Page 48

I missed hours of the day. When I woke, sunlight poured through the frosted window, bathing the room in a soft, golden glow that made the motes of dust in the air shimmer like tiny stars. The warmth of it pressed against my face.

Instinctively, my hand flew to my stomach.

The skin beneath my fingertips felt strange—textured, uneven. I pulled the blanket back to look. The wound was closed, but the skin had bubbled and rippled, as if it hadn’t healed quite naturally. Despite its appearance, there was no pain. If anything, I felt… strong. Stronger than the day I first walked into the labyrinth. Before the wound, before the exhaustion, before everything.

I stared at my stomach a moment longer, then let the blanket fall as my gaze shifted across the room. Leif sat by the fire, his broad shoulders hunched slightly as he worked the poker in the coals. The flames danced in his eyes, turning their dark brown into molten amber for just an instant before the light shifted again.

“Someone will see the smoke and investigate,” I said.

He glanced over his shoulder at me.

“They won’t. This cottage will look abandoned to everyone outside, no matter what happens inside.”

Leif set the poker aside with a soft clink and stood, brushing ash from his hands.

“Luke and I stayed here once.”

His gaze wandered over the room, as though it might hold the memory of his brother somewhere in its walls.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. There must be magic in these walls, because the sheets weren’t dirty from my boots nor stained red from the blood. They were clean and crisp.

I caught a scent of myself, and instantly took another. So was I. I smelled like a garden, and my hair didn’t feel matted against my head anymore. It was soft over my shoulders.

Leif had returned to standing by the fire as if he didn’t know what to do with me. I hesitated, watching him.

“I don’t know if I had the chance to say how sorry I am that you lost Luke.”

He stilled, his back to me for a long while before he turned around. When he did, he grinned, but it was a weak effort. The corners of his mouth curved, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’ve been too busy being a thorn in my side to do much else,”

he said, though his voice lacked its usual bite.

I managed a faint smile in return.

Leif crossed the room, coming closer but not as close as he’d been this morning when he sat by my side with a hand on my stomach.

“We found this cottage the night before he died. It’d been in a stone maze at the time, down a tunnel of stairs we almost passed by. He pulled back a curtain of flowers, and there it was. We spent the night, Luke giving me the bed while he stayed by the fire, and in the morning, I begged him to let us stay. I couldn’t stomach the labyrinth back then.”

My mind went to Thief, the little boy with silver hair and a mischievous grin. My mind painted a new face upon him, one with dark hair and scared eyes, looking to his brother for safety. That’d been how old Leif was when he first came—at the demand of his father—into the labyrinth.

“Luke said we had to keep moving, but we weren’t going in the direction of the center. He’d found a captain of a small ship who was willing to take us away for a price, sail us to the outer islands and we could start a new life there. We just had to stay in the labyrinth for long enough for witnesses to see us so they could return and tell our father that we had in fact been in the labyrinth. Our fate would be left for him to guess.”

Leif took a few steps closer, but still keeping me at bay. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. They seemed to drift through me, unfocused, as though he were looking at something far beyond this room, something distant—buried in another time. His expression was unreadable, his jaw tight, but there was a hollowness to his gaze, as if the memories he carried were too heavy to set down, even for a moment.

“Luke died that day,”

he said, his voice low and steady, though each word carried a weight that echoed in the small space.

“And it took me eight years to figure out that Father was the one who orchestrated it.”

I blinked, the brutal admission hitting me like a physical blow. My breath caught in my throat, and for a moment, I could only stare at him. The firelight flickered across his face, casting shadows that deepened the lines of pain and anger etched into his features.

“Why would he do that?”

I finally asked, though my voice barely carried.

Leif’s lips pressed into a thin line, his shoulders stiffening as though bracing against the question.

“If Luke and I left,”

he began, his tone sharper now, clipped with suppressed emotion.

“he’d lose his heirs. Eliminating Luke kept me close. Bound to him, bound to the family. But…”

He paused, his gaze finally settling on me, though the storm behind his eyes didn’t abate.

“As years have gone by, I think he regrets not letting us both be gone and finding a new heir.”

The silence that followed was deafening, heavy with everything he didn’t say. The flickering fire seemed too loud, its crackles and pops filling the space where words should have been. I felt my chest tighten as the meaning behind his words sank in fully.

“He doesn’t regret killing Luke,”

I said softly, piecing it together aloud. The truth tasted bitter on my tongue.

“He regrets keeping you around.”

Leif’s mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile—more of a grim acknowledgment of what he’d always known but had rarely spoken aloud. He turned his back to me, running a hand through his dark hair, the motion restless, almost agitated.

“You don’t have to pity me, Ren,”

he muttered, his voice quieter now, almost hoarse.

“I’ve lived with it long enough to know exactly where I stand. But being here? It brings it all back.”

I stared at him, the broad set of his shoulders casting long shadows against the far wall. The weight of betrayal clung to him like a second skin, unshakeable and permanent. It wasn’t just grief that shaped him—it was the knowledge that his family had carved a hole into his life and then left him to fill it on his own.

For a long moment, silence stretched between us, broken only by the occasional crackle of the fire and the faint whistle of wind slipping through the fissures in the cottage walls. I could feel the weight of his presence beside me, steady but uninvited, like a shadow I hadn’t meant to summon.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

Leif tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable, though the faint crease between his brows deepened.

“And yet, here I am,”

he replied, his voice a low rumble, more statement than apology.

I turned my head to look at him fully, though the movement made my neck ache. He sat at the edge of the bed, his posture stiff, his hands resting on his knees now that they were no longer tending to me or the fire. The faint glow from the firelight played across his features, sharpening the angles of his jaw and catching on the faint scar that ran just below his cheekbone—a reminder of the battles he never spoke of.

“I sent the wolf for someone else,”

I told him.

“I never intended for it to find you.”

Leif leaned back slightly, resting his hands on the mattress. He looked away, his gaze settling somewhere near the glowing embers in the hearth.

“You were bleeding out when I found you. I thought you’d die before I could help.”

I swallowed hard, the memory of the wound flooding back. The sharp bite of steel, the rush of blood, the fear that had clawed its way into my chest.

“You could’ve left me,”

I said, though the words felt hollow even as I spoke them.

His eyes snapped back to mine, dark and unrelenting, like storm clouds rolling in. “Could I?”

My heartbeat tattoo pounded uncontrollably.

His lips twitched.

“Had you sent for your lover?”

“Clark’s not my—”

“I found his note.”

Well.

Leif gestured to the table, where my note sat—now bloodied.

“It was half out of your pocket when I found you.”

He made no apology for reading it, but the contents of that letter burned in my mind.

I can’t stay and watch you fall in love with someone else.

“Clark doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m not…what he said…it’s not true.”

“Why haven’t you killed me?”

Leif asked.

“You’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

He sat close, but I couldn’t scoot back. His gaze held me in place, raw and unguarded, like he’d stripped away all the layers he usually wore.

I swallowed hard.

“Why haven’t you killed me?”

The space between us seemed to shrink, though neither of us moved. The cottage, the fire, the world beyond—it all faded into a blur. My mind, clear a moment ago, clouded over. There was only him now and the way his dark eyes roved over me like he was memorizing the sight of me.

“Someone once told me to protect my heart,”

he said, his voice quieter now, barely more than a whisper.

“Turns out I’m incapable of harming it anyway.”

He raised his arm and slowly peeled back his sleeve, exposing the tattoo etched into his forearm. My breath caught. It matched mine perfectly, that shape of a heart that pulsed with a rhythm. It thumped beneath his skin just like mine did.

“Aurelia put your heartbeat on your arm too,”

I said, the words coming out shaky, as though saying them aloud might somehow ground me.

Leif shook his head, his gaze never leaving mine.

“No, Ren. This isn’t my heartbeat. It’s yours.”

The heat of the room pressed down on me all at once. My pulse thundered in my ears as Leif reached for me, his hand warm as it brushed against my arm. Gently, he tugged up my sleeve to reveal my tattoo that beat in time with the heart on his forearm—but slower, calmer.

“And this one,”

he said softly, his fingers brushing the edge of my tattoo.

“this one is mine.”

I couldn’t process it at first. My mind scrambled to make sense of it, racing back to when Aurelia first marked me. That day had been before Leif and I had spoken, before we’d crossed paths in anything but shadows. How could she have known?

But as the pieces fell into place, they painted a picture I couldn’t ignore. The times when the tattoo didn’t beat in time with my own heart. When it would race without cause or slow when I was panicked. How it grew louder—more vivid—when I was near him.

“I figured it out while you were sleeping,”

Leif admitted, his voice almost hesitant, as though unsure how much of this I could take.

“My tattoo was so faint, as if it were dying, but then I heard the noise—your heartbeat. I checked, and there it was. Yours.”

He let out a shaky breath, a hint of a rueful smile touching his lips.

“I even did push-ups, trying to see if it’d make mine come back to life, but it only made yours go crazy.”

He shook his head, a quiet, disbelieving laugh escaping him.

“You should’ve seen me, Ren. Frantically trying to make sense of it all.”

I was still trying to make sense of it all. My mind reeled as the truth settled in, heavy and undeniable. Protect your heart. That’s what Aurelia had told me when she marked me. All along, I thought it had been about survival. About shielding myself from the labyrinth’s dangers and the people in it.

But I’d been wrong.

All along, Aurelia Brightspire wanted me to protect him.

Leif stood there, so close I could feel the warmth radiating off him. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his arm. I’d come to terms with my heart being on my skin. But seeing my heart on his skin didn’t feel real.

“Maybe we are wrong. It’s another trick from the gods. That couldn’t be my heartbeat.”

I looked up in time to see Leif’s lips twist in amusement.

“I can prove it.”

He hesitated for the barest moment.

Then dipped his head to wrap my lips in his. He was heat and flame and desire, and my traitorous mouth craved more. I needed to feel him, to taste him, to be closer to him than I’d ever been to anyone.

The heartbeat on his arm went wild.

He tasted like a forest. I couldn’t move away. Instead, I pressed the kiss deeper, inching closer until my body was against his and I could feel the heartbeat in his chest just as I heard it beat on my arm.

It greatly satisfied me when his heart sped up too.

Leif’s hand cradled my face, his thumb brushing over my cheek in a way that made my chest ache. The kiss was ravenous, all-consuming, and filled all the spaces inside me that had felt hollow for so long. I wasn’t thirsty anymore. Wasn’t hungry. I could live forever on his kiss alone.

I reached out, my fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as if to anchor myself, to prove to myself that this was real. His hands moved to my waist to curl me against him, his lips still soaking me in. He knew exactly how to touch me to light my skin on fire—from my waist to the curve of my neck to my hair.

Everything inside me was coming undone, then being put back together in a way I’d never dreamed of.

I’d planned out my life thoroughly.

I never saw him coming.

“Sometimes I don’t think you’re real,”

Leif spoke between kisses. His words were hot in my mouth.

“You’re a fragment of imagination sent by the Stone Gods to torment me.”

“I think we can agree you’ve been far more of a bother than I have been.”

I ran my hands through his dark hair, then down the strong line of his back.

He groaned into my mouth.

“Not possible. You’ve completely ruined me.”

For a beautiful moment, I forgot about our goal of reaching the center of the labyrinth. Let us stay in this cottage exploring each other—it was far more fun.

Leif took my lip between his teeth and gently tugged before breaking the kiss. My lungs took a minute to remember how to breathe. Our tattoos beat wildly, the sound betraying us both.

I savored the way his breath felt as he leaned his forehead against mine.

“That was… unexpected,”

I said when I found my words.

“Was it? I doubt even the Stone Gods for all their meddling could have stopped this from happening.”

Leif’s fingers came back to my cheek to trace the line of my jaw slowly, like he was mapping the lines of me to memorize.

“Every path, Ren. It all leads to you.”

Leif’s hands dropped. He stood and straightened his shirt before crossing to a table where he picked up two cups. He handed one to me. I didn’t ask where he got the water from. Right now, I just needed something to cool the warmth in my cheeks.

Leif watched me drink. It took a moment to register that he wasn’t drinking too.

“I’m so sorry,”

he whispered.

“But I came here to win, and you’re making that difficult.”