The corridor’s end. The fuckingend.
My heart lurched. I ran harder.
But the creatures weren’t done. Maybe they knew we were close; they surged from the hedges, faster and fiercer.
And as we neared that end, the wind didn’t feel so strong at my back. The brambles had slowed in their reach.
Dorian was weakening. I felt it in his grip, softer now. I heard it in his ragged breath.
No, no,no.
We were ten feet away when he stumbled. He almost caught himself, then stumbled harder. He lost my hand as he went down, rolling in the dirt.
I skidded to a stop and turned.
He lay unmoving in the dirt, his chest exposed to the sky. His breathing was fast, eyes wide open. Those ink-black veins were now rooted in his jaw, in his cheeks. His magic was spent, and so was his strength.
I glanced back. The end offered itself before me like a promise, the land stretching so, so far toward the forest. It offered life.
But it also offered death. If Dorian died, I died.
And maybe that was my fate, to die. I had lost my mother, Theo, Elisabet, Isa. I had lost everyone I cared about, who cared about me. And now here I was, days from home, an offering to the gods of a court I had no stake in. I was a toy, a joke to them. A rabbit, a pettifey. Deadweight.
And yet.
Into my mind sprang the first night Dorian had wrapped himself around me. His body behind mine, warming me from shoulder to thigh, his breath ghosting my ear. The smell of him—deep forest, resin, smoke. The intensity of his gaze when I’dcleaned the wound on his shoulder and back, his eyes black and full of me, only me.
Like I had strength.
Like I had power.
Like I was someone.
He’d given me almost every drop of water. He’d given me every strip of rabbit meat. He’d given me everything and left nothing for himself.
His promise, he’d said, was keeping me fed.
Lightning split the sky, briefly illuminating the hedge and the land beyond. A second later, thunder cracked above us like a divine strike.
Here, in this cursed place, the Eldermaze, Dorian hadn’t been my kidnapper. He hadn’t been my better. He’d been mypartner.
If I bore one good trait, Theo had always said, it was loyalty. And somehow, some way, loyalty to Dorian had threaded its way into my heart like one of those sharp-thorned brambles. I couldn’t deny it, couldn’t pretend it didn’t touch my heart now with its thorns. It had come without fanfare, without the promise of a future, without real trust in one another.
The truth settled in my chest, heavy and sure.
I couldn’t leave him.
We would pass this trial together or not at all.
At least I would die on my feet.
I turned. The thornstalkers were closing in on Dorian from every side, eyes gleaming, maws dripping. Perhaps their first and only meal in days, weeks.
I ran. I yanked my bow over my shoulder, already nocking an arrow from the quiver at my hip. I skidded to a stop over his body, bow rising, string already taut. And I screamed. A feral, unbroken cry. I was the girl being carried by those four guard through her bunk. Writhing and spitting and thrashing. She would die, but she would take at least one of these demons with her.
The first thornstalker leapt from my left, not fifteen paces away. Ipivoted toward it and loosed. The arrow flew into the creature’s left eye and sank deep. The thing went slack mid-leap and dropped with a skidding thud not far from where Dorian lay.
I was already nocking another, spinning right, but they were too close. Too many. Death licked at me from all sides, hot breath and teeth gnashing. The true end. I felt it expanding in my chest, a black void fizzing outward, promising nothing but pain and endless darkness.
