Page 8 of Steeling Light (Shadowed Debts #3)

Selithar was built around the Labyrinth, not the other way around. It predates the Fae, the dragons, and maybe even humans.

~Countess Alyth Corvanne, A Visitor’s Guide to Selithar

Ainslee

The Maze and Marrow is a confusing place for most people. It’s a restaurant, but it’s a restaurant built right outside the Labyrinth. Its guests don’t eat inside the Maze and Marrow; instead, they buy their food and walk through the gardens that line the entrance to the Labyrinth.

Very few people have gone beyond the winding hedges on the outskirts.

Especially after you get to the mist. Any other maze would be a joke for someone with Steel powers, but the Labyrinth’s mist rises above the tops of the stone walls that lead to the center, and the last person with Steel powers who tried to cheat his way through the maze was lost to the mists forever.

It’s the perfect place both to protect myself from Rhion and to give us the chance to talk openly. I haven’t been to the center, but I’ve been closer than most. I know how to get in and get out without ever sprouting wings, and Rhion and his soldiers—if he has any—won’t be able to.

I sit on a bench inside the Labyrinth with a plate of everfolded pastries and smile.

I’m not entirely sure why, but for the first time since I arrived in Selithar, I feel a little giddy.

Maybe it’s because I’m allowing myself to see Rhion again, or maybe it’s because I’m not thinking about anything important.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m sitting inside the Labyrinth, one of the few places in Selithar that I can appreciate.

The everfolded pastries smell of blackcurrants and venison, but I know better than to taste them while they’re still steaming.

I’m wearing a disguise as always. This time, I look like a woman barely a hundred years old without a single wrinkle-line on my face. And just like every other time, I hear Rhion before I see him.

“I’ve heard of the Labyrinth, but I didn’t understand just how large it was. This place is… it doesn’t belong in a backwater town like Selithar.”

I know the voice, and I turn to see what shape he chose for our meeting tonight. There’s no question when I see the tall blonde man smiling at me. Four massive skewers dripping caramelized tropical fruit onto thick cuts of a game bird are held in one hand while the other is in his pocket.

Those eyes… I don’t know how to explain how I know it’s him. They sparkle in a way that other people’s don’t. They seem to take me in and caress me with just a glance, perfectly kind and at such odds with how the world sees him.

“You found me again. One day, you’re going to have to tell me how you know it’s me.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “I’ll tell you right now. If you know someone, you can see through any shift. I could pick you out of a crowd no matter what you’d become. You walk differently. You’d move your arms in a uniquely Ainslee way. And no one has your smile. You can’t fake a smile.”

He sits down, and my eyes go to the skewers that he makes sure never drip onto him or the bench.

“You have a bounce to your step that the average woman doesn’t.

You have an energy that I’d know with my eyes closed.

And you don’t change your eyes or your hands nearly well enough.

” He says the last part as if it doesn’t matter at all, even though Darian has always chastised me for not shifting my eyes well enough.

“That’s it? You just see me and know? It’s not some House of Steel magic? You’re not carrying some enchanted coin that lets you see the soul of a person?”

Rhion laughs out loud. “You give enchanting too much credit. It can do a lot of things, but no level of enchanting can see a soul.”

I smile at the sound of that laughter. How long has it been since I heard it? Was it really the day that Darian was almost collared? When I was seventeen years old?

“So why choose the Labyrinth for our dinner?” he asks as he looks around at the people wandering the pathways at the entrance of the maze. “We could have had a much less public talk at a dozen other places.”

The corner of my lip curls up. “Oh, we’re going to have a private chat where your soldiers can’t get to us, and I don’t have to worry about you doing any of the things that my brother would warn me you’d do. I know we’re supposed to be talking like friends, but let’s not act like we’re not at war.”

Rhion nods, his smile fading some. “We can go for a walk in the Labyrinth if that’s what you want. There are no soldiers, and no one is going to hurt you, but I wouldn’t complain about a walk through a beautiful mist-filled hedge maze. You always loved long walks.”

I know the way he talks to everyone else, and this isn’t that. There’s no show of dominance in his voice now, no constant grating masculinity or need to show his strength to the world.

“You’re right. I do enjoy a pleasant walk, though…”

“…gardens were always my choice,” he says, finishing my sentence, and it’s like no time has passed since I was seventeen and he was twelve.

Rhion stands up before offering me a hand. I chuckle and take it, but when he crooks his arm, offering to walk arm in arm like we did when we were young, I keep my distance. I may want to believe that he’s the same person I spent so many afternoons with, but he’s not.

You can’t go back to the past no matter how wonderful it would be if you could.

We walk down the pathway that leads further into the maze, and I notice my everfolded pastries aren’t steaming any longer.

Rhion watches me out of the corner of his eye, but pretends like he’s looking at the rose bushes in this section of the hedges. He lifts a skewer to his mouth and absentmindedly pulls a piece of caramelized fruit off the end. “Oh, that’s good,” he says.

I take a bite of the first pastry and melt into the blackcurrant and venison filling. The sweet and savory blend is encased in buttery folded hot crust pastry, and it’s exactly what I wanted. Something decadent and hearty at the same time.

Rhion watches me, a smile crossing his face, but he doesn’t comment.

I can’t keep my heart from beating faster.

No flesh and blood woman would look at Rhion and turn him down.

They say that Sidon the Strong created the House of Steel in his image, and Rhion is exactly that.

A man larger than anyone else, he looks like someone who was built to destroy the world around him.

I know his touch, though. I know the gentleness behind those eyes, at least with me.

I’ve seen him and Cole fight. I know the brutality that he’s capable of, but he’s only ever been soft with me.

In the world we live in, that’s not common.

Even Cole, my best friend, has hurt me countless times when training.

Rhion, though… I don’t know if he’s even capable of it.

I shake my head to clear the thoughts from it. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt me, but I know he’d hurt Darian, Cole, and Maeve. I swore my loyalty to both Cole and Maeve. I met with Rhion to get information out of him and maybe sway him to our cause.

“Why are you in Selithar, Rhion?” I finally ask, ignoring the way his look makes me feel.

“I’m here because you’re here, Ainslee. My father would tell me to lie to you and do whatever it took to find out what you’re hunting for in Selithar.

You’d never come here alone without a good reason.

More than likely, it’s because you know about the relics that my father is looking for, and you think one is here. ”

The relics? That’s why he thinks I’m here? “I’m not here for the relics, Rhion. If that’s what you’re here for, then you should go elsewhere. I’m just trying to find an old friend of Maeve’s.”

Rhion frowns and absentmindedly brings the skewer to his mouth again, this time to pull a piece of poultry off it. His movements are smooth and almost sensual.

“Maeve’s friend?” He’s thinking, and I already know that I should have been smarter about what I said.

He may look like a brute, but he’s still his father’s son, and if there’s anything everyone knows about Gethin, it’s that he’s the cleverest of the leaders of the Great Houses.

“Before she became a High Fae, she was just a Wyrdling. Who would she have known? Brenna didn’t interact with her. Unless…”

He squints at me and asks, “Are you searching for Brenna? No, Cole and Maeve would have come for that. Maeve would want to hunt for her own mother, and Cole wouldn’t let her go alone. Who else could it be?”

The grin that crosses his lips makes me want to smack him because I know he’s figured it out.

“Her sylph. Brenna couldn’t stay near her daughter, so she left a sylph behind to watch her.

Sylphs are notoriously hard to scent out—even for harpies—and that’s why none of them found her, and there weren’t any whispers about dangerous shadow magic killing people.

Brenna’s daughter was raised by a sylph, and that’s why there was a sylph at the Midsummer Ball.

Sure, they were welcome to come, but only one came.

The rest stayed far away, just as the gargoyles did. ”

He finally seems to come back to the present and asks, “How’d I do? Did I guess it on the first try?”

“That’s an exciting theory, Rhion. It seems like quite the stretch though.”

I’m doing everything I can not to tell him what I’m doing in Selithar, but I feel like anything that I say is just going to give him more information. The best thing I can do is just minimize talking about it.