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I pulled it toward me, shifting his weight beneath him. He fell to his knees, and I cracked my foot against his face until he fell backward. Dragging his axe the final distance, I paused beside his head as his chest drew in a final breath.

“It will only hurt for a moment,” I wheezed.

I raised the axe over my head with a scream—swinging it down as every muscle in my body throbbed.

It cut through his flesh and the bones in his neck in one clean line, imbedding into the mud beneath his body until I pulled it free and pressed itinto the dirt to lean against. I fell to my knees beside his body, exhaustion stealing over me.

Grasping his head by the horn, I dragged the heavy thing back toward the entrance to the maze. It bumped along the surface of the ground, my arms too tired to lift it as it left a dark trail of blood. The roots from the hedges reached out, slithering into the pool beneath his body and what I left in my wake. They consumed the blood, drinking it down as if it was water within the ground.

I stumbled as I walked, my wounds healing over but the tiredness taking everything from me.

All magic had a price.

I emerged from the Labyrinth to silence. My eyes were fixed on Mab’s face as I dropped the Minotaur head between us. “The next time you think to pit one of your pets against me for a game, do it knowing it will not be me who dies.”

The Fae observers cheered, celebrating the bloodshed as if it was the greatest entertainment they could have asked for.

“You didn’t use your magic,” Mab said, lifting a brow as if she cared very little for the creature she’d used to kill her enemies when they displeased her.

“I didn’t need it,” I said with a grimace as Mab’s guard allowed Caldris to get to his feet.

He stepped up beside me, his eyes searching the side of my face. I refused to look at him, refused to acknowledge what he would see there.

I hated thinking of what I was becoming. Of what Mab was forcing me to do to survive.

“You made a deal. Allow us to complete our mate bond.”

Mab studied me, her lips twisting into a smirk. “In time,” she said, the trickery of a Faerie deal hanging between us. While she would need to allow iteventually, we would all live long lives naturally. She had all the time in the world before she had to do it, because I’d made a fool’s mistake and not been specific enough.

I glared at her as Caldris led me away, seeming to warn me to fight that battle another day. Blood dripped off me as I walked, staining the dirt and stone beneath us as we made our way back to my rooms.

Mine. The Minotaur’s. It hardly mattered now.

“He called me sweet blood. Said it had been a long time since he’d tasted one,” I said, my words a whisper between us. I didn’t dare speak louder, dreading the thought of one of Mab’s spies hearing our interaction. Caldris stilled, glancing back at the Minotaur head upon the ground as if it could offer more explanation. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Caldris said, but as his stare landed upon mine, I knew we were both thinking of what had happened when he’d taken my blood. We hadn’t dared to allow it again, worrying about the repercussions of such a thing.

His reaction had surprised him, and I had to imagine it was more intense than a normal Fae male consuming the blood of his mate for the first time.

The Minotaur had wanted more, too.

I stared down at the blood on my hands, raising them in the light cast by the twin moons through the window at my side in the hallways. The blood shimmered with the faintest golden light as I moved my hands back and forth. I doubted anyone would notice, doubted it was obvious enough for anyone to see unless they looked for it, but I glanced back at the Labyrinth nervously, anyway.

“Mab can’t know,” Caldris whispered.

I nodded. He wrapped me in his arms, and we hurried to my room and the bath Nila would draw for me.

We needed to wash the evidence away, rid me of any sign that my blood was different. If drinking it did something, if there was something to be gained from it, she would use it to become more powerful.

And I would die before I allowed that to happen.

“Caldris,” I started, wincing back from the glare he aimed at me as we came to a stop outside the door to my chambers.

“Say it, and I will bend you over and fuck you until you forget how to speak,min asteren.Don’t even think it,” he growled, his voice a warning. I had a feeling the fucking would only be the beginning of my punishment if I dared to disobey him. “Don’t ever think to ask that of me.”

I swallowed, nodding.

Even though I knew he was wrong.