Page 48 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)

Faye ran through the labyrinth, holding her mother’s hand.

‘To the castle! We…must…get within the castle gates. We’ll be safe there,’ Moddie called over her shoulder, and Faye saw that there were tears in her mother’s eyes, too.

‘I missed you,’ Faye called out as they ran, dodging branches and stones along the way.

‘The paths are closing!’ Moddie shouted, and pulled Faye along faster. ‘I missed you, too, my darling.’ She stopped briefly and hugged her daughter. ‘There’s so much I want to tell you, but there’s no time. For now, we have to get out of here.’

Faye held the crystal up higher and saw that Moddie was right; the sides of the pathway were drawing together. Some way in front of them she could see the moonlight glinting on the castle in the distance.

‘I don’t think we’re going to make it,’ Faye shouted in reply as the tendrils grasped for her more and more aggressively; she tore them away, but they caught her again and again, twisting up her legs and wrapping themselves around her wrists.

Moddie was the same, but different. She had not aged, because there was no ageing in spirit, and in fact she looked younger than she was when she died.

And there were other differences, too. Moddie’s hand in hers was light and insubstantial and, as they ran, it seemed that Moddie’s feet didn’t touch the ground.

‘We’ll make it,’ Moddie said. Faye remembered that determined tone. When Moddie wanted something, she usually got it. ‘Remember you’re half fae. Feel the faerie power as much as you can. You can use it here. Let it fill you.’

Faye focused on the swirling energy of faerie; she called it in, surrendered to it, with as much of herself as she could while running. She felt the power of faerie engulf her, thrill her body, sharpen her senses.

‘That’s right! More!’ Moddie shouted. Faye took in a deeper breath and felt the power unfurl from inside her at the same time it surrounded her; it grew thicker and flowed faster, faster, until she started to lose feeling in her hands and feet.

‘I’ve got you!’ Moddie yelled as Faye’s feet hovered off the ground like hers did.

The faerie power lit up the labyrinth; the light flashed on the dark hedges, and holes opened up and closed again at random in the walls of the labyrinth. The crystal glowed bright in Faye’s hand.

Moddie pulled her towards one of the holes in the hedge, but it was too small for them to fit through.

‘Can you make it bigger?’ Moddie breathed, glancing around them as the labyrinth continued to tighten. ‘When you focus on your fae magic, you can disrupt the illusion of the labyrinth. Can you control it better?’

Faye tried, but she didn’t know how. ‘Sorry.’ She felt like a failure.

But Moddie shook her head impatiently. ‘No time for sorry,’ she said. ‘You’ll learn to use it here in time. But for now, we need something else. I can’t get us through this on my own. He’s too strong for me.’

‘Finn?’ A part of Faye somehow still hoped that it wasn’t her lover doing this; that there was another presence scheming against her.

‘Faerie kings are jealous, Faye,’ Moddie chided.

‘But it’s my fault. I could have taught you about your true self, about your father, about faerie, but I wanted to protect you.

’ Moddie wrapped Faye in a hug and Faye felt the comfort of her mother’s body envelop her.

‘I’m sorry, Faye. I’m so sorry,’ Moddie had started to cry, and grief welled up in Faye at the sound of the sadness in her mother’s voice.

She gulped away tears; she had missed Moddie so much that it hurt to see her again now. It was an ache she had become accustomed to forgetting; seeing Moddie renewed the pain of her loss.

‘I’ve missed you so much,’ Faye started to cry.

It was all too much; she was so tired from fighting Finn, from feeling ill after being in Murias, from worrying about keeping herself and Rav safe, all of it.

She wished that she had never cast the love spell.

She wished her mother was still alive. Nothing was as she wanted it to be.

‘I know, my darling. I know.’ Moddie hugged her tight and kissed her forehead. ‘We can talk. But we need to get out of the labyrinth first. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Faye wiped her eyes and kicked a vine that was trying to snake its way up her leg. ‘Hurry! Can you magic us out of here? I know that Levantiana taught you the faerie magic.’

‘I can try. What do you know of the faerie magic?’ Moddie asked, out of breath.

‘I’ve been learning magic with Levantiana. So that I can come and go freely in Murias without being so…bound to Finn. So I can protect myself.’

‘With Levantiana? How?’ Moddie spun to face her daughter, panic in her voice.

‘The same as you. I made a bargain. On account of being Lyr’s daughter.’

Moddie caught her shoulders. ‘What? No, Faye. You can’t…Making a bargain with the fae is dangerous. You shouldn’t have done that. No. No, no, Faye…Please tell me that’s not true,’ Moddie cried. ‘Please. You don’t understand how dangerous that is.’

‘You did it,’ Faye argued.

‘I was dead already. I had less to lose,’ Moddie answered. ‘And I did it to protect you.’

‘I didn’t know that. You should have told me.’ Faye felt a terrible ache in her chest. Dread. Regret. Pain.

‘I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed to communicate with you. That was one of Levantiana’s conditions for teaching me,’ Moddie shouted, pulling Faye through the hole in the hedge, which was finally big enough.

‘What was the bargain you made?’ Moddie yanked Faye through, but the labyrinth tried to stop them, wrapping vines around their legs. Faye kicked them off again.

‘Come on. We have to keep moving. There’s no time to talk about it now. I offered myself as a weapon of some kind against him, in this war they’re having.’

They edged their way down a narrow pathway. Faye felt a wave of oppression wash over her and she tried to take a deep, calming breath, but the denseness of the hedges reaching in choked her.

‘No, Faye! You must not…’ But Moddie didn’t finish her sentence.

Something in the hedge reached out, as if it had arms this time, and dragged Moddie back into it.

She screamed and tore at the vegetation, but in seconds it had covered her body.

Faye rushed to her mother and started tearing the leaves away, but it was replaced with twice as much.

‘Mum!’ she cried out, trying to focus her magic again to stop the vines.

‘Faye. You don’t understand, about your father. I?—’

‘He tried to kill you. I don’t care what happens to him!’ Faye cried.

Grief twisted Moddie’s features. ‘No, Faye. That’s not true…I—’ Moddie choked and spat out the leaves snaking into her mouth.

‘You said it. I was eight, I came down that time, you were drinking with that woman from the coven. You said he almost killed you.’

Moddie shook her head, confused. ‘No. Faye…he didn’t. That’s not what I meant.’ She coughed again. ‘There’s no time to explain, but you’re wrong. Levantiana…did you visit the Crystal Castle?’

‘Yes.’ Faye felt branches pull at her clothes, vines wrap around her leg.

She felt them circle her left wrist; she pulled away, but they were too strong.

Desperately, she stripped vegetation away from Moddie with her right hand.

If Moddie didn’t mean that her father, Lyr, had tried to kill her, what did she mean?

It was so long ago, and Faye had been just a child.

What had Moddie’s exact words been? Whatever this meant, she couldn’t think about it now.

‘Did you bring back any of the rose petals? From Morgana’s castle?’ Moddie retched as the hedge reached the back of her throat. Faye nodded, horrified. ‘Cast one on the ground. Hurry!’ Moddie coughed as the vine disappeared into her mouth.

A leaf brushed Faye’s own mouth; she suppressed a scream and reached into her pocket with her right hand, drawing out the black kelpie’s scale which she had folded in half like a purse. Its tough, leathery hide had kept the three petals safe.

The plants had both of her legs now and would twist into her mouth the next time she opened it, she knew.

They would reach down inside her gullet, like they had with Moddie, spreading new roots inside her lungs and stomach, assimilating her into the labyrinth.

She had a sudden vision of herself with leaves and stems sprouting from the corner of her eyes, pulling her eyelids open in an expression of permanent horror as they wove her flesh back into the verdant green.

Faye took out one of the rose petals and threw it into the ground between them. At the same time, Moddie shouted, ‘ Tar a thighearna…Tar a thi! ’

A scream cut through the air. Faye’s last vision, bathed in the light of the glowing crystal, was her mother’s face, contorted with pain.