We drank from the canteen one sip at a time. Every hour I chewed on rabbit meat at Dorian’s insistence. We kept making right turns, and we met nothing of note until midafternoon.
It was then that Dorian put a hand out to stop me.
“I smell them,” he said in a whisper.
“What?”
“Thornstalkers. More than one. It’s…” His nostrils flared. “I think this is where they sleep.”
My throat constricted to a strawhole. “How many?”
“Many.” Dorian stepped forward, slow and silent. “Stay here.”
I did. Not just because I couldn’t move like him, but because we’d agreed: when it came to the five senses, Dorian made the calls. He knew what he smelled.
He vanished around the corner, and a chill broke down my spine. I stood motionless, one hand tight on the string of my bow, breath shallow. I counted heartbeats to pass the time, but they began to blur. The hedge rustled behind me once, and I spun so fast I felt dizzy under the sun.
Nothing. Just the maze.
By the time Dorian reappeared, he’d become so much a part of the silence that I nearly lifted my bow at the sight of him.
He leaned in, his breath a whisper against my ear. “There’s a wide corridor—widest I’ve seen. It runs diagonal and goes on forever. It’s riddled with them.”
I exhaled. “Then we turn back.”
He nodded. “We avoid the corridor every time we near it.”
So we did. We walked in the other direction, keeping away from that scent every time Dorian caught it.
I could read his body now. As we walked, I sensed his wounds in his movements. His left arm stayed stiff at his side. Sometimes he winced as he pulled out the sack of meat or handed me the canteen. I’d ask him if he was bleeding under there, would ask to stop and check on his stitches, but I knew he’d refuse me.
Yes, hewasfive and twenty. Stubborn, dismissive, like young people in the Dip could be. Like I could be, or Theo, or anyone who hadn’t fully matured. For a fae, five and twenty probably felt even younger than for a human.
In that way, we were the same.
We also had a sameness of mind. Stubbornness, willful attunement to our own beliefs and desires. And yet we worked well together; we had survived this long by sticking to our strategy, to our strengths. And we shared a ribbing sense of humor.
If he weren’t an evil prick, I could like him.
We came to the corridor a second time, then a third. Something began to nag at me—soft at first, then louder. Every time we came near that corridor, Dorian turned us away. And each time, the same part of the maze seemed to call us back. Not with sound, but with pattern. With repetition. As if the hedge itself wanted us to notice. Or maybe I was just noticing what had always been there.
By the time we found a narrow alcove and used our cloak trick to camouflage ourselves inside it for the night, I was quiet with the weight of my thoughts.
That night, Dorian nodded at the small sack tied at my belt. “What dead fae’s toy did Thalassa gift you?”
I blinked over at him, silvered by the moonlight. I had started to wonder if clouds ever passed over this place. “I haven’t looked.”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I suppose I imagine she’d want me to open it somewhere safe. Outside this place.”
A pause. Then a low, one-note chuckle. “I understand that.” His voice was quiet.
I glanced over at him, eyebrows rising.
“The sack is your promise,” he said. “But you’re Thalassa’s promise.”
“Promise of what?”
