Page 25 of Quarter Labyrinth

“I’m not giving him a head start.” I walked toward the ladder, swinging myself around to descend.

Clark glanced at the door we’d come from before following me. I pictured the fortune teller there, welcoming Bjorn to the labyrinth. Looking over him to steal what secrets his future held before deciding if she should warn him. I hoped she did. He wouldn’t listen though.

She hadn’t warned us of our deaths, but she’d gone noticeably cold when looking over Clark, like he was a ghost who had no business being here.

Whatever she saw when she looked at him, it frightened her.

I heard her voice seep through the wooden door. It propelled me faster.

There was no wind to tear against us here. No bodies falling as we climbed. No handles sinking into the edge of the labyrinth. We had made it, and now the labyrinth was welcoming us into the game where we would fight against strangers for a future none of us had earned. The night grew warmer as we went lower, my muddy brown hair sticking to my neck. A wispy fog rolled. Its tendrils curled around my ankles.

The ladder led to a circular pavilion with the face of a wolf etched into stone. Three more paths presented themselves, but thankfully, no competitors waited here.

“Ren! I know you’re in here!” Bjorn’s voice bit the night.

I dropped the remaining distance. Clark dropped beside me.

Without speaking, we dove toward the closest path and took off. Our boots slammed against stone pavers, then sunk into soft earth, then trotted against twisty roots that lay like a patchwork blanket along a winding path. We turned left, crossing over a bridge lit golden with stardust, then turned right to hop across a pathway of raised stones. Left again to slip through a tunnel of granite blocks. Then another left toward a forest of trees laden with pink flowers.

The merchant’s words came back to me. Four seasons. We enter in spring, it ends in winter.

It was spring now. That explained the mist in the air, the breeze that couldn’t decide between warmth and chill, and the pink and yellow flowers blossoming everywhere. Everything was coming alive.

“Here,” Clark said when he’d caught his breath. He reached a tree to pull back the flowering branches so we could slip inside. “We can sleep here tonight.”

I’d rather sleep with something against my back so I only had to keep watch from one direction, but at least we would be hidden within the canopy of branches. The branches shivered in the wind, but the expanse of them was so thick, we were properly hidden.

I unclipped my axe and rolled out my tired muscles. Beside me, Clark was stretching as well, then settled his back against the white bark of the tree, his sword braced on his lap. He pulled in a breath as if he hadn’t had a moment of rest in three days.

I suppose we hadn’t.

It felt like hours ago that we were waiting for my father to appear and announce me as the heir to his empire, but it’d been two full days since then, and our bodies couldn’t take much more.

“We will take shifts sleeping on another night. For now, I doubt we could stay awake even if we tried.”

I might have tried to argue, but the adrenaline left my body at an alarming rate. I moved to the opposite side of the tree as Clark, resting my head against my arm and my hand against my axe.

“We should have asked the fortune teller if we die,” I said. “I can’t sleep, knowing I might not wake.”

Plus, then I wouldn’t have heard her promise that I wouldn’t win. The dreadful words gnawed at me, begging my mind to abandon them as fiction.

Surely fate wasn’t sealed as securely as she believed. Futures were like the tumbling seas. One small decision could launch us down a different path, and things could still go the way I desired.

Even if I didn’t win the labyrinth, if I could just find my father, he could right things.

That would be my second option, and only after I’d done all I could to win the Silver Wings and the Shallows for myself. When I finally found my father, I didn’t want it to be because I needed him to hand anything to me, like I was a leech who needed him to keep me alive.

“Her words don’t mean you won’t hold the Shallows,” Clark said, as if he were privy to the words in my head. “She only said you wouldn’t win the labyrinth. Perhaps I accidentally step in first. Then I technically win, but I’ll give it to you.”

“Perhaps.” Or maybe no one wins this year. I could still end up with the Shallows.

But her words had deflated something inside me, the parts that held all my hope.

“We should get some sleep,” I whispered.

Clark didn’t reply.

A few minutes later, I heard someone scrambling past. My fingers closed around the throat of my axe, but their frantic footsteps continued past. I settled in once more.

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