Dorian stayed where he was. “You deserve the truth.”
I backed toward the door. Away from those eyes, those veins. A question thrummed through me, equally urgent and unwilling to be spoken.
Will you become one of them?
I swallowed past the stopper in my throat. My hand was on the folded knife at my belt. I had brought it with me without a second thought, and now my eyes fell on his exposed neck. The nick from days ago was still there.
Dorian still didn’t move. “I won’t become one, Eury. Not this time.”
He knew. He knew my question, my fear. Even now, his palm remained open on the bed.
I opened the door and met his eyes one more time. Not this time?Not this time?
But I couldn’t speak. So I slipped out from under the weight of his shadowy gaze.
I avoidedDorian for the next two days. It wasn’t hard; he was bedbound, and I was not.
All my training I did alone or with Haskel. Riding Pettifey. Shooting. Haskel and I even sparred with swords, though he disarmed me in seconds every time we touched metal.
Our second trial wouldn’t begin until the first had ended—and the first wouldn’t end until everyone in the Eldermaze was either dead or had escaped.
Dead, most like.
In the hours that followed our return, I had heard through gossip and eventually from Haskel himself that we were the only pair to make it out. We’d done it in three days, which no one seemed able to believe. And yet here we were in the citadel, a living truth.
For the others, escape could take weeks. Months. If they lived that long.
Who could survive the Eldermaze for months? Only someone like Thalassa, who’d conjured a home for herself inside the hedge. And even she had never made it out.
Now I understood why. She had figured out the way, yes—but she hadn’t had the strength to take it. She’d needed magic, and as she told us, one drop more would have been too much. At the time, I hadn’t known what that meant.
A drop more, and she’d have become a wraith.
Meanwhile, most fae stared at me. Some were bold enough to ask how we’d gotten out, though Haskel had made it clear I wasn’t allowed to answer. We couldn’t give up the secrets of the Eldermaze. Fae society depended on their trials, it seemed—and the trials depended on secrecy.
I hated it. If I could, I would whisper the truth in every one of their ears. Why should they die because the spiritstag willed it, because of rules laid down four hundred years ago by a dead queen?
I’d looked into their faces before we began. They were alive. They wanted to stay alive.
What had they thought when the acid rain came? Had they understood? I still didn’t—not really. As far as I knew, Feyreign wasn’t a land of acid rain.
And I had no one I could ask for an answer. Haskel was a man of arms and strength. And I did not want to speak to Dorian. Didn’t want to look into his eyes. Didn’t want to feel so hinged on his approval or disapproval of me.
He’d told me the truth, and it was horrific. The wraiths were once fae. From what I’d seen, the wraiths obeyed. They were mindless, lethal. They had killed the people I loved, and they’d done it at the behest of this court. And Dorian had been there, directing them. Participating in the slaughter.
He’d almost become one of them.
Not this time, Eury.
Inside the Eldermaze, things had felt different between us. It was as though past and future were only concepts; the earth was real, the hedge was real,wewere real.
Now—
Part of me still wanted to kill him. Part of me knew I could never trust him. And another part—one I couldn’t seem to silence—had risen to the awe in his voice like it was sunlight.
It had begun that first night in the maze, when I’d been too cold to sleep and he’d wrapped himself around me.
Curse the fae. Curse his warmth.
