Page 86 of The Sinner's Bargain

I cradled my book closer, partially considering turning back when the path became overrun with tangled branches forming a web of sharp thorns knotted together before a high, arched gateway.

It was curiosity that propelled me forward.

It was the need to know what lay on the other side.

It was the flicker of a figure drifting out of sight when I glanced away that I would have missed if I hadn’t just caught the movement out of the corner of my eye.

“Hey!” I called, hurrying forward to peer past the wall. “Hello? Can you tell me if...?”

I let my words trail off when only my voice echoed around me, and no one came to investigate. Thoran’s guards left me alone, barely acknowledging my existence, but I doubted they would blatantly ignore me. My only other guess was a trick of the light or a bird.

Taking a deep breath, I crouched. Kept my head down and squeezed through a tiny section near the bottom where the thorns hadn’t yet found each other. Unforgiving barbs caught my coat. Tangled into my hair. Clawed at my face. One cut deep enough that when I emerged on the other side, droplets of crimson stained my fingertips when I touched my cheek.

“Damn it,” I mumbled, lips turning down.

There was no way Thoran was going to miss the scratch. He would ask how I got it, and I knew I couldn’t lie.

I’m not in the garden, I reminded myself. He said I could go anywhere, except the garden.

But I had no idea where the garden with the silver roses even was. The night I arrived, it had been pitch-black, and I’d been running wild and frantic. Even when Thoran hauled me away, I couldn’t have found my way back even if I tried.

Still, I told myself that if I saw a garden, I would turn the other way. My goal was the lake and nothing else.

Satisfied with my own plan, I stepped through the archway and found myself lost on a silver path surrounded by walls of brittle shrubbery. It wound in and parted in two different directions about six feet in. Part of my brain, the part not in awe of my surroundings, was more certain than ever that the figure I thought I’d seen had in fact been a figment of my imagination; the direction I was sure it had taken went straight into a short alcove and a dead end. There was no way a person could simply vanish.

I glanced back at the archway and my last chance to go back.

The open maw seemed to be urging me to leave. To run. But I’d already gone that far and had the battle scars to prove it. Leaving seemed so cowardly when I was fine. It wasn’t as if I could get lost. Thoran would notice my absence and he’d come to find me.

Comforted in that knowledge, I pushed forward. I followed the curving path through towering greenery broken up by the occasional fountain or statue. A marble carving of two little girls holding wicker baskets nearly cost me ten years of my life when I rounded a bend and came face to face with their blank, milky eyes.

“Oh my God!” I gasped, hand clutching my chest where my heart had nearly leapt out.

The pair stayed still and silent as I scooted around them and continued.

I found a well, moss covered and endless as I peered over the edge into a dark abyss. A hollow hum seemed to come from somewhere deep at its core. Parts of a wheel and bucket remained mounted to the sides, but the pieces lay in splinters across the path. Nature had already begun to take claim of the wood. Weeds and decay fused it in place.

“Hello?” I called into the void.

My voice tumbled into the darkness and reverberated back to me, tinny and warped. The unnatural cadence of it had me drawing back and away.

Something snapped behind me.

The distinct crack of a twig splintering beneath an approaching weight.

I spun, already expecting another person, and finding an empty path.

“Hello?” I ventured.

An eerie silence crept into the clearing with me, distorted only by a ping ... a plop of something moving in the belly of the well.

Heart palpitating, skin both chilled and sweaty, I hurried away without looking back. My feet quickened until I was practically sprinting, taking random curves, and dodging the unseeing eyes of weeping angels. I didn’t stop until I was sure I’d put as much distance between me and that well as possible.

Panting slightly, I slowed as I came to a break in the maze and took it. The opening offered freedom and escape, and I didn’t hesitate.

Solid ground vanished.

Stone became liquid as my feet sank to the ankles in murky sludge. My cry of panic went unheard as I tried to scramble back. The muck claimed my right shoe and I stood a moment, balanced on one foot, debating whether or not I was willing to reach in and rescue it.

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