Page 14 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

It was the size of the dead ones behind her, black beady eyes seeming to blink as it took her in, daggers in her hands, chest heaving. Eight obsidian orbs flicked to the carcasses, then back again.

“No,” Zylah breathed. “It wasn’t me.”

The arachnid lunged. Zylah rolled, a leg striking her arm. She slashed once, the blade slicing clean through skeleton and the spider screeching as it stumbled. A thick, clear ooze coated Zylah’s dagger and sprayed across her sweater as she swiped with the other hand, but this time she was too slow, a leg swiping her off her feet.

“I didn’t come this far to be taken out by a fucking spider.” Zylah rolled to her side as another leg came down, thrusting a dagger into a joint, the spider screeching as its leg broke clean in two. She spun again, slashing with her second blade across its eyes. Razor-sharp pincers snapped at her, narrowly missing her hand as the thing cried out. But it bought her the time she needed; with one forceful stab, Zylah slammed her weapon into the spider’s head, the creature’s legs twitching as it died.

Chest heaving, Zylah clutched her remaining dagger to her chest.Click click. Movement at the corner of her eye was her only warning, sticky webbing covering her arms and pinning them to her chest. Zylah ran, jabbing the dagger like a saw at the sinews encasing her, gasping and swearing as the clicks grew louder. Something caught her foot and she fell, all the air shoved from her lungs with a sharp pain. She tried to roll to her back, her arms still bound, her feet now tangled too.

The spider was the same size as its dead companion, sharp pincers flexing as it scurried towards her, spitting its web to pin her in place. Zylah sawed frantically against the silk at her chest, but the web was thick.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, repeating her stilted movement over and over in her effort to escape.

The creature slowed as it clambered over her, eight hairy legs caging her in like the ribs of some great beast. In its eyes, all Zylah saw was her own horrified reflection, the sticky web that covered her head to toe.

It lowered its head a hair’s breadth from her face just as Zylah broke her arms free, plunging the dagger into its abdomen and dragging it down with a ragged groan. Clear liquid oozed everywhere as the thing stilled, and she didn’t want to dwell on whether it was spider blood or guts or both, but whatever it was, she was covered in it.

With another groan, Zylah shoved the carcass aside, slashed at the web around her feet and scampered away from the dead creature, gagging and spitting and wiping at her face as her chest heaved and her heart beat rapidly.

But there was no time to steady her breaths, to wait for something else to find her, because she knew with certainty there would be more. Zylah didn’t hesitate; she pushed to her feet and ran.

Chapter Nine

Forfourdaysofmaddening tunnels, stairs, and passageways, Zylah kept moving. Four days of trying to call her sword to her and failing. Evanescing was still out of the question. Mercifully, there had been no more cobwebs, no more spiders, no more giant wolves, or any other kind of monster for that matter. She’d eaten only moss and some glowing vein cap, a mushroom she’d read about many times but never come across, sprouting from cracks within the rock in the dark, damp corners of the maze.

There had been no sign of Holt, either, not even the faintest glimmer of feeling down their bond. But Zylah didn’t let herself dwell on that.I’ll find you, she promised him, over and over; promised herself.

Arioch’s journal had been destroyed, its pages drenched and ruined by spider blood, every bit of ink leaching into the next. Not a single sheet was legible, and given the futility of carrying dead weight, Zylah had opted to leave it behind. All that remained was the single dagger, the bladder that was now almost empty, the flint and striking rock.

Now and then she’d entered larger expanses of the maze, though she was certain now it was some kind of cave network, some parts with steps and arches and columns carved out of the rock, roots and vines twisting down from somewhere above. Once, she’d crossed a bridge made entirely of roots, the drop beneath too dark to see an end to it, only to circle back around to it an hour or so later. A short while later she’d run and run and run up a spiral staircase, only to reach a dead end at the top and had to limp back down, a slew of curses on her lips.

Without the Seraphim’s map, she had no idea if she was going in the right direction, whether she’d been heading for the exit or making her way to the centre. How long had it taken him to find his way to the entrance, only to discover he couldn’t escape?

“You have until the blood moon,” Ranon had said. For what, Zylah didn’t know, but there would be no summoning Pallia. There had been too many opportunities for her grandmother to intervene, tohelpin some small way, and she hadn’t. Which left Zylah with only one conclusion: Pallia was gone from this world, whether Ranon believed it or not.

Another more pressing need had awoken her that morning. Zylah was almost out of water. And though she knew she could last days without it, it would slow her down, weaken her considerably. Ranon’s maze was not a place for weakness. The many skeletons she’d passed, the spiders, the twisting passages and looping routes were all evidence enough of that. Once or twice she’d felt certain she’d seen the glimmer of a wraith in the darkness, the shadows of ghosts watching her but never drawing close.

The dead had their uses, though. Zylah stole a waxed cloak from a skeleton, one end fastening through a loop at her shoulder, the hood only raised when she slept in fretful bursts. Though it was vastly different in style and age, it had reminded her of the one Holt had given her when they’d first met.“How do you do that?”she’d asked him when it had appeared on his arm.“Are you just pulling this stuff from nowhere?”Her fingers reached to her throat, recalling the way he’d fastened the buttons for her, warmth spreading across her chest at the memory. Everywhere she turned, roots and vines erupted from the rock, a constant reminder of the magic he’d favoured, as if the maze was taunting her. Part of her suspected it was.

Zylah pressed on down a mossy slope, following a steadydrip drip dripsomewhere below. Odd formations hung above her like icicles carved from the rock, others rising to meet them but never quite touching, like the teeth of some giant beast. She stood at the base of a pair, fingers brushing over the textured surface, a chalky dust coating the tips when she pulled them away. The air was different here, an almost metallic tang to it that stuck in the back of her throat.

Drip drip drip. Arioch had told her to collect water, and though she’d tried, it was damned near impossible to catch the tiny droplets from the jagged rock, short of running her tongue over them. Zylah felt confident in her knowledge of plants, but she didn’t know enough about minerals and their possible toxins to risk doing that. Such an abundance of moss was a good sign, and though she was sick of the taste, she took her time wringing out handfuls of the stuff into her water bladder before shoving it into her bag as she descended.

Ranon’s weakness occupied her thoughts. The way Aurelia appeared weakened, too, as if her father had drawn from her like a fountain. Pallia. The blood moon. What was Ranon planning? He needed power, magic, but drawing from the moon seemed farfetched even for an ancient Fae.

A splash of water had her stilling. Zylah crouched low in the shadows, waiting. No sound followed it, but still, her heart hammered hard against her chest until she convinced herself it had been nothing more than a falling rock. Sunlight touched the base of the slope below, a shadow slashing through it and then gone.

It was as if every twist and turn of this maze was designed to urge her to turn around, to retreat, to cower and hide. To wear her down. Zylah laughed soundlessly. Not too long ago, it would have worked. Would have had her curling up in the moss and staring into nothing. But that was the trouble with shutting everything out: she’d shut out the good, too. Denied herself time with Holt.

Never again.

She reached the end of the slope, raising a hand to her eyes to shield them from the refracting light. A large cavern spread before her, a wide shaft of sunlight illuminating it and bending off an expanse of water and the angular planes of glass. Not glass, she quickly realised, but countless purple crystals sprouting from the cavern walls like clusters of giant mushrooms, far larger than the ones she’d come across before. Even the strange formations that reached from above like thin fingers were covered in them, something about them achingly familiar. Zylah sucked in a breath. She’d seen the crystal before, in the sword Holt had given her.

A handful of bats flew from one shadow to another, a small rock falling into the water below. It stretched the entire expanse of the cavern, shadowed by a broken platform that sat far above. Crumbling pieces had tumbled into the water so long ago that crystals now sprouted from them, too. And though it was breathtaking to behold, a chill danced down Zylah’s spine at the sight.

The air was still, calm. No fetid stench permeated the space. With tentative steps, she approached the edge of the water, lowering to her knees to peer into it. Fresh. Clear, her dishevelled face staring back at her. She reached a hand towards her reflection, pausing when a shape she hadn’t yet noticed caught her eye.

Zylah almost fell back on her heels. A skeleton. And another, and another. She scrambled to her feet, staggering away from the shore. Bones littered the edges of the water, some jutting out of the shallows. She cast her gaze across the deep blue, remnants of the broken platform stitching a route across the glassy surface. There was every chance that whatever had killed the fallen around her was long gone. But Zylah knew that was a fool’s hope. And a fool she was, because she wasn’t going back. What good would it do? Four days. Four days back in the direction she’d come from. Towards Raif. Towards Ranon. Or ahead, across the water. And a possible way out.

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