Page 37 of The Lord of the Labyrinth

“Trolls.” Patch scratched his bearded chin. “Must be trolls.”

Trolls?Kate’s stomach knotted in fear. What had Patch said? Be fast and avoid getting hit by clubs or something? She could be fast. Sure. That was something she could do.

“Let’s see if we can slip around them,” said Patch.

Kate tried to hide her dread as Patch led the way forward, Kate following as they ran into a forked pathway.

“Left or right?” she asked, her chest tight as she weighed her options. Left seemed quiet, safe. It was a sunlit path with smooth walls. The right path, however, shook with the tumble of rocks against one another and seemed far less welcoming by the way the walls of the labyrinth here had turned jagged and sharp-looking.

“Well, left, obviously,” Patch said.

Kate breathed out slowly, letting herself calm and follow her instincts.

Assume nothing in the labyrinth is what it seems...

An idea grew in her mind. Ifshehad a labyrinth, she would guard the path that led to the heart of the puzzle with the most dangerous creatures. The safer path would keep leading the person around in circles or back out.

“Left, then?” Patch prompted.

“No.” She turned toward the left path with a wave of her hand. “That’s whathewants. To keep me stuck at the edges of this thing forever.” Well, she wasn’t going to fall for it. “We go right.”

“Towardthe trolls? Don’t be stupid, girl.” Patch started to walk in the other direction, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side.

“I’m not scared of trolls.” She’d had her social media accounts targeted by mean girls when she was in high school. From what she remembered of her mother’s stories, there were various kinds of trolls, and these definitely weren’t of the mean-girl internet variety. The ones she remembered from the tales lived under bridges and ate goats. Surely these trolls couldn’t be worse than the morgens?

* * *

They weremuch worse,as it turned out.

Kate and Patch huddled behind a large boulder as five massive trolls, each more than twelve feet tall with gray skin, slung stones at a sixth that was crouched against the wall opposite where Kate and Patch were hiding. The labyrinth had opened up into a wide-open space filled with piles of rocks that formed tall, unstable-looking towers of stones.

“Why are they hurting that other troll?” she asked Patch. They kept their heads down and peered through a crack between two boulders to watch the trolls.

The kobold studied the trolls for a moment. “That one’s a runt, smaller than the rest. Trolls are a bit judgmental about things like that.”

“Abit?”

The trolls were massive, thickly muscled, with round heads and black eyes. They wore leather vests and trousers, and their skin looked like it was covered with a layer of silvery fur. A few had small pairs of horns jutting from their temples.

“We might be able to get around them if we go now.” Patch pushed at Kate’s hip, trying to get her to move. They had a chance to escape if they stayed on the narrow path between the boulders. Kate moved along the path, peering between the stones every few steps to keep her eyes on the trolls. She saw the smaller troll fall to its knees, covering its head from the blows of the others as they threw massive rocks. She was pretty sure the others were laughing.

Theyaremean girls,thought Kate.

A flash of memory shot across Kate’s mind. She was crouched in the corner of her bedroom, listening to Sandra complain about her to her father. Sandra had never hit her, but she’d been as cruel with her words as the stones these trolls were throwing. A stab of pain in Kate’s chest made her stop. She couldn’t just leave. If she had the power to stop someone from getting hurt, she wasn’t going to just run away.

She caught Patch’s shoulder and whispered to him. She nodded to the place where the labyrinth walls seemed to narrow in the direction they’d been moving. “Meet me at the far end of the pass.”

“All right,” Patch said, then halted. “Wait—what?” The kobold whirled back to face her.

“Go,” she hissed. Before she could talk herself out of this really stupid idea, she crawled between the two nearest boulders to a place where the trolls could see her.

Then she shouted at the top of her lungs, “Hey! Pick on someone your own size!”

The trolls slowly turned around, some still holding hefty rocks.

Yep, that was stupid. Really stupid. Why had she said that?

“What did you say?” one of the trolls ground out in a slow, gravelly voice.

---