Page 41 of With Wing And Claw

Oh.

Oh.

Inspiration struck like a tidal wave.

‘I’m afraid it’s hopeless,’ she said, taking her eyes off the paralysed fae and aiming her words at the ceiling again. She didn’t turn away entirely, though. The captives had to hear her in order to spread the word later. ‘It seems they’re too stupid to comprehend how pretty you are. Or too blind. Maybe both, actually.’

The air around her warmed in agreement.

Naxi snuggled up against the smooth wall, grinning at the pink gems sparking back to life around her. ‘I have a suggestion for you. How about you let these boring idiots go, and I’ll keep visiting you instead? I’ll make sure to come say hello every day. Maybe I’ll persuade some others to come with me after a while – I don’t think they’ll agree to do that if you kill their friends now, though.’

There was a flicker of uncertainty in the mountain’s strange, all-encompassing emotional landscape. Not exactly doubt, but definitely a crack in the simmering anger and disappointment … creating room for Naxi to slip her hands around those inhuman feelings and knead them into the shape she needed.

‘Every single day,’ she repeated, enunciating clearly to make sure the fae heard her as well. ‘I promise. If I stop coming, you can start dragging them into your caves again, as far as I’m concerned.’

A collective shiver ran through the group of fae; a few muffled whimpers broke free. But the Labyrinth …

The Labyrinth moved again.

With a rumble not unlike the echo of distant thunder, the stone began to shift – melting like ink-black ice as it slowly pulled away from locked arms and feet and wings. Fae gasped and staggered forward. Coloured gemstones lit up again. A warm, almostcheerfulkaleidoscope of a thousand different hues – as if this promise was exactly what the mountain had hoped to claim.

If that was the case, Naxi was not ungrateful for its assistance.

‘Let’s go, then!’ she said, turning away from the cave to pat the smooth black walls. ‘Would you kindly show us the way to the nearest exit, sweetheart?’

The pink veins returned, lighting up even brighter this time.

She shepherded the group of stumbling fae into the indicated tunnel, pretending not to notice the way they kept a few inches away from her. One or two of them had the presence of mind to mutter something about the place being very pretty, actually. The others just clung to each other as they hurried through the maze, heads bowed, voices muted if they dared to exchange any words.

The path sloped down and farther down – not back to the remains of the bone hall, then, but to one of the other exits Emelin had opened during her brief stint of court reforms. Naxi didn’t keep track of their direction. She was too busy petting and complimenting the Labyrinth at every turn, and besides, who cared where they ended up?

Every part of this island was as ugly as the next, after all.

The walk seemed much longer than her original path to the prisoners, now that she was stuck with a horde of hysterical fae clamouring against her demon senses. She barely suppressed a loud cheer of relief when finally the first whiff of fresh sea air reached her through the underground tunnels. Nearly there, then. Now all she hadto do was shoo her accidental protegees out the Labyrinth and into the world outside, and they could—

The path turned its final bend.

Naxi froze.

Not because of the open gate before her, or the sound of crashing waves in the distance. Nor did she give a rat’s arse about the cries of relief as the fae captives stormed outside, smelling their freedom; she didn’t even care, notreally, that none of them bothered to throw her the briefest parting glance as they swept out their wings and soared out of view, their voices rapidly dying away in the distance.

Rather …

It was the vision waiting for her outside.

Thetreeswaiting for her outside.

So, so manyof them, their presence digging into her nymph magic like roots digging into fertile earth … making her heart squeeze with some emotion she hadn’t felt in centuries, something she didn’t dare examine too closely as she staggered towards the looming exit. Gnarled trunks filled the world before her. Knotted vines. A mottled canopy of leaves that seemed to swallow every ray of sunlight, shadows curling through the undergrowth in decidedly unnatural ways.

It wasalive, this wood.

Not in the way she was used to, lush and joyful like the forests on Mirova had been before the Mother’s armies had burned them, down to the last sapling. These trees were all crooked and twisted. There was something dark, something savage, in their veins that made a mockery of all nymph principles of peace and loving compassion … but hell, what did it matter if they didn’t sing to her, if they growled and snarled and hissed instead?

She wasn’t all sweetness and sunshine either.

She’d never been that good at playing nymph in the first place.

The Labyrinth warmed around her as she stumbled her last breathless steps forward, its fond feelings washing over her almost like a hug. Only then did she understand – that the second part of her walkhadbeen much longer than the first.