None of them were.
The cushions were gone. Jesstin’s as well. Instead of a great open space, he was standing in front of an arch. The sign above read Freedom.
The exit.
He looked around. No ghosts. No traps. Just rows of perfectly trimmed hedges. Just a maze.
Was it another trick? He hadn’t agreed to help them. He hadn’t even decided what to do before they’d left him there with nothing but questions.
Unless he wanted to fight the vines and leaves again, he only had one way out, and that was through.
Jesstin closed his eyes when he stepped under the arch, expecting something else to jump out and grab him. But when he opened his eyes, he was out. A golden, dusky light bathed the earth. It was the first real light he’d seen in Rivenholde, though it was on its way out.
“I knew you could do it!” It was Ryquin’s enthusiastic tenor that greeted him first. He slapped an arm over his shoulder with a rough, congratulatory tug. “I knew you were the one, Jesstin. I knew it in my bones.”
The man who had announced Jesstin’s doom was next, Estelar right behind. A woman draped something heavy over his shoulders. He reached back and found it was some sort of fur-covered cape. He flinched when she stretched to place a thorny circle around his head, but the sharp edges had been blunted.
“Our first winner in seasons. Many seasons.” The announcer shook his head. Ryquin might have expected him to win, but the man was clearly stymied.
Estelar was just as shocked, but his eyes were clouded with suspicion. “And by someone not of the blood. A first for us. In all our history.”
Jesstin swelled with self-righteous pride. Served them right, seeing an outsider win. “I’m full of surprises,” Jesstin said with an ingratiating smile at the man who’d threatened to murder him only a few hours ago. He looked past Estelar, searching for Sesto. Elloven. “That it then?”
“Your prize?” The announcer’s astonishment grew. Jesstin had forgotten all about that.
“Indeed,” Estelar said. He crossed his arms. “Is that not why you challenged the labyrinth, to ask for something you could never otherwise have?”
You can ask for whatever you want. They can deny you nothing. Wasn’t that what the girl had said to him, before patting his shoulder and offering the pitying look of someone sending them off to their death?
Before he’d started, he’d known exactly what to ask for. The bond broken, leaving him beholden to no one... leaving him free to turn his back on the cursed place, her, all of it.
On the other end of his ordeal, that no longer felt like the right answer.
“I...” His request would not be popular with Estelar, but they could deny him nothing, right? “I would like Taven Considine banished from Rivenholde and Elloven’s life. Forever.”
Estelar was at a loss for a moment, and in those seconds between reaction and response, he’d never looked more menacing. “That’s your ask? You don’t want something for yourself? You can have anything, you know. Anything at all.”
“That’s what I want.”
Ryquin grinned. “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, Father, compared to what past winners have asked for. It’s a simple laying of magic.” His eyes challenged Estelar, adding an interesting layer to the exchange.
Estelar breathed in through his teeth, his eyes cast away. “We’ll prepare everything, and it will be done at evening meal.”
“Why not now?” Jesstin asked. “What if I want it done now?”
“The rules do not specify immediacy,” Estelar said testily. “We need two different individuals, one to bind Taven from Rivenholde’s borders, the other to bind him from her. It’s unreasonable to expect them to drop everything and come. You’ll have what you ask at evening meal and not a moment sooner.”
Estelar broke away without excusing himself. Ryquin’s amusement followed him.
“You have really upset the establishment tonight, Jesstin. An outsider, winning full stripes? And now you request the one thing he doesn’t want to give.” He slapped his shoulder again, and not lightly. “You’re a special man. Come see me after your reward, and we’ll discuss what happens next.”
Then he, too, disappeared, swaggering away with the confidence his command would be obeyed.
Jesstin unclipped the ungainly cloak and let it fall to the ground, ignoring the insulted gasp of the announcer and the girl who’d pinned it on him. Enjoying that, he removed the “crown” next and sent it flying into the gardens like a saucer in a game he and Gennady used to play. That was even more satisfying, until he heard someone cry, “It’s mine! I caught it!”
Fuck whoever had caught the crown. Fuck them all.
He’d find Sesto later. He needed space to think. Alone.
