“Is that so? Suppose that’s why I haven’t encountered another fae since then.” She paused. “My partner and I heard them out there, dying. A few of the others did find my riddle, but none were bright enough to solve it.” She turned away.
I let out a long breath. Gods… she’d just let them die.
She glanced back. “After just fifty years in here, my partner left. Of course, the moment that young fae stepped outside, he died. Fell into the hedge and couldn’t get back in. Very sad.”
I stared at her, wide-eyed. How had she survived while her partner hadn’t?
“I’m joking.” She gave a wink. “But about which part?”
She burst into laughter and tottered off, beckoning me forward with a crooked finger.
Thalassa’s bedroom was another low bed tucked into a small space. A wash basin sat nearby, and strange, mismatched ornaments dangled from the branches and thorns above. They didn’t seem native to the maze—pendants with gemstones, throwing stars, daggers, odd bits of jewelry and a blade.
“Thalassa,” I said, circling the room, “these things…”
“Trinkets from the dead,” she replied cheerfully, lifting a golden bracelet from one branch. “Want this?”
“No.”
“Ah. Oh well.” She slid the bracelet back into place with care. “One night. Sleep well, rabbit, for you must leave come sunrise.”
Rabbit.
I stared after her as she disappeared into the maze of brambles, her moss shift vanishing through the leaves. Was it a coincidence? Rabbit was probably the Sylvanwild pet name for children. More affectionate, maybe, than pettifey.
I didn’t undress that night. I didn’t even take off my cloak. Morning would come soon, and I wanted to be ready for it.
So I lay flat on my back, eyes on the ceiling of tangled thorns, and wondered at the logic of the Eldermaze.
Thalassa had figured it out. That meant there was a way.
From somewhere deeper in the hedge home, Dorian’s moans rose into screams.
The night pressed in. The brambles held us fast. And in a half-sleeping haze, I listened as my partner endured thornstalker poison from dusk until sunrise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the morning,it wasn’t Thalassa who woke me. It was Dorian.
A hand settled on my shoulder and gripped it, firm but not rough. My eyes opened to a dim white light and the outline of him. His hair hung long, veiling his face. He was dressed, though one side of his leathers had clearly been patched.
“You’re awake,” I whispered, my voice too high, too thin.
“It’s time to go.”
I pushed up onto one elbow. “Are you all right?”
He grunted and rose. That was my answer.
I sat up and rebraided my hair in what I sensed was the hour just before dawn, when the world had turned to grayscale. Around me, Thalassa’s trinkets and weapons hung motionless in the branches—suspended in a silence that felt wistful.
She must have rooted deep into the maze to find all these belongings from her fellow fae. She’d had centuries, after all.
In that stillness, I returned to the logic of the maze. I had thought about it all night—waking, dreaming. My mind had circled it, and I was no closer to an answer.
Now we would go back in. Wanderers again.
When I entered the main room, a spicy scent met me. Thalassasat at the table with three steaming cups. She slid one toward me without a word.
