11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

A fter Rhaznia’s cries and Raif’s voice had long since faded, Zylah rested, exhaustion demanding she stop.

Best case scenario, the pair had attacked each other. Worst case, Raif had won. Although there was every chance that whatever ability Rhaznia possessed to paralyse through touch or venom also worked against a vampire. Zylah silently prayed luck was on her side.

Twice she had come across Kopi’s feathers since leaving the half woman, half beast to burn, and it had urged her to keep going, even when the pain in her shoulder and arm had her seeing stars. But the adrenaline had long since worn off, pain turning to nausea, black spots swimming in her vision. Zylah slid to the dirt, jagged rock pressing against her back as she gripped her shoulder, fingers delicately prodding. There was nothing she could call to her that would be enough, though even with the vanquicite lodged in her spine, she’d been able to heal herself and others.

But nothing answered when she tried, and Zylah swallowed down the nausea at what she needed to do. She lay on her back in the dirt, reaching her arm above her head and crying out in agony. Slowly, she rotated her hand, sweat beading her brow and a scream threatening to tear free as she reached for her other shoulder. The dislocated shoulder popped back into place, and Zylah rolled to her chest, hands pressed into the dirt as she gasped against the pain.

“You survived Kerthen,” she mumbled to herself. “You can survive this.” Only she’d cheated, then. Struck a bargain with a stranger when the pain from the vanquicite became too much and no amount of healing would subdue it.

With her sword to steady her, Zylah made her way through a large chamber of crumbling pillars, vines twisting and wrapping around each of them as she recalled her agreement.

“I will take your pain and in return you will give me your assistance when I call upon you, without question, without hesitation, without consideration.”

It was a coward’s way out. But it was the only way to survive, and she’d known it.

“A favour? Is that what we’re bargaining for?” Zylah had asked the stranger. “What could I give you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I will ask for it, and you will give it freely. Do we have an agreement?”

A fool’s bargain. More vines burst through the rock, taunting her as she pressed on into the next passage. Holt had paled when she’d told him of her exchange with the stranger, and she’d been arrogant enough to assuage his fears, to convince him she could unravel the bargain before it was called in. Zylah laughed bitterly in the narrow space, the sound echoing along the rocky walls. Now she couldn’t even evanesce.

The air had gradually become cooler over the last day or so, forcing her to steal more clothes from the Aquaris Court to keep herself warm. It was a meek use of her magic, but she was grateful for it. Zylah crossed another bridge, fingertips trailing over vines and sucked in a breath. Holt had been able to send things the same way he could call them to him, and the thought had her stealing a pencil and sheet of parchment from their room at the tavern to scrawl a note for Nye. But no matter how many times Zylah tried, she couldn’t get that damned scrap of paper to leave her palm.

During her sixth try, resting against a broken pillar, light pouring in from above, another feather fell onto her upturned palm, resting over the screwed-up note. Zylah blinked. “Kopi?” She dared to raise her voice. “Kopi?” But no answer came.

It could have been another of the maze’s tricks. Another way to torment her. But Zylah shoved the feather into her pocket and headed off in the direction it had fallen from.

A few more twists and turns and Zylah rounded a corner, only to almost tumble over the edge of a sudden drop. Below her, light filled a wide cavern, passages cutting away from it in every direction and—Zylah pressed a hand to her mouth, uncertain whether it was just another trick, an illusion.

The mouth of the maze. The way out.

She peered over the edge, gaze sweeping over every detail for a hint of a trap, for cobwebs, for skeletons long since dead. But the space was devoid of anything, just a simple cave mouth with unremarkable passages leading off it at all angles. No markings in the rock, no vines, no moss, but plenty of places the light didn’t reach, plenty of corners shrouded in shadow.

Beyond the opening, Zylah could only discern more rock from her current elevation. She held her breath, listening. Even beyond the cave was eerily quiet. Where there should have been at least the whispering of wind, there was only silence, and now she silently cursed herself for calling out for Kopi earlier, announcing her location to anything and anyone that cared to listen.

Still, it didn’t stop her carefully manoeuvring her body from the ledge, pausing every now and then to glance around the cavern below. She was too exposed like this, on display, but the ground was so close she could almost jump it, if only— click . Zylah froze. Click. Click.

“You’re the first to find their way out, Zylah. And I have seen many enter this maze,” Rhaznia said from below.

Zylah climbed with steady movements, waiting until her feet touched the ground before she turned to face Rhaznia. The beast’s face and torso had been badly burnt, her silken hair missing entirely from one side of her head, the horn on that side blackened and charred. Her great body blocked the entrance, enormous legs just within the threshold.

“You’re a prisoner here,” Zylah realised, unwilling to draw attention to the damage she’d inflicted, though she knew the creature before her would never forget it.

Rhaznia glanced over her shoulder to whatever lay beyond. “It was my maze, once. Ranon took it from me.”

“So take it back. His grandson is following me. Use him as bait.” Zylah had been afforded weeks to think of all the ways she might kill Raif slowly, and though she’d have loved nothing more than to personally slit his throat, Rhaznia’s torture would suffice.

“I have not encountered his kind before. He will not be easy to trap.”

Dangerous, what Zylah was considering. But Raif was a thorn in her side she could do without. “My offer still stands. I’ll help you trap him.”

Rhaznia’s face twisted. “I should gut you for what you did to me.”

“Your choice.” Zylah shrugged, drawing her sword for all the good it would do. “Ranon or me.”

The creature lunged.

“Both, then,” Zylah muttered, darting between legs. All she had to do was reach the threshold, step out into the open, and leave this place and its monsters far behind. She could taste the fresh air, feel the breeze on her face; twenty paces and she’d be free.

Rhaznia whirled, one leg furling around Zylah and slamming her into the dirt, her sword tumbling from her grip. Silken threads bound her torso to the cold rock beneath, a curtain of black hair tickling Zylah’s cheek as the creature lowered its marred face to hers.

“You’re familiar with the effects of my venom,” Rhaznia began, pinning Zylah’s arms and legs with more web as she studied one of her clawed hands, liquid glistening at the tips. With a black, slender tongue, she licked at the venom, hissing in satisfaction at the taste. More web covered Zylah’s body, her limbs, trapping her in place. The light of the world beyond the maze cast Rhaznia’s silhouette in shadow, and still, Zylah couldn’t evanesce. “Perhaps I’ll leave your guts for last—” A shriek, and something slammed into the creature’s body, venom spraying across Zylah’s face and eyes.

She held her lips firm, whimpering against the burn of the poison on her skin, eyes scrunched shut against the bite of it. A string of Rhaznia’s curses followed a snarl—another cyon wolf, Zylah presumed, blinking against the burning in her eyes, tears streaming down her face with whatever poison Rhaznia had spat at her. The cyon wolf roared, the sound ricocheting in the cave, and Zylah knew the chances of her getting past both of them were slim. She could see nothing but moving shadows, the glow of the cave mouth, but that was all she needed. If she could free herself from the web…

“Zylah!”

Raif.

He’d found her, his voice far too close for her to evade him again. Zylah’s heartbeat roared in her ears as she wriggled against her bindings, debating whether she’d cut herself if she attempted to call a dagger to her palm, conceding that it was worth the risk. Shadows moved around her but Zylah ignored them, ignored the burn of her eyes, her face, ignored the concern that laced Raif’s voice as he shouted her name. She summoned a dagger to her palm, twisting it side to side with her wrist to hack at the web.

Cold hands touched her face and Zylah stilled.

“Zylah,” Raif breathed. “Can you hear me?”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she spat. A shadow moved overhead as Raif tore at the web trapping her to the rock.

“I can heal you. Please. Let me heal you.”

The thought of him forcing his blood on her again had her shaking. “Rhaznia!” Zylah called out, her voice broken and desperate. “You want Ranon? His grandson is here for the taking.”

Raif’s quiet intake of breath was unmistakable, but the vampire didn’t stop tearing at her bindings, didn’t say a word. He freed her legs and her empty hand as the wolf and Rhaznia fought somewhere behind him, nothing more than blurred shadows and snarls and screams.

Zylah’s fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger as Raif moved to her other hand. He tore at more of the web, and as his fingers brushed hers, she moved, slamming the blade into what she hoped was his face or his neck, shoving him back and rolling away as he cried out in pain.

She grasped for her sword, used it to stand, to get her bearings, to turn to the light—the way out—and ran.

“Ranon’s grandson. I accept your gift, Zylah,” the creature said somewhere behind her. Zylah didn’t care. She was running, her name on Raif’s lips so close she was certain he was right behind her, fingers closing around her elbow just as she reached the mouth of the cave. Zylah didn’t stop as those fingers pulled away from her, as Raif called out again, not for her, but at whatever Rhaznia had done. Attacked him with her venomous hands, Zylah hoped. Prayed for it.

Wind whipped at her hair as she left the shadows of the maze, the world bright and blurry around her, the soft crunch of snow underfoot. Zylah could see nothing, but still, she ran, stumbling and falling, nothing but bright light every way she looked.

Cold damp seeped through to her knees. Her fingers burned from the cold. But nothing would stop her from running, fear and elation urging her on as her eyes streamed against Rhaznia’s venom. No magic answered her, no matter how hard she tried to find it, to evanesce, to escape.

It didn’t matter. She was free. And Raif would never touch her again.

He called her name from within the maze, the sound cut short by his screams.