I took a step closer. “You escaped.”
“And you’re no ghost.”
“You’re hurt. Do you need?—”
“No.” Her head turned sharply away. “I need nothing from you.”
The words caught somewhere deep in my chest, where grief and recognition sometimes share a shape. If someone had asked, I couldn’t have said why I wanted Faun to survive more than anyone else. The answer lived somewhere outside my brain, and I could only feel it in the tightness of my chest and the curl of my fingers into my palms.
But I felt it. I knew it had to do with what we meant to the kingdom—or didn’t. With how we had both been shaped by a loyalty that had nowhere to land.
We were more alike than different. And I understood, perfectly, why she treated me the way she did.
“You’re slow.”Dorian lunged along the wide tree branch, the point of his sword ripping through my training leathers at the center of my chest. “And distracted. Remember, the eyes are where the fight is.”
His black hair lifted in the breeze, stirred with the same restless energy that seemed endemic to this place. He had recovered completely—the whites of his eyes clear again, the sickness purged from his veins.
I leapt back, as if distance could undo the strike he had already landed. Wielding a sword right-handed still felt like learning to speak every word backward—every movement deliberate, mechanical, foreign.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He lowered his sword slightly. “Since when do you apologize to me?”
“Did I?” I drove my sword toward him. “I take it back.”
He slipped his body sideways, dodging my thrust with practiced ease. His gaze never left mine.
It had been four days since the last pair returned from the maze. Since then—nothing. Two pairs still unaccounted for.
“I found out this morning from Rhiannon,” Dorian said. “The first trial has ended. She’s calling us together tonight.”
I froze, sword still pointed at him. My chest caught mid-breath. “So the last of them…”
“They’re gone.”
Eighteen of us. Eighteen still lived.
“But,” Dorian said, “she wants a private audience with you beforehand.”
My sword wavered. I lifted my gaze to his face.
Dorian’s eyes were studious on my chin, my lips, my nose, my own eyes. When he stared at me like this—which had only started since the trial had ended—I was grateful to be holding a weapon.
“Why does Rhiannon want to see you privately, Eury?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell him. Not now. Maybe not ever. “Maybe to tell her my secrets. I don’t know?—”
“And what secrets would she care to know?” He stepped closer, until our shared breath felt confidential. His free hand, the one not holding his sword, flexed once at his side, half reaching,then stopping. “Perhaps one relating to the maze? You figured out what Thalassa could not. What no other fae could.”
I lifted my chin, unwilling to back away but wanting to. This close, the smell of woodsmoke clung to him—earthy, feral, intimidating. “What do you mean?” I asked, though I knew.
“The way out.” His gaze swept over me—mouth, eyes, shoulders, mouth again. I gripped my sword tighter. “Rhiannon knows it was you.”
A dart of shock pierced my chest. “Me?”
“She’s known me my whole life, Eurydice. She knows what I’m capable of—and what I’m not. Rhiannon is no fool. She knows how to put pieces together. It’s how she holds her crown.”
And she wanted to see me.
