Page 47 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)

Gasping for breath, she looked expectantly at the same two bearded gnomes that had let her in the first time.

‘I need to enter the labyrinth,’ she said, her breath ragged. ‘My…my friend…has been taken,’ she panted.

‘She didn’t say the magic word, did she?’ the gnome on the left said to the one on the right.

‘Nope,’ said the gnome on the right. He looked up at her expectantly.

‘Password,’ he said seriously.

‘I don’t have a password,’ Faye snapped. ‘I am sidhe-leth , half fae. I don’t need one. Let me in. I command it!’ she said, feeling the now-familiar lassitude of being in Finn’s kingdom, but she fought against it and held on to her panic at Rav’s abduction into faerie.

‘Ooh. She commands us!’ The gnome on the left smirked.

‘Password,’ the other gnome said again. ‘Orders from Up High. Even half humans got to give the password or be locked out.’

‘Well, I don’t know the password!’ Faye shouted. ‘Just let me in! There must have been some mistake.’

‘No need to shout,’ said the gnome on the right, looking affronted.

‘But…Please.’ She knelt down in front of them and looked beseechingly at them both, but they avoided her gaze. ‘Please. I’ll…I’ll see you’re richly rewarded.’

Faye had no idea what she was saying or indeed how she would be able to reward anything in the faerie kingdom, but she was desperate. The gnomes conferred between each other and the one on the left pointed to the silver pentagram ring she wore on her right hand; it had been Moddie’s.

‘We’ll have that. Give us that and you can come in,’ he said, stroking his beard. ‘But you can’t tell anyone we let you in. Say it was an accident. You just woke up in the labyrinth. They believe that sometimes.’

‘It was my mother’s,’ Faye appealed to the gnomes.

The gnome on the left pursed his lips. ‘We want it, or you don’t come in,’ he repeated.

‘Fine. Yes. Have it!’ She pulled the silver ring off with some difficulty – she hadn’t taken it off for years – and threw it on the ground between the gnomes.

The gnomes pushed the gates, and they creaked open slowly. Faye barged through. Yet, this time the labyrinth loomed dark in front of her, reaching away into blackness. Faye stopped in her tracks.

‘I can’t see anything!’ She turned to the gnomes, who were shutting the gates behind her; the last shards of the strange golden light of the entry to faerie narrowed to a crack, threatening to plunge her into oblivion.

‘Please! Stop!’ She ran back, putting her hands in the crack of the gate as it closed, trying to hold them apart.

‘I can’t see! I need light! Please, I’ll be trapped in here!

’ she cried, but the doors closed and she had to pull her fingers out to avoid them being crushed.

Faye heard the gnomes chuckling as the lock turned, and complete quiet and darkness suffocated her.

‘No light for traitors, miss,’ one of their voices called. ‘King’s orders.’

Before, the labyrinth had opened to her like a rose; now, it clutched at her with branches and tendrils and refused to let her go.

Faye groped ahead of her in the dark, following only by instinct.

Dead silence accompanied her concentration; the only sounds were her jagged breath and occasional cries of frustration as she met one dead end and then another.

The stream of faeries that had swarmed around her before, treading on her toes, singing, dancing, rolling and fighting, was gone.

It was as though she was alone in the world.

‘Help! Please, someone, help me!’ she called out, but there was no reply.

‘Finn! Finn, I command you to hear me!’ she called in vain, but she knew there would be no answer.

He had taken Rav, of that she was certain, and abandoned her here to the labyrinth; locked her in like any mortal woman.

As a punishment to stop her coming after Rav.

But she was sidhe-leth.

If I could come through before, then the only thing stopping me now is Finn , she thought. So there’s no point calling on him for help. He’s angry…because Rav kissed me. Jealous.

Faye stopped running and stood still in the labyrinth, gathering her thoughts and steadying her breathing. There was no point panicking.

She plunged both hands into her pockets while she thought, and her fingers closed around the crystal in her pocket.

She brought it out and held it up to her face; it still held a tiny amount of luminescence from the Crystal Castle, but it made little difference to the dark.

Yet, she felt it held a power that she could use to help her, if only she knew how.

She racked her brain, trying to remember the crystalline singing that seemed to have come from the walls of the seven-pointed faerie castle.

She could remember the words, though she didn’t know what they meant. She began to sing the words softly, and then louder as she gained confidence. She tried to replicate how it had sounded.

Tar a thighearna…Tar a thi… She sang the harmony. And, as she did so, the crystal began to glow, lighting up the dark labyrinth. The pinkish light filled the pathway, shining into the overgrown high corners and the mud underfoot.

Faye looked around her; now, at least, she could see where she was, though she still had no idea where to go. It wasn’t going to be an easy route through this time.

As she took some tentative steps forward, she heard a voice in the distance.

She listened hard; it was very, very distant.

The voice grew a little louder; still, it was only the volume of a whisper, and it seemed to be passed leaf to leaf in the dark, a shushing noise that carried a word.

Faye, Faye , the leaves whispered, circling her like a net. Faye.

It was Moddie’s voice. Faye turned around, trying to find the source of the whisper. She was sure it was her mother’s voice. Faye. Follow my voice.

Holding the crystal in front of her for light, she followed twist after turn, sometimes feeling as though she was walking uphill, sometimes down.

But try as she might, Faye couldn’t get any closer to Moddie’s faint call and, all the time, she kicked away reaching branches and trailing weeds that seemed bent on tripping her up and holding her back.

She had to keep singing, or the crystal dimmed. Tar a thighearna…Tar a thi… she continued, hoping that the crystal wouldn’t fail her.

At the centre of a hedged-in square she found a large silver bowl of pink roses standing on a golden cube, which reminded her of the carpet of rose petals that had surrounded the Crystal Castle. As she stopped to smell them, she looked down and saw the letter M scratched in the dirt by her feet.

Moddie had been here; she was close by. Somehow, she was helping Faye through the maze.

Faye took three of the roses and picked the petals off, scattering them behind her like the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel; she would need to find her way back through the labyrinth, after all.

She followed another twist and another turn and, at the far end of the next pathway, Moddie stood waiting for her, wearing a gown made entirely of rose petals. She held out her hand to her daughter.

‘Come on, darling. We don’t have much time,’ she said, and Faye ran to her, with tears burning her eyes.