“Dorian,” I croaked. “Where’s Dorian?”
She hesitated. “I… I don’t know.”
“He’s my trial partner.”
“If you’re alive and here, then I suppose he’s here in the citadel, too.” She sounded more hopeful than certain as she fidgeted with the mossy cloth in her hands. “The Eldermaze. You survived it.” Her voice trembled with awe, edged in disbelief.
I had to get up. I had to see Dorian. “How long have I been asleep?”
She did a quick calculation on her fingers, her lips moving. “Three days.”
I threw off the blanket. I was in a nightgown and barefoot. Who had dressed and bathed me? Maybe this girl. Maybe someone else. When you were that exhausted, care was care.
As I moved for the door, the girl stared at me. She was taller. Most fae were.
“What is it?” I said.
“You survived,” she said again. “You survived the Eldermaze.”
Somewhere I could almost hear that child wailing at that word.Eldermaze.Like a curse, a death sentence.
I slipped past her and into the hallway. Which way to Dorian’s quarters? Left. It was left. My steps quickened. My memory of the citadel returned—the route, the turns. Even now, barefoot, I felt the ghost of me from before the Eldermaze exploring this hallway. Eurydice of the Dip. Eurydice of hunger and fear with her blunt knife. We’d had different fears, different desires.
Yes, she was a ghost. I could never quite be her again.
I arrived at Dorian’s door and knocked hard, fast. Again. I was about to knock a third time when it opened.
Haskel stood there. He looked annoyed, then surprised. “You’re up.”
I tried to shoulder past him. He didn’t budge. I flicked a glare up at him. “Where ishe?”
“He’s here. Resting.”
“Let me in.”
“Now, girl…”
“I need to see him.”
He relented with a sigh and a wave of his hand. He stepped back, opening the door as he did, and Dorian came into view.
My partner lay in the center of his bed, his eyes shut. His chest moved up and down, a slight rhythm. Just that sight brought me relief.
“A visitor here for you,” Haskel said. Then, low and confidential to me, “Though I wouldn’t expect much.”
Wouldn’t expect much?I stepped forward, fingers curling against my palms. “Dorian,” I said, soft. If he was alive,wewere alive. If his chest moved, his heart beat, that meant his hazel eyes could see me?—
Dorian’s eyes opened, and I froze.
His eyes had not returned to normal. They were black, black, black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I saton the edge of Dorian’s bed. He was awake, aware, gazing at me with those black eyes. He sounded sort of like himself, but he looked like the monster my mother had seen under that tarp as a girl.
He spoke first. As his jaw moved, the blackness in his veins shifted under the light. “It’s not as bad as it looks.” His voice sounded different—grittier, hoarser.
Haskel had left us, and now I didn’t know what to say. In the Eldermaze, things had been different between us. We’d seen each other vulnerable, in pain, hungry and thirsty. But now we were back here in the citadel, where he was a fae and I was a human. The weight of that pressed on my shoulders.
