Page 50 of Quarter Labyrinth

“We are three less than we were an hour ago,” Harald spoke with a glance toward Ivar’s body. “No one would fault any others if they wished to surrender.”

Aiden looked where Charlotte had gone as his fingers curled over his white stone once more. But he didn’t throw it. He slid it back into his bag, picked up the dagger that was in Charlotte’s chest a minute before, and stood.

“Good. Then let’s see to Ren’s wound, and move out.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Whether Astrid hid during the fight, or Lady Luck shielded her, she wouldn’t say. Either way, Astrid appeared shortly after they peeled my bloody tunic over my head.

“Must be nice to have a Stone God on your side,” Aiden grumbled.

Harald cut him a look. “Leave her be.”

“Why should I? She’s the reason we came into the stone maze in the first place, instead of traveling under the cover of the forest. She’s why Ivar is dead, Barrett is gone, andCharlotte is a wolf.”

“Barrett is gone because he’s a coward,” Astrid shot back.

Aiden threw himself at her, but Clark stepped in the way to grab his outstretched dagger and hold him fast. “Control yourself,” Clark shouted. “We won’t win by killing each other.”

Maybe it was his words, but I suspected it was the fact that Clark shouted at all that had all our breaths in our throats.

Aiden jerked free, but tucked the blade away. “Fine. But I’m not following Astrid anywhere again.”

“Good,” she snarled. “Find your own Stone God.”

Clark leveled them with a stare, then returned to my side. He swallowed hard as he looked over the wound. It wasn’t critical, but the cut dove deep into the flesh and tore a clean line across my side, as if Bjorn had been trying to split me in two.

“I’ll need to stitch it.” Tove knelt at my side. She rove her tender hands over my skin to check the edges before dipping them into her satchel. When they emerged, they held thread and a needle.

I scrambled away.

Harald dropped to stop me. “Tove studied with the healer aboard the Castillion. She knows what she’s doing.”

Tove was nine, but I had to admit I didn’t know anything about caring for wounds, and no one else offered information.

“Will it hurt?”

She didn’t answer.

Clark wrapped my hands between his, and nodded to Tove. “Do it.”

She threaded the needle. “Hold her tight. And Ren? Try not to scream.”

Then she pierced my skin, and I drove my teeth together to stifle the guttural cry that rose in my throat.

Tove, to her credit, worked quickly. Her fingers were swift, her touch sure. But nothing she did could erase the fact that she was pulling a needle and thread through my skin. Everything in me wanted to fight back. I might have, if it weren’t for Clark on one side and Harald on the other, holding tight.

Aiden retreated to one side to pace, while Astrid went to the other. Gunnar, surprisingly, didn’t retreat with them. He crossed to my side to sit by my head, stroke my hair, and sing a quiet song about fields of flowers, still waters, and a life fully lived. I closed my eyes as he sang, pretending that I were in his song instead of in the labyrinth, and willing the pain away.

It helped a little. By the time Tove announced we were done, my heartbeat was almost normal.

“Thanks,” I told them. “All of you.”

“Of course,” Gunnar said, and he said it so innocently as if there was no doubt in his mind that we would come through for one another. Like we were a family forged long ago, not held together by loose bonds of convenience.

Gunnar surprised me today. He’d entered the labyrinth merely because it appeared on his doorstep, and it’d been clear from the first day we met him that this was just a game in his mind—a maze to explore and nothing more. At any time he could have surrendered, but he didn’t. He stayed with the lot of us, even as our lines grew thin.

Our hands were coated in the blood of each other. Ivar’s blood as we whispered our goodbyes over his body. Charlotte’s blood before she’d become a wolf. My blood.

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