The footsteps reach the curve in the tunnel, my hands tense around my weapon, and into my line of vision steps an enormous beast. A ferocious bull-like head sits atop an upright muscled body. Its legs end in large hooves, and in one clawed hand it holds a double headed battle axe.
“Minotaur,” I whisper, half in horror and half in awe.
The minotaur opens his mouth to reveal sharpened teeth. He lets out a deep, gravelly laugh I swear I can feel vibrating in my own chest. His glowing eyes settle on Chase and, in earthy, rumbling tones, he says, “So. We meet again.”
Wait, what? Meet again?
I tear my eyes from the minotaur long enough to glance at Chase. For the first time since I met him, he looks afraid. Which means I should be afraid too. I train my eyes on the minotaur once more, aiming my arrow at his chest and swallowing against the dryness in my throat. Olive’s words are a whispered memory inside my head: You’re going to wind up dead a whole lot sooner than I thought.
From the corner of my eye, I see Chase backing away. “What are you doing?” I whisper. “We can take this guy down. With my illusions and your strength, we can—”
“No,” he says. “We run.”
“But—”
“RUN!”
I release my weapons. Chase pushes me ahead of him. We hurtle along the tunnel with the minotaur’s angry cries and pounding footsteps following us. The tunnel splits and twists and straightens once more. My heart pumps adrenaline through my body. Fear lends me speed. We run and run and run and still the minotaur is behind us. We run and run and run—
And then we fall.
I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see the abyss until we ran right off the edge. And now we’re falling, falling, falling, flailing limbs and screaming, darkness all around, and a pale blue light far below.
“Slow yourself!” Chase yells.
I know I’m supposed to be able to do that. Send magic out, push against the ground, slow myself to a halt. And I’m trying, but I can’t see the ground, and I can’t direct my magic because it’s whipped away as air streams past us, and all I know is that I’m plummeting to my death.
A hand catches hold of mine. Chase tugs me closer, pulling me into an embrace. We spin through the air together as a whirlwind surrounds us, slowing us. Slowing, slowing, slowing—
And then we strike the ground.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
The smell of sand and water fill my nose. A hard, uneven surface presses against my back. I’m aware that I’ve been asleep, but I don’t know for how long. A low groan escapes me as I stretch my limbs and try to remember where I was before I fell asleep.
The labyrinth.
The minotaur.
The fall.
Adrenaline shoots through me, aiding my efforts to pull myself to the surface of consciousness. I blink. After focusing in the dim blue light, my eyes manage to make out a rock wall somewhere above and behind me. With a great effort, I sit up. The action causes my head to throb, and I raise my hand to the source of the pain. I feel something wet on the back of my head. I pull my hands away and find a dark substance on my fingers. Blood. I feel my head again but can’t find an open wound. It’s obviously had time to heal since we hit the ground.
We.
Chase.
I look down and find him beside me. “Chase?” He doesn’t respond. I can barely see anything in the pale light, so I gather magic into a ball of warm light above my palm and leave it hovering near Chase. With tentative fingers, I examine him. An alarming amount of blood is pooled beneath his head, but when I tilt it to the side, I find only a surface wound. Thank goodness for our superior healing abilities. If we were lesser magical beings, that fall would definitely have ended us.
I rest my hand on his arm as I look around. We’re at the bottom of a gorge with rocky walls rising steeply around us. A few paces away, a shallow stream runs past us, tripping over and around sharp-edged rocks. The source of the pale light is somewhere on the right. I wonder if it’s a way out. If I follow the stream, I’ll find out, but I don’t want to leave Chase in his current state. Some creature might appear and drag him off to its lair.
I return my attention to him as his arm twitches. He breathes in deeply, then lets out a long groan.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“You landed on top of me,” he mumbles, his eyes still closed.
“I did?”
“I think I broke every bone in my body.”
“I think you may be exaggerating. But I am sorry. I wasn’t planning to land on you. And thank you. For slowing us both down.”
He peels one eyelid open. “Clearly not enough.”
“Well, enough to keep us from splattering across the rocks down here.”
He opens the other eyelid and frowns at me. “Not the nicest image, Calla.”
“Sorry.”
He moves as if to push himself up into a sitting position, then collapses back with a groan. “Damn ribs,” he says between shallow breaths. “Say what you will about exaggerations, but I’m pretty sure I fractured a few of those.”
“Well, keep still until they finish healing.” I return my hand to his arm so I can push him down if need be.
“How long have I been out for?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just woke up. Hopefully not more than a few hours.” I remove my amber from my jacket and touch the screen, realizing belatedly that I’ve now put blood all over it. My heart sinks when I see the time. “Ugh. Twenty-two minutes to five. We’re not likely to be home in the next twenty-two minutes, are we?”
“Why, what happens at five o’clock? Got a hot date?”
“No, that’s when my mom gets home from work. The Guild would have notified her about sending all trainees home early today, so she’ll expect to see me there.”
“So tell her you’re with a friend. That isn’t a lie.”
“Oh, we’re friends now?”
“Yes. I think it’s a nicer label than ‘that thief who broke into my house.’”
“True.” I find my stylus, which is fortunately still intact, and write a message to my mother telling her I’m hanging out with a new friend and will be back later tonight. “Okay,” I say as I put the amber away. “That buys us another few hours. Now we’ve got until 11 pm. If I’m not home by then, my mother will go into full on panic mode at precisely one minute past eleven.”
Chase attempts to laugh, but his face crumples into a grimace of pain. When he’s recovered, he says, “You have a curfew?”
“Shut up. Of course I have a curfew. And I’m sure it wasn’t that long ago that you had a curfew too.”
He tilts his head away from me and closes his eyes. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”
I watch his chest rising and falling as he breathes through his pain. “Do you need some healing magic?” I ask eventually.
He opens his eyes just a crack. “I thought you only lasted ten days at healer school.”
“Yes, but my guardian training this summer included a crash course in basic healing magic.”
His eyes slide shut. “Forgive me if I don’t find that entirely reassuring.”
“Why not? It’s simple stuff. Just transferring magic through your skin to aid your body’s own healing process.”
“Don’t worry about it. My body’s pretty good with healing itself. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And if this is your way of asking if you can rip my shirt open and feel my chest, you’re not exactly being subtle about it.”
After a split second hesitation, I say, “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m asking. Can I start now?”
His eyes widen. His lips part, but no sound comes out.
“What?” I ask. “You can dish out comments designed to make others feel awkward, but you can’t take them?”
“I’m … just … surprised.”
“Because you were hoping I’d wind up spluttering defensively about how I have no
interest in touching your bare chest?”
“I was just joking.”
I lean closer and say, “So was I.” It wasn’t my first reaction, but in that split second before responding, I decided not to be the stuttering, embarrassed school girl. My face didn’t seem to get the message, though, and I’m glad there isn’t enough light down here for Chase to see the heat in my cheeks.
He lifts his arm and places his hand over mine. “I like you, Calla. If I had to fall into another chasm with someone, I think I might choose you.”
Aware that he’s most likely making fun of me again, I place my other hand over his and say, “Well, now, that is just the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
He laughs, which is a good indication that he’s almost fully healed. I laugh too, although it isn’t quite genuine, because of all the things that have ever been said to me, it probably is one of the nicest. And that’s kind of a sad thought.
The sound of falling rocks brings our laughter to a sudden end. I extinguish my ball of light and look further down the gorge. In the dim light, I see a skinny shape moving upstream, splashing as it goes, kicking rocks here and there.
“Here we go again,” Chase mutters as he sits up. He peers through the semi-darkness. “At least it isn’t a towering minotaur. Whatever it is, we should be able to get rid of it easily.”
“Perhaps it doesn’t mean us any harm. It looks quite preoccupied with its own business.”
“You,” Chase says, “are so naive. Everything here is harmful. It probably wants to strangle us and eat our brains for dinner.”
“How graphic,” I comment. “And cynical.”
“I have reason to be.” He moves to stand up, but I put my hand on his arm.
“Don’t. Let me project a simple illusion. The creature won’t even know we’re here.”
Chase relaxes and nods. “Sounds sensible.”
I’m tired from my body’s efforts to heal itself, so a simple illusion is all I’ve got energy for. Thankfully, in this situation, it’s all that’s needed. I imagine the area we’re sitting on and the rock behind us. I picture the scene as it would be if we weren’t here. I hold the image in my mind as the creature passes us. It’s about half my height and appears lizard-like, walking on its hind legs instead of crawling. It makes an odd humming sound as it splashes through the water. It keeps moving, and Chase and I remain silent until we can no longer see it.
“Look at that, Mr. Cynic,” I say to him, nudging his arm. “Off it goes on its own merry way.”
“That doesn’t prove it isn’t harmful, Miss Naiveté. It might still have eaten us if it knew we were here.”
“Miss Naiveté?” I shake my head and stare down at my lap. “I’m not nearly as naive as you think I am. I just like to assume someone is innocent until they prove to be otherwise.”
“And almost everyone does prove to be otherwise.” Chase tilts his head down, trying to meet my gaze. “Don’t you know what the world is like?”
I lock down the barriers of my mind as images of a dungeon filled with hanging cages and wailing prisoners surface from the depths of my memory. “I know exactly what the world is like,” I say quietly. “I know the evil that exists. I know the terrible things people do to each other. I’ve lived it. I’ve survived it. But just because I’ve seen the palette of dark colors doesn’t mean I have to paint the rest of my world that way. I can choose the bright colors instead. I can see them, paint them, draw them, surround myself with them like a loud, glorious song drowning out all the darkness in the world.” I look up at him. “You know?”
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t know. But I wish I did.”
His words make no sense to me. “But … you do. I’ve seen your paintings. They’re life and light and joy. You can’t possibly create masterpieces like that and tell me you know nothing of the beauty in the world.”
“That isn’t what I mean. What I mean is …” He rubs a hand across his brow. “There is too much darkness, and no matter how much life and light and joy I paint, I can never drown it out.”
The way he sounds—so somber, so despondent—reminds me of the Chase I saw when I traveled back in time. The Chase who said nothing would ever be all right again. “Why do you—”
“We should get moving,” Chase says, standing suddenly. “I feel fine now. Told you my body was great at healing itself.”
“Uh, okay.” I climb to my feet as Chase examines his amber.
“Damn, I should have checked this earlier. Gaius released the owls into the labyrinth two hours ago. An hour ago he sent another message saying the owls returned with nothing.”
“That’s weird.”
“It is. Those owls have never failed me before.”
“Perhaps we fell too far down for them to detect us.”
“Or perhaps,” Chase says, “we’re not inside the labyrinth anymore.” He pulls out his stylus and writes a doorway spell against the rock wall. The surface melts away to reveal a doorway into the faerie paths.
“Yes!” I clap my hands.
“We can stop by your home first,” Chase says, grasping my wrist loosely as we walk into the darkness. “That way your mother has no reason to panic.”
“No, we need to check your tattoo studio, remember? Besides, Mom thinks I’m out until later. I don’t need to get back immediately.”
“Okay. But if she somehow missed your message and is expecting you, don’t blame me.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
We walk out of the faerie paths into the back room of Wickedly Inked to find it in the same state we left it in: not much damage aside from the broken chair. Saber obviously didn’t come back here after dumping us in the labyrinth. In the bright light, I’m far more aware of the blood dried on my hands and streaked across my clothing. I touch the back of my head and feel strands of hair crusted together.
“You look terrible,” Chase says.
“Thanks. You don’t look so great yourself.” The back of his head, neck and coat are covered in half-dried blood.
He leans against a counter and gestures toward me. “Are you planning to go home looking like that?”
“You know, that kinda sounds like the reverse of what my mother says when I want to go out wearing something she doesn’t approve of.”
He smiles at his feet. “Sorry, I just don’t want you getting in trouble. If I had ever arrived home looking like that, my parents wouldn’t have let me out the house again.”
“Yeah, you’re right. This definitely qualifies for panic mode in my mother’s eyes.”
Chase slides his hands into his coat pockets. “You can clean up at my place if you want.”
“Thanks. I think I’ll take you up on that offer.” My only other option is Ryn’s house, and, while Ryn wouldn’t panic like Mom, he would definitely ask questions.
“Great.” Chase pulls out his amber. “Let me just tell Gaius we’re both fine. Then we can go.”
* * *
I soak in the pool in Chase’s bathing room while my dirty clothes, laid out flat on the grass-enchanted floor beside me, are slowly cleaned and dried by a laundry spell. It isn’t a spell I’m particularly proficient at, since Mom’s the one who does most of the laundry at home, but I think it’ll remove most of the blood I somehow managed to wipe all over my clothing.
“Stop hogging the pool,” Chase calls from outside the door, startling me. “You’re not the only one who needs to clean up.”
“Sorry!” I shout. “Almost done.”
He uses the bathing room when I’m finished, and I discover more of his paintings and sketches while he’s busy. He has a small home—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathing room—and every room is filled with his work. I’m sitting at the desk in the living room examining a rough sketch of a minotaur—which I assume he did while I was in the pool—when he walks into the room.
“Oh, you’re still here. I thought you might have gone home by now.”
I stand. “It would be rude to leav
e without saying goodbye, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would.”
“Well, anyway, thanks again. For—well, for a number of things now.” Like earlier, I shake his hand.
“Happy to help,” he says with a shrug. “If you need my assistance with anything in the future …”
“I’ll know where to find you,” I say with a smile. I realize our hands are still clasped, and I step away before the moment becomes awkward. I check the barrier around my mind so I don’t project anything embarrassing, like the unsettling wish that I could hug him goodbye instead of simply shaking hands. Then I open a doorway and send myself home.
There’s still a smile on my lips as I walk out of the faerie paths and into the kitchen at home. A smile that vanishes the moment I see the upturned table and smashed dinner plates. For a frozen moment, I stand there, my eyes darting around as fear and adrenaline course through me. I grab a throwing star in one hand and a knife in the other.
I step silently over the debris. The kitchen door is half open. In the visible slice of living room, I see ripped cushions, dark soil spilling from a fallen flowerpot—and a slender arm stretched out across the floor.
“Mom!”
I abandon all efforts at stealth and rush into the living room. Amidst the wreckage of overturned furniture and shattered belongings, lying motionless and silent, are my parents.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Chaos.
“Of course they’re connected! Why would two unrelated criminals attack the same household in the space of a month?”
“She’s still breathing, but I can’t wake her up.”
“Maroon, yes. And a scar on his left cheek. See if anyone knows anything Underground.”
Ryn is arguing with several guardians while three healers kneel on the floor attending to Mom and Dad. Violet has her arm around me as she speaks quietly into a mirror to one of her reptiscillan contacts.
I wish they’d all shut up. I wish they’d let me near my parents. I wish I could do something. Instead I’m sitting on the edge of an upside-down couch as that image—that image I will never be rid of—torments me: Mom and Dad lying with limbs bent at uncomfortable angles, a knife within Dad’s limp grasp, the stuffing from a cushion forming a puffy halo above Mom’s head, and a small glass bottle lying between them.