Page 77 of The Lord of the Labyrinth

“Different?”

Caden nodded. “You seemed... I don’t know... justbetter.” He shrugged. “Happy. I think if the king made you happy, then you should go back.”

Kate bit her lip to keep from crying. “Would you miss me?”

“Of course I would,” Caden replied. “But that doesn’t mean you should stay. You’re always so sad here.”

“How did you get to be so wise?” Kate asked, her voice trembling.

Caden’s eyes were serious. “I have a really smart older sister.”

Kate threw her arms around the little boy, hugging him against her chest. She breathed in the scent of him and pressed her lips to his golden hair. She would carry the memories of him with her always like a shield into every battle.

“I will miss you more than you know.” Her words were barely a whisper, because if she said them any louder, she might lose the strength to go.

When at last she let go of him, he smiled, but his eyes were full of tears.

“I believe in you, Kate.Youjust have to believe in you too.” Then, without looking back, he left and closed the door behind him.

Kate glanced around her bedroom once more. Her home, her clothes, her books, everything would be left behind. But that was the old Kate’s life. She didn’t need any of it anymore...

Except her mother’s book of fairy tales.

She retrieved it from the floor and pressed it against her chest, shutting her eyes.

How do I get back to you, Roan? Are you even alive?

“Show me the way back...” she murmured to the night.

She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to try. She couldn’t live the rest of her life not having taken the chance to go back.

Nothing happened.

Kate opened her eyes, still in her room. She closed them again. “Take me back,please.”

She waited. Still nothing.

“Damn it...” She stifled a sob, but she refused to give up. Roan had said he opened roads to travel between worlds. Roan could open those roads as he pleased, but she wasn’t Roan. So how...?

Lightning crashed outside and rain poured from the skies. Just like the night when she got into her car and...

“Oh my God...”

She remembered driving through the storm past the edge of the woods, where Roan in his owl form had crashed into her car. It was a liminal place between worlds, according to the fairy tales. She remembered her mother telling her that places “in between” could help a person find their way to the land of the Fae.

Kate scrambled to change out of her PJs and into her jeans and a sweater. She then pulled on a raincoat and tucked the book in one of the pockets, along with the feather. She left her house and slipped into the night. The clouds above shuddered with thunder, and a bolt of lightning tore across the sky.

“I’m coming, Roan. Hold on.” She ran down the street, straight toward the dark outline of the woods.

I wish to return to the labyrinth. I wish to go home. She repeated the words in her mind like an incantation, praying it would work.

Lightning struck a tree at the edge of the woods. Fire sparked through the leaves and shot down the trunk, breaking the tree clean in half. There in the center of the split tree was a shimmer of light, bending and refracting in a way that was not of this earth.

She ran toward that sliver of light. Ignoring the fire that now wreathed the area, she leapt through.

The tides of time carried Kate away from the place she’d once called home. Blinding colors and flashes of light pulled Kate across thousands of universes. All she could do was hold on to the image of Roan in her mind.

I wish to go home. To Roan.

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