The Shadow mulls that over. “I don’t know. I’ve always assumedthey did, but I can’t say for sure. There weren’t many efforts at diplomacy, after that. Mostly just blood and war and death.”
I chew at the inside of my cheek. “Because Amriel was furious.”
“He was in agony, and didn’t know how to manage it yet. And he was only twenty-eight, then. Young and spiteful and reckless.”
Twenty-eight. The same age I am now. I tally the math in my head—this means Amriel and his Shadow are two-hundred and fifty-four. “And now? What is he now?”
A dark, humorless chuckle coils in his throat. “Now he’s just spiteful and reckless.”
I laugh at how ridiculously true that is. And relax against the Shadow, my body molding to his. “Yes. He really is.”
“You should sleep, Princess.”
I stifle a yawn. Between today’s adrenaline, the relentless spikes of emotion, and my head injury, I’d like nothing more than to rest for a while. But… “I don’t expect you to carry me all night.”
“I will, though. Iwantto.”
I turn that over. I’ll need all my faculties once the sun comes up and I have to navigate this maze on my own again. And he offered. So I snuggle close, lulled by the cadence of his steps.
Eventually, I dream. Not in pictures, but in sensation. I dream of a place I’ve never touched before—an ocean of bliss, so welcoming that my arrival completes a circle that has always needed closing. It’s a place of belonging, one that cradles me close, and when the dream ends and I surface toward consciousness again, the loss of that paradise leaves an empty, painful throb behind.
I try to delve back into slumber, to return to that place of completion, but the dream breaks into wisps, my fingers groping at nothing.
My eyes flutter open. A mournful sound creeps from my lips.
I roll over and survey my surroundings. We must have passed through another door at some point, because the Shadow has set me down atop a lush bank beside a glowing cerulean stream. He sits in the grass a few feet away, cross-legged. Willow branches spill around us, encasing us with gleaming violet blossoms, while beyond the dome of flowers, a yellow flushwarms the horizon.
I sit up, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Where are we?”
The Shadow’s expression is solemn. “The safest place I could find. I only have a few more minutes.”
I peer up through the willow branches. To the west, the castle rises against the sky, already lit by the rays of dawn. It looks closer than before, though I still have some way to go.
“You should use your gyre,” he says. “Go back to the castle. Keep yourself safe while I hunt.”
I turn back. “I…can’t.” And then, because his honesty deserves more of the same, “I’m scared of what might happen. Of what I’ll let Amriel do. I’m scared I’ll never leave again.”
Such naked longing moves across his face that I drop my gaze, fiddling with the long grass that sprouts up around me.
“You could just stay, you know,” he says. “Even if you never came back to the labyrinth, never broke the curse, we would take care of you. You could have either of us, or both. Whatever you wanted.”
My eyes prickle inexplicably. “I know. I know that. But I have to keep going. On my own. I have to gohome.”
He absorbs that in silence. Then, “Will you promise me something, at least?”
I brave a glance and find his mouth flat, his brows drawn. “What?”
“That you’ll use your gyre if you get in trouble. If I find you today, if anything threatens you, just go back to the castle. Please.”
I swallow the barb in my throat and nod. “Yes. All right.”
His posture eases a fraction. He looks like he wants to say more, but I wait and wait and wait, and nothing comes.
“Was there something else?” I prompt.
He glances away. “It’s nothing.”
A dry laugh falls from my lips. “Obviously it’s not nothing.”
