandparents. The loneliness. The back-breaking labor. The fact that they were selling me to an awful older man, knowing how miserable a life with him would be. Did I really want to go back there? Why?
“I just got up every day because I had to. There wasn’t any other choice,” I confess.
“Do you think you were happy?” he asks.
“I don’t think I’ve been happy a single day since my father died.” It hurts to say, hurts to even think, but it’s true. “But I think I convinced myself that I was. I mean,” I hesitate, thinking this might be too personal to say, “I don’t remember the last time I laughed before today. Before now.”
“It’s a shame. You have a really beautiful laugh.” He’s watching me closely, no falseness in his voice or his face.
I study his honest face, all his airs completely gone. “I feel like before I wasn’t really seeing you. I was seeing an actor.”
His entire body stiffens. It takes him a long minute to answer. “Maybe you were. Maybe before I wore the mask of the King of the Wind Fae. I did what was expected of me. What people wanted to see. But it’s always felt so… hollow.Ialways felt so hollow.”
“Are you going to keep playing that part when we go back?”
I can tell he’s working out something really important to say. “Will you be staying with us when we go back? Because, Alette, I–”
“Ashton!”
He goes rigid. “What?”
“Something’s wrong.”
He holds himself perfectly still, but for a long minute nothing happens. I start to imagine that the strange alarm that had started to ring inside of me out of nowhere was just my anxiety. But then, I feel it.
It starts with a shudder. A twitch, really, like the cottage is hiccupping.
Ashton and I freeze in place. It happens again, a sideways lurch that nearly throws me off the bed. The mugs on the breakfast tray rattle, then topple to the floor. He sits up fast, his expression wild. Then, we’re both on our feet.
“What the hell—” he starts, but the words vanish as the entire floor tilts and we both slide toward the hearth.
The shaking stops, but only for a heartbeat. Then a low, grinding rumble, like the world is clearing its throat, and the cottage pitches again, harder this time. I slam against the door. Splinters jab my shoulder.
“We’re moving,” I whisper, not trusting my voice to say more.
Ashton tries the door. It’s stuck, or locked, or welded shut by some magic or trick. He throws his weight against it, and the whole wall groans, but nothing gives. Without a word, we both grab our packs and pull them on, knowing that we’re going to need them now.
The next jolt slams us to the floor. I grab my dagger and, out of desperation or terror, it morphs in my hand, lengthening into the sword I used in the maze’s first trial. The blade lights the room in a raw, cold glow.
I start hacking at the door, every swing sending up a spray of woodchips and splinters. The room shakes, but I keep going. Ashton grabs the stump of a chair and smashes it against the frame, splintering the wood.
Another lurch. The ceiling splits, moss and debris raining down on us.
And then there’s a moment of stillness. The whole cottage settles, slow as a coffin being lowered, and then there’s nothing. No movement, no sound but our own breathing.
He gives me a look.
“Is it good we stopped?” I whisper.
It takes him a second, but he shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We need to get out of here.”
I swing the sword again. This time, the blade bites through, and the door groans open. But instead of the clearing, the sunrise, the nymphs passed out drunk on the lawn, there’s only black.
We step out and there’s… just dirt and darkness. My sword light reflects off a tall wall of dirt in front of me that seems to go on forever. I crane my head back, looking to the sky, and swear there’s an opening far far above, but I can’t be sure.
The tunnel walls look slick, pulsing with veins of some sick, wet green. The earth smells sweet and rotten, like old fruit under a barn. Nothing about this makes sense. Nothing exceptaccepting that we’ve somehow been dragged far beneath the surface of the maze.
“Wh-what is this?” I ask.
