“Courage,” I whispered, my throat dry. Then louder: “Courage. Courage.Courage.It’s courage, you bastard.Open.”
My voice echoed off the hedges. If anything else lurked within a league in this godsdamn maze, it definitely knew I was here now.
Nothing happened.
And then everything did.
The hedge rustled. The whorl twisted outward, leaves peeling away as if obeying some ancient order. A hole appeared—small, then widening, wide enough to crawl through.
Darkness waited beyond.
I spun, just in time to catch the shape of something surging toward me. A shadow broke into motion—too fast, too close?—
Hands slammed into my back. I was shoved forward, arms catching me. And then we were both tumbling into the blackness of the hedge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I lay in darkness,on hardpack ground. My shoulder throbbed. So did my head. But what captured my attention was the voice above me—high, sparrowlike, impossibly ancient.
“Well,” the voice said. “This is unexpected.”
I opened my eyes. Darkness pressed in, thick with the scent of earth. Something heavy lay across me, but it shifted away a moment later, lifting the weight from my chest.
“She can’t see in darkness,” came Dorian’s voice nearby.
“No?” the sparrow-woman said. “You’d think humans would have figured out some solution by now.” Shuffling footsteps moved away from me, soft against the dirt.
“Are you all right?” Dorian asked. His hand came to rest gently on my uninjured shoulder.
“I’m alive.”
Then, all at once, light bloomed—a crystal hovered in the air between us, glowing with soft white radiance. The light caught on a gnarled hand curled around its stem, and above it hovered a face.
She looked exactly as she sounded: ancient. Her lips had folded inward with age, and her eyes were pale and pupilless—blank orbs like polished bone.
And yet, she waslookingat me. I could feel it like a weight behind my sternum.
As my vision cleared, the twisted boughs of a hovel took shape around her. The walls and roof were woven from thorns and leaves, arching some eight feet overhead. I lay on packed dirt surrounded by the makings of a home: a crooked table, a pair of chairs, and unfamiliar objects I couldn’t name. Beyond the old woman, the passage stretched deeper into darkness, the crystal’s glow too faint to reach.
The woman stood before us like a shade. Her garment wasn’t fabric but a shifting patchwork of the maze itself—woven from bark-slick vines, brittle petals, and faded moss. Time had curled the edges and dulled the colors, staining it in streaks of green and ochre. It hung unevenly from her thin frame, the hem trailing like roots, the sleeves loose and ragged to the elbow. In the crystal’s dim glow the damp foliage clung in places, and where it thinned her skin showed through like a ghost half-formed from rot and bloom.
I pushed myself upright. Dorian helped steady me.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you know?” the old woman said, amused. “You invited yourself in.”
“A hollow?”
“It’s been called many names,” she said. “But I call it home.”
Dorian stepped in front of me. “Where are you hurt?”
“My right shoulder,” I said. “And my head.”
“She landed hard,” the old woman said, drifting closer. Something metal flashed briefly in her hand, and I tensed. “You sure you want him as your guest?” she asked.
Dorian must have seen it, too. “We claim asylum,” he said. “One night of asylum, by the Hollowbound Rite.”
