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FORTY

I woke hours before the sun and stirred Clark. Footsteps nearby our path told me someone had passed while we slept. The fact that we still had our heads told me they hadn’t seen us.

With the light of the star in the east to guide us, we traveled as quietly as we could through the endless turns of the labyrinth. Sometimes we had to double back when our path ended, other times we found ourselves at the same opening again and again, but little by little we walked the maze, drawing nearer tothe star in the east.

It was hours past sunrise when the labyrinth spilled into another forest, one that surrounded an old temple. Whichever Stone God this belonged to, they’d long since been gone. Or they’d slept for so long that the labyrinth forgot about them. Either way, their temple was nothing more than a ghost of splendor. Massive stone columns, now cracked and leaning, reached for the canopy above, where vines and moss had claimed them as their own. Time and nature had softened its once-pristine edges where ivy crept up the crumbling walls.

Fragments of statues dotted the temple’s grounds. Their faces were worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. A headless figure of a warrior guarded the shattered steps.

Clark and I stepped among the fallen statues scattered as if the remains of a battle.

“The story of Lawson,” Clark said. “I remember it from the book.”

I stepped carefully over the jagged roots that clawed their way through the fractured stone floor. My boots sent echoes bouncing off the hollow halls. “Why do I get the feeling that his tale is as sad as the rest?”

Clark followed close behind, his dagger unsheathed, the blade glinting faintly in the dappled light filtering through the broken ceiling. His eyes darted to every shadow, his shoulders tense. “It’s never a joyous story.” His voice was low but loud enough to stir the stillness. “Lawson led a group of men into the labyrinth searching for something to save their island, but the group turned on one another and struck each other down.”

His voice faltered, and I knew he was thinking of Astrid. His pace quickened.

“The entire group perished in the labyrinth before it ended, and their island suffered because of the group’s selfishness. As Lawson lay dying among his fallen men, he pleaded for his life, and Dimitri took pity upon him. He turned him into a Stone God. But Lawson has no taste for mortals or the games we play, so every four years—when we enter the labyrinth—he hides from it all.”

It was hard to imagine Dimitri taking pity upon someone. Everything I’d seen about him had been hard set and callous. But it wasn’t difficult to imagine Lawson among the fallen here. The others bodies had been turned to stone as well. They lay scattered about, their eyes open but empty. We walked through their graveyard.

“We should keep moving.” Clark shifted, eyeing the ruins.

The grooves carved into the floor were filled with rainwater that shimmered unnaturally, catching faint light from nowhere. The glowing runes etched into the stone pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. “The temple feels wrong,” he added.

My curiosity outweighed my caution, as it always did. “Look at these carvings.” I crouched beside the altar. The grooves formed intricate patterns that spiraled outward like the branches of a tree. “What do you think they mean?”

Clark sighed, scanning the shadows for movement as he leaned closer. “Probably ‘stay away,’” he said dryly.

I uncorked my flask to fill what I could with the trapped water.

“That’s likely sat there since spring.” Clark made no move to fill his flask.

“And if I want to last until winter, I’m going to drink it.” He was right though. The water tasted stale. Still, if Lawson wasn’t going to use it, I was.

Something stirred, and we both looked up.

“Didn’t you say Lawson hides from the mortals?” I whispered.

Clark tightened his grip on his dagger. “That’s not Lawson.”

It was distant, but coming closer. A rustle in the dead leaves. A voice carried by the wind. We had just enough time to hide behind the cracked ruin walls before a figure came sprinting through the woods.

He chose another wall to hide behind. We watched him through the cracks as he pressed his back to the walls and breathed deeply. He was perhaps ten years older than us, and frightened out of his mind by how wide his eyes were, and how his body trembled.

Delilah’s necklace heated around my neck. She was protecting us from something.

I got the feeling it wasn’t the boy. It was whatever chased him that frightened her.

The boy had the sense to draw his sword before the threat showed itself.

Two large wolves prowled through the trees, their snouts to the ground. Their noses led them toward the ruins.

“He needs to run,” I whispered to Clark. “They are going to find him.”

“We stay out of it, and keep our heads down.” Clark reminded me. “Not our ocean, not our tide.”