If he’d struck her, it would have hurt less. Of course she wasn’t going to say love. She’d never been in love, but whatever pull she had toward Jesstin Skylark was unlike anything else she’d experienced, and it had only been a week. What would it be in a month? A year? All she knew was it wasn’t the bond filling her with such dread for his safety. It wasn’t the bond breaking her heart at his cruelty. “I can see now how unsafe such vulnerability would be with you.”
Jesstin pinned his outstretched arm to the wall. His eyes closed and stayed that way. “It’s been a long, strange night. I’m not trying to hurt you.” He looked her way. “I don’t know if they’re lying to me, manipulating me—” His laugh was filled with revulsion. “No, they’re definitely manipulating me, but I don’t think they’re lying. Not entirely.”
“Who?”
“They need me.” He tapped the wall and pushed off. “And if I deliver, they’ll break our bond without one of us having to die or you having to hitch your soul to that fuckwit Considine. Oh, did you know they threatened to murder me tonight?” He shook his head. “They actually tried to murder you. Question is which one?”
“What are you talking about?” Elloven was dumbstruck. She couldn’t even address the insinuation that her fall had been caused intentionally. “What happened to you tonight? Where were you?”
He just shook his head. “I’ll get us out of this mess.”
Elloven howled the next words. “Speak straight to me, Jesstin!”
The room blasted into mayhem. Glasses exploded, sending shards everywhere. All but one candelabra winked out in a sinister whoosh as a table went hurtling from one side of the room to another, narrowly missing Jesstin’s head.
He dove for the floor but tripped and went sprawling.
Elloven’s silent scream became one with her agony.
Chairs toppled. Glass sprayed in shards. Even the light had fled.
Jesstin dragged himself up and away from Elloven. He didn’t have to ask. He knew she’d done it. One look into her staggered gaze was enough confirmation.
He inhaled through his nose, as cool and collected as he could, like she had not nearly killed them both. “This place is nothing but secrets, but you have yours too, don’t you?” He delicately created distance. “Now that I can see you’re fine, I’m going to find Sesto and make sure they haven’t indoctrinated him too.”
“I want to know.” Her hand moved to her throat in a rough, agitated massage. “I want to know why you won’t tell me.”
“With your intelligence, I’m shocked I even have to explain.” His left leg began to shake. His leg. Was she doing that too?
Elloven’s voice wavered. “Then assume I’m not intelligent, Jesstin.”
He raked his hand across his face. He didn’t feel injured, but he was just as dazed as she looked, and that look scared him more than what she’d done.
The magic had been in her all along, but Rivenholde wasn’t just teasing it out of her; it was ripping it out of her.
“Do you actually trust them? These... family members of yours?”
She tilted her chin in a proud nod. “For the first time in my life, I’m getting some actual information about who I am.”
“If you trust them, I can’t trust you. If I can’t trust you, then I can’t talk to you.” He brushed by her without a second look, unbolted the door, and slipped through, radiating a heat even the cold didn’t dull.
Jesstin’s chest was heavy from the clutch of fright still subsiding. He knew what she was capable of, but he hadn’t been afraid of her. He’d seen the size of some of the shards on the floor. If one had hit him just right, he wouldn’t be walking away. He wouldn’t be walking at all. Whatever had happened in that room, she hadn’t been in control, and if she couldn’t control chaos magic, he wasn’t safe with her.
He followed animated whoops beyond the back row of the amphitheater. The sounds were uncomfortably similar to the crowd in Mythgarde chanting for his death.
“What’s all this?” he asked a child rushing by.
“Oh, what a night! First the aerialists go splat and now...” The boy’s eyes were saucers of wicked joy. “It’s labyrinth time!”
How the hell were there still more events? The night should already be over. “Labyrinth time?”
The boy glanced ahead in impatience, sighing. “The maze? You know.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
The boy grunted but looked up. “The Labyrinth of Deception, where the veil is thin? It’s the only place the dead in the Mori can come through, and they’re mad, real mad, my mama says. Mad like we’ve never seen in the world of the living. The dead are known tricksters, and they love to lead the challengers to their deaths.”
“Why would anyone agree to do that?” Jesstin scoffed.
