Page 42

“Is that such a bad thing? I don’t feel any different.” In fact, Kate had never felt clearer, freer. She wasn’t certain that the memories were worth anything but pain.

Thalia lifted Kate’s chin so that she met the woman’s eyes. “He took from you everything he wished someone else would take from him, but he does not understand, and he does not have that right. I will return your memories to you?—”

“No!” Kate jerked her chin free of Thalia’s grasp. She didn’t want to feel any more pain or sorrow. “I don’t want them back.” She turned to flee, but Thalia’s voice halted her.

“Without the pain of life’s worst moments, you can never truly know the value of your greatest joys.

He took all of it from you, not just the bad, but also the good.

What we experience, the good and the bad, teaches us the most important lessons in life.

We must look inward and ask ourselves who we want to be.

Without those lessons, you would never know what matters to you, what you would move heaven and earth to protect and love.

To love my son, to save him, you must accept all of who you are, Kate of the Winslows.

The good and the bad. You are the sum of all your dreams, your memories, your desires, your grief, and your joys. ”

Kate turned, her heart filling with hope. “You think he loves me?”

Thalia smiled. “In a thousand years, my son has never let anyone close to his heart, except you. You have traveled where others have tried and failed. You have gone deeper into the labyrinth than anyone else, and the dark paths have remained clear of most of its dangers. You, the woman he loves, have shown courage within those walls. Because of who you are, you not only survived, you stood strong. You got back up on your feet whenever you were dealt a blow.”

Kate shook her head. “But I was afraid.”

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is persevering in spite of it. It’s facing the darkness within your soul and realizing it has no true power over you. It comes from those moments where your memories have guided you and reminded you what made you the woman you are.”

The darkness... Kate had been in the dark for years, the darkness of not having enough love, of an uncertain future, of not trusting herself or believing she was enough. When Roan had sent her to the labyrinth, she’d faced darkness and she hadn’t let her fear rule her.

Was Thalia right? Was she brave and she simply hadn’t realized it?

“Do you trust me, Kate?” Thalia spoke, but Kate heard Roan’s voice when his mother spoke. She saw his eyes through his mother’s as Thalia held out her hand once more.

Kate stared at her hand. Her instincts made her want to run away from the pain, from the memories she knew would be agony.

Then she thought of Roan and the look in his eyes as he’d danced with her.

He’d seen her that night, all of her, just as he had the other nights he’d been with her.

He’d wanted her, but not because of desire alone. He’d wanted something more.

“I can save him?” she asked.

“You can. Let your heart guide you. You will know what to do when the time is right.”

Kate placed her hand in Thalia’s. Pain shot through her body as memories struck her like bolts of lightning and visions flashed across her mind’s eye, forcing her to relive everything in an instant.

Her mother spun her around the yard with her hands, both of them laughing... her mother’s body lay in a coffin, her features waxen... dirt covered the coffin as it was lowered into the grave...

Sandra taking her father’s arm and kissing him... Sandra pushing Kate farther and farther away from her father...

Little Caden in a cradle, his chubby hands grasping the teddy bear that Kate had snuck into his crib... her standing apart from her family at Caden’s birthday party... thinking of how her own birthdays had been forgotten...

The college campus, vast, beautiful, exciting... the face of a cute boy who knocked her down on the grass... the sunlight of his smile... the promise of the life that had its own adventure if she ever returned home.

So many memories, so many parts of herself that she didn’t know she could ever want back, but now that she had them.

.. as much as some of them hurt... they were hers .

They belonged within her heart. Thalia was right.

She felt deeper, richer, even with the agony of her mother’s death and her father’s distance.

She was herself again in a way she’d never thought she would need to be.

But Roan was not and could never be a part of her previous life or a part of that other world. The weight of her life encapsulated in a thousand memories buried her like an avalanche... but one thought rose to the surface.

I have to save Roan.

No matter what she chose about her future or what Roan had done to her, she had to save him.

Thalia was right. Those memories, the ones that Roan had taken to protect her, she needed them.

Even the hardest, most painful ones. They made her who she was.

Losing her mother, growing up so alone, connecting to Caden and then being brave enough to start a new life at college.

All of those things had made her the woman she was, the woman who had braved the labyrinth to save her brother, the woman who’d fallen in love with Roan.

Thalia watched her with a penetrating, all-knowing look.

“What must I do?” asked Kate.

Thalia pointed to a flowing river just beyond where she stood. “Time is a river here. Where we stand, we are beyond its reach. To join my son, you must step into the river.”

Kate started forward, but Thalia stopped her. “You will need this.” She held out a slender dagger, the one that she had stolen from Roan’s bedchamber.

“Where did you get that?” She thought she’d lost it climbing up to the palace.

Thalia placed the dagger in Kate’s hand. “Where I found it does not matter. What matters is that this blade can wound a Seelie warrior... even a king.”

“Culan,” Kate breathed in understanding.

“Be brave, Kate. Be true to yourself.”

Kate swallowed hard. It was difficult to leave this place, which felt so calm and safe. No wonder Thalia had dwelled in these silver woods for so long.

“If this is the river of time... is it possible to see my mother? To go back to a moment when she was still alive?” The need to see her mother had been buried so deep, but now it was clawing its way to the surface.

“It is possible. You could return to a time when she lived.” Thalia’s tone was quiet. “But it comes with a cost.”

“What cost?” Kate would give anything to see her mother again.

“Once you step into the river, you cannot return here. The way will vanish. The mists of time will drift far out of reach, and my son will be lost to you. You will be a child once again and live the past with your mother, starting over. Your mother will still die, your father will still move on. All that has happened will happen again. None of that is within your power to change. But if you go back, you will never remember this world. This future will never come to pass. Before you choose, you must see Roan’s world as it will be if you never set foot in the realm of the Fae.

” Thalia waved a hand, and the woods around Kate filled with muted sunlight that cast images in the mist.

Patch drowning in the morgens’ pool because she was not there to save him.

Magda perishing beneath the stones hurled by her own kind because Kate was not there to stop them.

The walls of the labyrinth growing taller, the passages darker.

.. the endless lives lost in the winding darkness as the labyrinth stretched forever and ever, covering the land.

Roan sitting upon a throne, his eyes cold and vengeful as he watched his lands destroyed by the Seelie.

Eudora, Rath, even Babbitt all lay dead, Seelie weapons having taken their lives.

All because of a war that never should have come about.

Kate swallowed back a sob as the grim future tore her heart in two.

“No,” she gasped, and the visions vanished.

“You cannot save your mother or change the past... but you can change the future.”

Thalia pointed at the river. “Make your choice, Kate of the Winslows.”

On shaky legs, Kate approached the water. Within the diamond glints of the rushing flow, she glimpsed her mother’s smiling face.

“I miss you...” Kate whispered to the reflection of her mother within the fairy river.

“I miss you so much, it feels like I’m dying inside.

” The desire to choose her mother, to choose her past, was so strong.

She wanted to leap into the water, to go back to a time when she hadn’t lost anything in life yet.

Even knowing she’d lose her mother all over again, she wanted those few precious years back.

The enchanted water showed her mother’s face as she spun Kate around in the backyard. Fireflies glowed in the warm green night. “And he shall say, ‘Kiss me, Kate.’” Her mother’s voice drifted up from the water as she spoke of the dashing man that Kate would someday know was her destiny.

Roan . He was her destiny.

Her mother wouldn’t want her to return to the past, to lose herself in it. Not when she could save not only the man she loved but the world that had shown her she was strong, that she was worthy.

“The winds of time will shift soon, Kate. You must choose...” Thalia’s voice came from a great distance now. Kate dove into the water, dagger gripped in her hand as she chose her fate.

* * *

Roan swung his broadsword in a large arc, slicing the nearest Seelie warrior in half.

The labyrinth’s passageways were now filled with the dead—both Seelie and Unseelie.

Friend and foe alike stained the soil with their blood.

But Roan could not stop, could not grieve, until he killed his cousin and ended this.