Page 35

T he night garden was even more wild and untamed in this dreamlike incarnation than it was in Wyldraíocht.

More a labyrinth than a garden here, it was bordered by towering hedges that had grown so impossibly tall that even from the crest of the blackthorn hillock, Aisling couldn’t see where they ended.

The Luna moth soared upwards, its glow growing fainter and fainter until it disappeared into the hedgerow.

Aisling watched it go, gazing after its fading trail before approaching the behemoth shrub.

There was a gap in the foliage—she’d just been able to make it out on her descent.

It wasn’t wide, nor was it lit or marked in any way other than two great stone statues flanking the entrance on either side. Aisling faltered as she drew near.

They weren’t the exact statues that guarded the entrance to Laure’s palace, but the creatures were unmistakable.

These manticores were twice the size, and their expressions twice as menacing.

The one on the left was posed with its lips curled back in a vicious snarl, baring teeth as big as Aisling’s hand.

They shifted then, stretching and shaking so their stone coating cracked and crumbled onto the grass at their feet. Both had eyes of blazing red—eyes of fire, of molten lava—and they fixed them on Aisling so intensely that she couldn’t force herself to take a single step closer.

“A new game,” the creature on the left said, voice somewhere between a growl and a purr. “What a treat.”

The manticore on the right, the smaller of the two, grinned wickedly. The smile was garish on his lionesque face as saliva dripped down his chin. “I cannot remember the last time I tasted human flesh. So succulent, so sweet.”

“She is not ours,” the larger of the pair growled.

“Perhaps not yet,” the other cooed.

The beasts slid from their pedestals and approached Aisling languidly.

Immense, leathery wings unfurled from their backs; the breeze of their movement ruffled her hair.

The smaller manticore prowled around her in a circle, drawing in deep drags of her scent.

The other came to a stop before her and cocked his head to one side.

“Tell us the riddle’s answer, and we will show you the safe path,” he said.

It took Aisling a moment to find her voice, and another still to catch her breath before she could answer. “Shadows. It’s shadows.”

The circling beast laughed maniacally, a high-pitched keening sound that echoed off the knoll sharply. Aisling had to resist the urge to cover her ears. “You don’t know the answer,” he teased, singsong. “You don’t know the answer!”

Aisling felt only disbelief at first—surely he was lying. Surely he was only trying to get a rise out of her. But as he continued to cackle, her heart sank.

“Stupid, stupid girl,” the manticore before her snarled.

Aisling’s cheeks heated; she was ashamed.

Humiliated. She was positive she had the right answer, despite the fact that she’d been unable to use it to her advantage in any of the arenas thus far.

It hadn’t even occurred to her that she’d been wrong entirely.

“You’re lying,” she pushed back. She believed it less and less herself, but it felt better to argue than to be cowed by their taunts.

“Just a stupid human girl,” the smaller manticore cooed.

“Maybe,” Aisling acquiesced, finding her footing once more and standing up a bit taller. She wouldn’t let her determination wane. “But I’m a human who’s out-logicked your god three times now.”

Facing the judgment of the two savage creatures, she hadn’t any idea what the correct answer might be.

Except, as she’d considered in the Undercastle, perhaps it didn’t matter.

She’d already gotten past three of Yalde’s challenges without solving his riddle, and she’d do so again.

She was sick of being made to feel helpless; Aisling would take back her agency one way or another.

“You will not be able to logic your way out of this task, Red Woman. This maze has no end; no other entrance or exit but this. Its walls are unscalable and impenetrable. Either you find the answer, or you remain lost in our garden.” The larger manticore spoke the words slowly.

Still in his gravelly, brutish voice, but with a different cadence.

This was Yalde, speaking through the beast’s mouth.

The other stopped circling to stand at his side.

A long tail snaked up behind him, flicking impatiently back and forth.

Its tip ended in a bulbous telson that tapered into a barb, sharp and glistening with venom.

Aisling had never before seen a scorpion outside of photos, but their stingers were unmistakable.

She shifted her weight onto her heels, nearly toppling over backwards as it seemed to track her movements.

Then, the manticores began to retreat. Both kept their fiery eyes fixed on her as they moved, together at first, then separating to step back up onto their respective pedestals. They settled slowly, slowly back into their poses.

“Go!” They roared the command and the hedge trembled with the force of the sound.

Aisling darted between them, ducking low as their tails interlaced to form a deadly arch overhead.

She chose a direction at random, caring for little else beyond putting distance between herself and those hungry beasts.

She didn’t slow until she’d made several turns and reached the first dead end.

Every inch of her was throbbing, aching, burning. The blisters the wildfire had raised across her back and down one of her arms had torn open as she’d dragged herself through the dungeon tunnel, and her head ached fiercely from thinking. From panicking. From Yalde’s intrusions.

Aisling couldn’t recall the last time she’d been so tired, physically or mentally.

She’d once spent three days with a group attempting to summit Mount Rainier, trekking through snow and scrambling across ice slopes.

After their second day traversing the peak in near-whiteout conditions, she’d made the precarious descent roped up to the others while only one of the guides and several far more experienced mountaineers finished the climb.

By the time she made it back to her car, she thought she might never walk again.

Her feet and fingers were frozen; the thirty pounds of gear in her pack felt closer to sixty.

That was nothing at all compared to this. In fact, she’d have attempted that climb ten times over if it meant getting out of Yalde’s game.

Still, she continued trudging on. She had no strategy other than to keep moving. If she stopped, she knew it was unlikely she’d find the will to convince herself to start again.

A hissing sound stalked Aisling through the maze.

Its volume waxed and waned, sometimes so quiet she could scarcely hear it at all.

Other times, it was so loud she expected to see a giant serpent bearing down on her when she wheeled around to look.

It was the sound of something creeping through the hedge; something slithering through the overgrown grass.

Always just on her heels, always just out of sight.

But even fear wasn’t enough to urge her to move any faster.

She longed for the comfort the Luna moth’s light had brought her. Even if it wasn’t Kael at all, it eased the persistent hurt inside her to imagine it was. She hadn’t seen it since it vanished into the hedgerow. She wondered if it was searching for her, too.

Having run into yet another dead end, Aisling doubled back.

As she turned, the hissing intensified again, sharp and insistent; this time, emanating from the shrub just over her shoulder.

It came closer, closer, and then something long and thin burst from the leaves.

It wrapped twice around her middle before she could react, constricting instantly and pulling her towards the dense foliage.

A vine—one of Laure’s. Aisling could feel the remnants of the Seelie Queen in the plant’s savagery, in the way it bit into her waist like it remembered her.

It wrenched her around, hard, and she froze.

Her mother stood just ahead.

Maeve’s eyes were pearlescent and unseeing, her mouth hanging slack in a frozen, soundless scream. It was the same expression Laure had worn when Kael’s shadows suspended her above The Cut, moments before he’d spilled her blood to feed the Sangelas ritual.

And something was writhing within her wide open mouth.

Laure’s vines curled from her lips, snaking out in brittle, withered strands and reaching for Aisling with deliberate hunger. They pulsed and twisted, alive in a way that turned her mother into something hollow and possessed.

Revulsion climbed Aisling’s throat. She tried to look away, but the image rooted her there: Maeve’s face split open, overtaken by Laure’s once-beautiful magic. The vine around Aisling’s waist tightened further still, but the ensuing burst of panic was enough to free her frozen limbs.

She’d grown so used to the weight of Kael’s dagger at her hip that she’d nearly forgotten it until now. Her fingers scrambled for the hilt, hands shaking as she wrenched it free.

And then she began to hack.

The vine screamed when the blade sliced into its stalk and bled a milky white sap that reeked like overripe fruit.

Another shot up from below and tightened on her thigh, then yet a third joined the fray to snake up her arm.

Aisling slashed at the vines wildly, hardly caring how many times the knife’s edge bit into her own flesh as she fought back.