Page 14 of The Fae King's Labyrinth

“Ghost?” The air turned humid and the soft sound of water lapping filled the tunnel.

“My enforcer,” Azulin replied as though this cleared up every aspect of his relationship with the mysterious Ghost. “Do you feel something when we touch?”

I frowned up at him as he loomed over me. “The tingle?”

He lifted our joined hands. My sleeve—which must’ve been ripped at some point—fell back, revealing my forearm to the light of the flame above my head.

Azulin uttered a sharp exclamation. Our skin contrasted harshly—mine warm and sun-browned, his cool and pale—but woven over both our forearms was a pattern of golden leaves. The vine curled up my arm to reach just above my elbow, but his vine only reached about halfway up his forearm. As we stared at it, the golden vines appeared to breathe and ripple as though alive.

“What is it?” I asked, trying not to panic. The strange tattoo-like marking didn’t hurt, but it did tingle and warm my skin.

“You are the key,” Azulin confirmed, his voice lowering to a rumble that buzzed in my bones.

For a moment, I couldn’t catch my breath.

Suddenly the pooka yelled from somewhere ahead. “I found the turn. Hopefully, everyone knows how to swim?”

∞∞∞

Azulin

She was my way out. The mating vine on our arms declared it in no uncertain terms. We were magically compatible, and our joint magic would free both of us from this maze of a prison. I just had to figure out how.

Even in the brief time we’d had held hands, my magic had stabilized. It no longer hid from me. And when I reached for it, my magic responded readily—eagerly, even, as though no curse bound me at all.

However, the curse yet pressed on me. It hemmed me in, threatening to barge in and disrupt my connection to my magic the moment I let go of Calypso.

“Did you two hear me?” The pooka’s voice came from farther ahead. The sounds of splashing accompanied it. “This way ends in water. If one of you can’t swim, I suggest we head back to the last intersection.”

As though on cue, the rumbling of the maze vibrated through the floor beneath our feet. Gripping Calypso’s hand more tightly, I turned us to face where we had come. As I suspected, the passage walls were moving, closing us in again.

“Run,” I instructed, turning toward the pooka’s voice and the watery passage he had found.

For the first few moments, Calypso kept up, but then she stumbled and her fingers slipped from mine. I skidded to a halt and reversed direction.

“My apologies,” I muttered before I scooped her up, hauling her over my shoulder. The cloak fell off her shoulders as she braced herself against my back, just missing tangling in my feet. I ran for our lives toward the end of the passage, leaving the cloak behind.

“Watch out!” I yelled moments before we reached the corner and slid around it as the wall snapped shut behind us. My boots skidded on the water-slick stone, and I barely managed to swing us around. Dropping Calypso’s body against my chest, I cushioned her with my body as best I could when my back hit the far wall hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.

Abruptly the rumbling ceased, and the walls stilled.

Calypso sagged against me, resting her forehead against my chest. My heart’s violent pace stuttered strangely for a moment. I tightened my hold on the small human briefly before dropping my arms from around her.

“You certainly know how to make an entrance,” the pooka declared as he waded through the calf-high water to join us. “Do you delight in skin-of-the-teeth entrances?”

“No.” I glared at him before straightening and surveying our new environment.

“How deep does the water go?” Calypso asked as she stepped away from me cautiously. Her kirtle skirt dragged in the water, pulling the garment down to hug her hips. More curls had escaped her rapidly deteriorating braid. The escapees danced endearingly around her face, teasing the curve of her cheek and resting against the upper arch of her eyebrow. I forced myself to look away from the sight and focus on the task at hand.

Black water lay before us, rippling with the remnant vibrations caused by the rumbling tunnel’s movements.

“There’s a wall to the left.” The pooka lifted his torch. The light barely brushed the surfaces of a wall perhaps twenty feet or so away. “But I can’t see anything ahead of us. I wandered in that direction, and the depth seems to remain the same for at least a bit.” He eyed the water suspiciously. “I am not too pleased with our inability to see beneath the surface. There’s no way to tell if there’s anything in the water before we step on it.”

My thoughts went instantly to Calypso’s bare feet. Both the pooka’s and my boots would protect us, but Calypso—

“There appears to be an edge here.” My attention snapped around to spot the human. She’d moved faster than I had expected. Calypso wandered farther out into the center of the tunnel, apparently feeling something beneath the surface of the water with her foot.

“Ca—” I swallowed the rest of her name. “Callie, you need to come back. It isn’t safe.”

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