Page 32 of Queen of Stars and Shadows

I turn back toward where the pillar stood mere moments before, and the High Priest is gone. In his place is a pile of ash and a tattered purple robe. The magic he’d trapped had been his death, abandoning him the moment it was freed.

Another flash, and I spin to see that the door is open, and Owyn stands there, a glowing blue light pulsating from his hands.

“Sarielle!” he calls.

We run toward him, the space we now occupy just an ordinary room, our footsteps ringing across the stone. When we reach him, he pulls me into an embrace. “I thought I’d lost you.”

I sink against him for a moment, too exhausted to move. “How long were we gone?”

“Half a day,” he says. “I couldn’t get the door to open again until just now, when you freed the magic.” He shakes his head in disbelief, a smile on his face. “You did it. You released the magic. I’ve never felt anything like it.” He raises one hand and summons a bright ball of blue light, grinning.

His smile falls a moment later when I sag against him even more. “You’re hurt.”

“Just exhausted,” I say.

“We can stay here the night,” he says. “I’ll find some food and build a fire.”

I look at Lilette and we shake our heads. “I don’t want to spend another moment in this place as long as I live.”

Owyn squeezes me. “Okay, then. I will help you walk.”

“I’m okay. Let’s just go.”

We don’t move fast, but we make it down to the first floor of the palace, and then out the grand entrance, across the courtyard past the cathedral, and finally, out the ornate gates that were my gilded cage for most of my life.

I don’t look back as we walk away from the Amethyst Palace for the last time.

Chapter Eighteen

Sarielle

“Here. Eat up,”Owyn says, handing me a stick with skewers of roasted rabbit.

I take the stick and begin to devour the meat hungrily. He hands Lilette one, too, and for several minutes there is silence as we eat, sitting around the fire at the camp we’d made.

We’re only a couple miles from the Amethyst Palace, just far enough so that I can no longer see the golden spires. Once it was forever out of sight, we’d stopped, and Lilette and I had built a fire while Owyn went and caught our dinner, which he no doubt had a little magical help with.

As I sit there, I listen to the crackle of the fire and the babble of a creek a few feet away. It’s late morning. We’d been trapped in the labyrinth overnight and walked through the break of dawn to find the place we’re now resting. I now have less than three days to reclaim my throne and stop hell from being unleashed.

But I can’t keep my eyes open another moment.

I toss my greasy stick out into the bushes and lie back on soft grass beneath a fringe of trees. “We can’t sleep too long,” I say, my words thick and almost unintelligible. “Don’t let me…” I am asleep before I finish the sentence.

When I hear a branch snap nearby, I sit bolt upright. The sun is setting. I’d slept without dreaming, something that hasn’t happened since… I can’t even remember. Owyn is a few feet away, rebuilding the fire. Lilette is still fast asleep on the other side of it.

“I told you not to let me sleep too long,” I say crossly.

“Well, good evening to you, too,” he says. “It was only about seven hours. You were exhausted.”

I raise my arms over my head and stretch tentatively. My muscles feel soft again, refreshed. He wasn’t wrong. I’d needed that sleep. But now I’m down to two days and some change.

Owyn must see the wrinkle in my brow because his smile drops. “What is it?”

My eyes meet his. And I tell him, finally. The thing I’d been too ashamed to tell anyone but Zyren and Lilette. And Zyren doesn’t even remember.

When I’m done, Owyn’s expression is so bleak, it makes my stomach clench into knots. “Say something,” I whisper.

“I wish you’d told me sooner.”

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