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Chapter Six

“G ive me your lips, that I might taste the history of you in a kiss,” said the dark king.

“Just a kiss?” his bride replied. “Or would you take my soul with it?”

The dark king smiled in the way of all clever Fae. “A decent kiss should do nothing less than steal one’s soul.”

—Anon., Tales from the Twilight Court

Kate tried to close her hands into fists and winced.

“This isn’t a dream.” Her hands were red and raw from her climb down the rope. She’d been hurt in dreams before, yes, but she’d never actually felt any pain. Now her hands were in agony.

She tried to distract herself by studying her surroundings. The dungeon was gone, and so was her little brother. A forest lay behind her, so heavily crowded with trees it looked almost black, and a forbidding chill ran down her spine. She definitely didn’t want to go that way.

Ahead of her was the entrance to Roan’s labyrinth.

It was made of stone, and it was beautifully carved with the most intricate patterns that looked like Celtic knots.

Stunning but unfathomably complicated. The walls were impossibly tall, making her feel like an ant standing before a sycamore tree.

And far beyond, almost out of sight upon the horizon, was the distant shape of the palace, which glittered in the pale sunlight that was just cresting the horizon.

She lifted her face to the sky, seeing the weak light of the rising sun.

“There’s more than just moonlight in this world as Babbitt said,” she mused. But this sun was nowhere near as strong as the one back home. It was more like when there was a layer of cloud that filtered it so you could almost stare directly at it.

Kate tried not to think about Caden in that dark, barred cell and how scared he was.

Surely Roan wouldn’t keep him there forever.

.. Would he? This was a man who had commanded her to strip naked and await his return, who had robbed her of her senses with a single kiss.

He was used to taking what he wanted and not being refused.

“Please, just let Caden be all right.”

The wind tugged at her hair before it whispered through the trees behind her. For a moment she thought she heard a woman, or perhaps several women’s voices murmuring. Kate turned to look at the trees but saw no one.

“Is someone there?” she called out.

The trees stilled, and the wind faded.

Focus, she reminded herself. You’ve got sunlight you can use to navigate the maze.

She studied the shadows from the entrance.

It was just now dawn, assuming the sun here rose in the west and set in the east. She could keep watching the shadows, and once the sun passed overhead at noon, then the shadows would stretch in the opposite direction.

A labyrinth was just a complicated maze, right?

She had solved a corn maze in middle school by keeping her right hand on the wall and following it to the end.

She’d only run into two dead ends and corrected her course before she finally found a way back on the path.

This must work the same. It has to.

She wasn’t going to let Roan win, and she wasn’t going to let Caden down. Whatever Sandra might think of her, Kate would do anything for her little brother. She wasn’t going to leave him in the dungeons of a Fae king.

With a deep breath to clear her head, Kate entered the labyrinth.

The ivy-covered walls stretched up more than twenty feet on either side.

She studied the glossy leaves of the plants, and inspiration struck.

She ignored the pain of her rope burns and dug her hands into the foliage, grasping stems. She tucked one foot into the crevice of the plants and pulled herself up.

If she could reach the top of the wall, she could see her path and find her way to the palace.

If the walls were wide enough, maybe she could walk along the top the whole way!

Halfway up the wall, Kate was grinning. Her plan was working. This was easy.

Something sharp bit her hand and she gasped, jerking away from the ivy.

“Ow!”

She checked her palm. A little red dot formed, with a thorn jutting out from it. Before she could pull the thorn out, a new pain stabbed her other hand.

She tried to grab a different part of the plant, but thorns kept sinking into her hands each time.

In her panic, Kate lost her footing and fell, landing hard on her side.

Pain throbbed through her body as she tried to catch her breath.

After a long moment, she rolled to sit on her backside and plucked the thorns out of her hands one by one.

The ivy had attacked her. She stared at the beautiful leaves that rippled innocently with the breeze as if nothing had happened.

Climbing was out.

“Can’t blame me for trying,” she muttered.

The red welts the thorns left were another nuisance, but she could power through it.

She had to. Roan was clever. It might not have occurred to most people to just climb the walls, but apparently he’d thought of it and prepared for it.

And if the walls were lined with thorns, what other traps might she run into?

Kate got to her feet, brushed herself off, and held up her right hand, but she was careful not to touch the wall this time.

From what she’d seen of the castle in the distance, it would take her a day walking straight through, which meant it was going to take too long to walk through the labyrinth’s twisting paths.

She needed to speed up. Kate’s body ached from her fall, but she could at least jog.

She was in decent shape and if she moved faster, she could get through the maze quicker.

Kate jogged for what felt like an hour before she took a break to walk and catch her breath.

The labyrinth was starting to feel monotonous.

The hedges seemed to go on forever in slow curves or sharp twists, yet they were somehow the same.

Her own footfalls and her breath seemed to match the ripple of a breeze that moved along the walls of ivy, like the labyrinth was breathing with her.

She knew logically that wasn’t possible, but it didn’t stop her from thinking that the labyrinth was somehow connected to her.

The farther she moved into the maze, the taller the walls seemed to get, and the more the ivy would overhang the gap, which meant less of the pale sunlight could reach and warm her.

Was she going underground? Or were the walls somehow growing above her?

She couldn’t tell. She studied the sky and had the eeriest sensation that she was being watched, but she saw no other creature near her or above her.

She shivered and rubbed her arms. At least Babbitt had dressed her in warm clothes.

Keep going. Don’t stop. Just keep moving.

She was still jogging when she burst around a sharp corner and barreled into somebody who was bent over.

“ Oof! ” a deep voice grunted as the person she’d collided with fell flat on his face, spilling a bag of rocks that sparkled in the muted light.

“Sorry!” Kate tried to catch hold of herself against the wall.

“Oi, what in blazes are you doing here, girlie?” the creature she’d crashed into demanded, his dark eyes narrowed in suspicion.

She tried to figure out what he was. Some kind of goblin, maybe, or a very tiny troll? He was only as tall as her shoulders, though taller than Babbitt back at the palace. He had a mass of dark hair that fell past his shoulders and a bushy black beard.

“I’m solving the labyrinth,” Kate said.

A harsh laugh escaped the creature. “Are you, now? No one solves Lord Arun’s labyrinth, foolish girl. No one ’cept Lord Arun himself.”

“I’m not a girl,” Kate said, holding her temper in check.

The creature snorted as he looked her over. “Ah. You must be Lord Arun’s human pet. I’ve heard the pixies chitter on an’ on about you.”

“The pixies?”

“Oh, aye, little bastards won’t stop yammering,” the creature grumbled. “Of course, anytime the king does something, the pixies have to have their say, don’t they?” He sniffed and looked her up and down. “Well, who are you, then, girlie?”

“I’m Kate, Kate Winslow.” She held out a hand to the creature after he bent over to retrieve his small leather bag from the ground and collect the last of the sparkly stones, which he dropped inside the bag. He slung it over his shoulder and glared at her, but he didn’t take her hand.

“Name’s Patch. Well, off you pop, then.” He turned away and started to leave.

She gently tapped his shoulder, and he looked back at her. “What is it?”

“Forgive me, Patch, but do you mind if I ask what kind of Fae you are? I don’t know anything about this place. I only just met my first brownie. And Roan, of course.”

“Oh, Roan , of course,” he said in a high-pitched girlish voice. “You humans. Lord Arun is the most powerful Fae in the realm, and you call him Roan .” He shook his head, muttering something about young’ins and a lack of respect.

Kate didn’t want to call Roan by his title. It felt like calling him Lord Arun would give him power over her, and she desperately needed to keep him on the same level as herself.

Patch snorted. “I’m a kobold. I work in the royal mines.”

“The mines? What do you dig for?” She was genuinely curious.

“Treasure. What else would you dig for? You humans sure are daft.” He started walking, and since it was in the direction she wanted to go, Kate kept pace with him.

She ignored his insult. She needed to learn as much as she could about Roan, this place, and the labyrinth. “Do you know how to solve the labyrinth?”

Patch’s boots slapped the earth in a rhythmic march as he walked. “Only the way back. I live on the outskirts. Only safe place to be in here. Go any deeper and you run the risk of being eaten or killed.”

“Eaten or killed?” Kate’s stomach gave an anxious flop. She’d been told the labyrinth had danger, but she hadn’t considered that something might eat or kill her.