“That you know the bond exists. You felt it in your room, when I touched your leg and your pain went away. And in the solarium, when I grabbed your wrist and you were able to see my—” A choking sound.
I peer down at my bracelet. “What was that?” I say with a frown. “I think the connection broke for a second. I didn’t hear that last part.”
“Nothing.” He glares at me through the crystal. “Except that I’m saying the bond proves we’re more than just blood and bone. We’re also connection, and pleasure. Or we’re supposed to be, anyway. Things are…different for me.”
The grief in his tone steals the air from my lungs, evenas I crawl through another turn. This man idolizes pleasure, but never gets to have it, his whole life steeped in pain, instead.
Goddess. I shouldn’t sympathize, not with a heathen. And yet I can’t help but wonder who I would have become if I’d had my beliefs taken from me. If I’d had Ishanna wrested away not by choice, but by force.
Maybe I would have turned to drink, too. To anger and sin and unhappiness.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I scoot down a few stairs, already anticipating the sideways swoop at the bottom.
“For what?" he says hoarsely.
“Your curse. Your suffering. Your?—”
“Lifeissuffering,” he says, something in his voice closing up. “At least for me. Don’t worry about it.”
I hesitate. That was clearly the wrong thing to say. Better to argue with him, I guess. “All right. But you’re ignoring something very important.”
“Which is?”
I roll two more pebbles and make my choice. “That if the bond proves there’s something more, that only argues infavorof a higher power. Maybe this…connectionyou value so much comes from Ishanna.”
“Is that what you think?” he says tightly. “That what you and I are to each other comes from your goddess?”
I pause. I didn’t say that. And yet it’s a fair question, because for all that I’ve spent this conversation needling him, I can’t deny that the bond exists. Something within him calls to me, and whatever lives inside me answers, whether I want it to or not.
Which means… Well, I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out, yet.
“Hush,” I say, unable—or unwilling—to explore that question further. At least not right now. “You’re distracting me.”
“Oh,nowI’m distracting you? I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I did. Now I don’t. So just be quiet for a second, okay?” The exit looms ahead, maybe two or three flights away, now.
“You do realize I’m a king, right? You can’t command me.”
“Shhh.” I reach into my pocket and…
Oh, no.
My next heartbeat collides with my ribs, nearly knocking me off-balance. I’m so close to the end.Soclose. But I’ve run out of pebbles, and now have nothing left to toss. Except my orb bracelet, or my knife, or my gyre. But if I strand myself without a weapon or a failsafe, without a way out of this maze should the worst happen…
No. I have to find something else.
“Princess?” Amriel says, as if sensing my hesitation.
My mind races. Maybe I could cut something apart with my knife, toss the pieces, but…what?
My hair? I cringe. Absolutely not. I’d rather die splatted across the ceiling.
“Princess.”Amriel’s tone sharpens.
I wince, grateful that he can’t see my face from this angle. I don’t want to admit my situation, in case he decides to do something stupid. Because if he explodes right in front of me, if he makes me watch him die…
I push down a dry heave, unable to even complete the thought.
