Page 22 of Court of Dragons and Ashes

The Earth Court is a maze. I’m instantly lost. Every wall is dark mud and looks the same, and there are no markers or signs. No way to know one corridor from the next. Within minutes, it feels like I’m lost and alone, even with the Earth Court king at my side. Grayson keeps walking, robotically, before we come to a pair of metal gates. Two people are dead outside the gates, Earth Court guards by the look of their uniforms. I try not to stare at them too long, knowing I need to focus. I hate how dead bodies aren’t all that shocking to me anymore. Grayson opens the gates, and I instantly feel the magic of this place, dark, engulfing magic wrapping around me. It reminds me of Grayson, earthy and strong.

As Grayson steps in behind me, the gates slam shut behind him, sealing us in before they disappear into the dirt, like there weren’t gates there at all. I look up at Gray, the red haze fading from his brilliant silver eyes. He looks down at me, his smile widening as he reaches for me, pulling me close to him in a tight hug. I’m not used to being hugged by Grayson. Not like this. Notwith my entire body pressed against his hard one. He hugs me so tightly. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”

He keeps repeating it as I breathe in his scent and hug him back. It’s hard to be mad at him about the leaving me on Earth thing when he is shaking and clinging to me. The king who doesn’t like to be touched is not letting me go. “I missed you too, Gray.”

“You came back,” he breathes down my neck, softly kissing my skin.

I shiver, his kiss like a branding that shoots pleasure through my body. “Let’s not discuss that right now. Do you know where we are? It’s a test.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles into my neck. “I know—” He lifts his head, and he looks around. If I ever thought I’d seen Grayson scared before, I hadn’t. Not like he is when he looks back at me, pushing off me. “NO! Not here, anywhere but here.” He slams his fist into the wall. “NO! NO! NO!”

He falls down to his knees, shouting no over and over. My heart cracks at the fear in his voice. Where the fuck are we? “Grayson!” I grab his shaking, sweaty hands. Blood coats his knuckles, but I don’t care. “Grayson, look at me. You’re okay. It’s me, Ellelin. Your Ellelin. Come back to me from wherever you are.” He breathes in deep, finally lifting his head. His eyes are filled with tears, but none dare drop between us. “Okay, what is this place?”

“It’s called the Labirinto,” he whispers, like words are a weapon here, and he looks around. “It’s a deadly maze, built before even the courts were created. My mother used to bring me here, a lot, and she loved it here. It used to lure her in, my father said, but he didn’t know about it until it was too late. They say a mighty dragon god died in this place, and his spirit made the maze as a way for him to live and torment. This place, it…makes your worst fears come true, makes you see things that arenot there while promising you your dreams. My mother went mad in this place. I was with her, trapped with her for months. While she slowly went mad, my father couldn’t get me out. No one in the court could get me out. So, she just hurt me over and over again, not even aware of who I was in the end. She just thought I was an enemy sent to hurt her. For so many months, it was just me and her bumping into each other again and again. I wouldn’t hurt her back, and sometimes I went to her, knowing she would hurt me but just needing to speak to someone. Anyone. I was only five; I needed my mum.”

Sickness rises in my throat as my heart shatters for him. I knew he had scars on his body, that he went through something terrible, but I didn’t know it was this. This is worse than I ever could have imagined. “That’s why you didn’t want to be touched anymore. How long were you in here?”

“A year.” The two words crumble between us as horror lances my heart. “I was trapped in here for a year. The scars…she made weapons and used to cut me every time to make the darkness get out of my blood, as she put it. She found me, thought she could drain evil from me. I don’t know how to explain to you what it’s like to have your mother not even recognise you and hurt you over and over again. I never wanted to come back to this place. I locked it up and guarded it so that no one would ever get in and out.”

I stroke his palm. “How did you get out in the end? How did you and your mother get out in the end?”

“To this day, I do not know how I got out. It just finally let me out a year later. Maybe this place was bored with me. I’d all but given up by then and was thinking of ending things,” he admits, and he looks up. “I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have met you, the greatest reason for living I’ve ever known.”

“Gray,” I whisper, searching his eyes and moving closer to him. “And your mother?”

He looks beyond me, at the walls of ivy that make the maze. “She wandered out too, but she was never the same.”

“Grayson…I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. How did your father deal with it all?” I whisper. As a child, no one spoke about the Earth Court, around me at least. I never met Grayson or his parents as a child.

“It broke what was left of my father’s soul when we came home. My mother never came home mentally. It was like this place stole her soul. And when my father couldn’t even hug his son, and his son wouldn’t let anyone touch him? He tried his best to heal me, to be a righteous king, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t exactly the greatest person at being kind and loving. But he tried with me. I think a part of him left when we went missing, and that part never came home either.” He sighs softly, pulling me onto his lap. I wrap my arms tightly around him, leaning on his chest, listening to his racing heart. “You can always hug me. It doesn’t… I’m not scared of you. I will never be scared of you. We need to get out of this place, Ellelin.”

“Do you remember how you did it all those years ago at all?” I ask once again. Anything would be useful at this point.

“No, there was nothing memorable to it. I just woke up one morning, and the door was there. It didn’t make any sense. The mystery of it almost drove my father insane. He sent so many people in here to get my mother out, to get me out. Hundreds. They were never seen again. At the beginning, it was volunteers happy to try to save the prince and queen. After a few hundred, the volunteers waned, and no one wanted to come in here. Can you blame them?” I shake my head. “So my father just started sending people in. You can say, when he died, there wasn’t much cheer for his life, for their ruler. Many didn’t want me either, ‘the broken maze king,’ they named me.”

“Love cripples people sometimes,” I whisper.

He leans in, brushing his lips across mine. I gasp at the contact, at the amazing feeling from just a brush of his lips. A slow dance that takes my breath away. “I understand him now. I never did, not until you were taken from me at the end of the Dragon Crown Race. To not know what happened to the woman you love…madness becomes a friend. I think he loved my mother. Dearly loved her. From what I remember, she was a good person, but…it’s all bled into misery. I have a little sister who is her image. I’ve tried to bring her up, and when we are out of here, I’d like you to meet her. She is safe. I hid her with guards before the Dragon Crown Race, just in case it went wrong.”

Madness, it’s what I felt on Earth at the thought of never seeing them again. “I love you, Grayson. I wanted you to know that I loved you from the first training session, from the first time you were vulnerable with me. I didn’t know what it was I felt for you, but it’s just grown, and now you are part of me. You always will be. I don’t see you as broken, Gray, I see you as my perfect king.”

He kisses me again. This time it’s different. A desperate passion, his hands digging into my hair. He breaks the kiss, looking deep into my eyes. “I love you with every crumbled inch of my scarred heart.”

The ground shakes violently, and Grayson pulls me to my feet with him. Aphrodite’s voice echoes loudly. “Find the monster and destroy it to be free!”

We run just as the ground cracks under our feet. Grayson reaches a hand out to stop the ground splitting under us, but nothing happens. “She has taken my powers, or this place has!” I try to call on my shadows, but they don’t move. We both leave the idea of using magic to help us, and run through the maze, around the ivy-walled corner, as the ground cracking follows us.

My heart pounds, thinking of Grayson in here, being chased by his own mother. He and Lysander have a lot in common withtheir fucked-up parents and childhood. I was lucky my parents never did any of that. I never once felt scared when I was in their presence, and I can’t imagine what it’d be like to feel scared like that.

We’re just going around a corner when Grayson goes still. I hear a deep growl echoing and vibrating through the walls near us.

“What the fuck is that?” I whisper, clutching Gray’s hand.

“Some of the maze is alive,” he informs me. Could have mentioned that small bit of information before. Something bursts out of the ground, looking very much like a dragon, but it’s made of vines, with snapping sharp green teeth, and it lunges straight at us. Grayson pushes me behind him in one swift move, and he reaches out, grabbing the mouth of this gigantic creature before it can bite him. His muscles strain against his shirt as he roars at it, and with nothing but strength, he pulls it apart with his bare hands, letting the vines shatter to the floor. Breathlessly, he looks back at me and smirks. “Their mouths are their weak place.”

My heart is racing as I smile. “That was sexy.”

“I aim to please you.” He grins and holds my hand once more. “But we need to move right now.” We run again. It feels like we run forever, for hours, when it’s probably only minutes, before we come around an ivy corner to a clearing. In the centre of the clearing is a house in the middle of the maze. Grayson looks down at me in confusion for a second. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

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