Page 63 of Quarter Labyrinth

When it was finished, Leif dropped to his knees.

“It’s done,” he whispered. “It is finished.”

I thought to ask about what happened with Luke that haunted him eight years later and drove him to such revenge. The labyrinth had been stained red from his killings. With each one, a part of him loosened, his breaths and the tension in his shoulders, like weights dropping from his hands.

He seemed to forget about me for the moment. I used the time to sneak back to my original tree, and retrieve the dagger Leif had thrown earlier. Right now, it was my best chance at staying alive should Leif now turn on me.

His head lifted. “I know you’re still here,” he said.

I stayed silent.

“You saved me,” he went on. He stood, and sheathed his dagger—my dagger—before turning to look for me. “I thank you, but I have a deal with Dimitri, and that depends on me discovering the truth about Allison. I think you know something.”

I held my breath while he looked, as if that could quiet my tattoo. But the trees weren’t thick enough to hide me when his gaze landed my way.

Leif grinned—a thin, vicious thing.

“There you are.”

I stepped forward, holding the dagger like a shield. “Even if I knew something, I’d never tell you.”

He released a sigh. “You’re becoming more trouble than you’re worth.”

Just then, to be my savior or my demise, the familiar pattering of hoofbeats pounded through the forest. Leif’s eyes hardened, his body sucking back all the tension it’d just let go of. I noted it all with interest. He was frightened of Dimitri, as much as he didn’t wish to be.

I should be frightened. Dimitri wanted to kill the descendant of the one who trapped him in this labyrinth.

He didn’t know it, but he wanted to kill me.

“Leave,” Leif told me. “Get that necklace away from him.”

I slinked back into the coverage of the trees, heading further back than before.

“Do you never do as you’re told?” Leif groaned, but there hadn’t been time to run.

Dimitri had come.

TWENTY-NINE

I clutched Leif’s dagger as if it could single-handedly save me.

Dimitri rode in like a king after a battle, surveying in the bodies before inspecting Leif’s torn cheek.

“Are you satisfied then?” he questioned. His blonde hair gleamed in the summer sun, his resplendent cloak flowing behind him like a curtain of starlight. The only flaw in his majestic composure was the severe frown etched from one chiseled jaw to the other as he regarded Leif. “Is your thirst for revenge properly quenched? The onesyou sought are dead.”

“Yes, they are.” Leif wiped his cheek before glancing at the blood it left on his fingers. “And yet, I find the anger burns still.”

Dimitri circled Leif while atop his white horse, much like a vulture circles the dead. “Stubborn humans. Let your past die with Luke. Your future is what matters.”

“I couldn’t have a future until they were all dead.” Leif moved as he spoke, leading Dimitri away from me, the soft grass bending beneath his tall boots.

Dimitri wrapped his reins around his fists. He looked much like a father trying to talk sense into his son. “I knew you had a future when you were eight years old. I found you, a trembling boy covered in your brother’s blood, and I marked you as mine then. You are still mine, even if the Silver Queen and Lady Luck claim you too. You are, and always have been, my prodigy.” He swung from his horse to stand tall next to Leif. “Show me I wasn’t wrong to put my faith in you. Find Allison. Kill her. Then bring me her head.”

My blood chilled.

I wrapped my fingers tighter around the hilt of the dagger. He won’t be getting anyone’s head.

Dimitri’s blue eyes widened, then narrowed to dangerous slits.

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