Chapter 8

So this little butterfly was the woman who caught Jericho's eye. A new year always meant a new tribute, and I should have suspected we'd be seeing another useless human in the realm soon. Someone had to water the plants, after all.

Though it was more than a bit unusual to have her plopped on my doorstep. The only logical explanation was that she'd collapsed there after somehow making it through the Senseless Forest on her own will. She had more than enough Skolex goo and blood in her clothes to imply she'd not been portalled to the other side, but the fact that she was fully aware and sharp was still a clear sign of preferential treatment. Someone must have given her an antidote for Tree Sprite poison at the very least. Otherwise, there was no way her body would have cleared those toxins so quickly without intervention.

Was Jericho actually sweet on this one? Wild.

Whatever the case, I'd been obligated to dip into her head and see what I could find. Placing a tracking mark on the tributes was the bare minimum expected of me, and I could muster that much effort once a year to keep Jericho off my back. The singular dot on her palms allowed him to watch her through his projection lens, and my only real job was to assure he had a window to the show. Though the amount of time I had to spend cleaning the stains and smells out of her clothing was far beyond that bare minimum. I wasn't going to tell her that the real reason she didn't have a bra was because I accidentally ruined all the lace in the scrubbing process. It was bad enough trying to undress, clean, and redress her without looking or touching places I shouldn't. My reputation and intimidation factor would be more impressive if I let her think my nightmares contained a touch of physical reality.

It was also to my advantage for her to think I'd marked her intentionally, like some sort of animalistic claim. I'd brutalized a lot of human psyches through dreams, traumatizing men and women with equal enthusiasm, but the physical scars never materialized in reality. The only person I'd ever marked like that was from Olympus, which she certainly wasn't. The heavenly realm would be raining destruction down upon us the moment she entered the portal if this tribute had been born with even a drop of angel's blood.

None of this made sense. I couldn't say what I'd done differently, but the damage was done. My one solace to this already growing mess was that there were certainly worse tributes I could have been stuck with.

Butterfly was interesting, I'd give her that. I'd taken deep dives into the psyches of an untold number of humans in my lifetime, recreating dreams and nightmares for their time in REM, but of all the horror scenarios I'd built out of their internal insecurities over the years—which mostly ranged from cheating spouses to home invasions—I'd not ever peeked into a fantasy quite like that.

It was a bit telling and disturbing, however, that her worst fear and her most taboo kinks were so tightly interwoven in her headspace that I couldn't fully separate them before showing her a vision. Her mental health was either concerning or delightful, depending on how fucked in the head you were.

Also the fact that I had to personally temper back the violence of it all, softening her nightmare to keep her mind from total shutdown, was saying something. It was as if sex and fear were the same for her. Not even I could pinpoint exactly where her nightmare ended and her needs began. All I'd discerned was that she wanted to be pinned down and taken— presumably less literally—and she cried when she came. I wasn't entirely sure where the severed heads, the water torture, and all the blood came in, but somehow that was stored pretty snugly against her ‘romance and dating' section.

Maybe she loved sex but was afraid of people? Maybe some irrational fear of men? Were there enough kidnappers and serial killers in the human realm to merit giving them such a significant space in her mind? How confusing. I'd say I needed to slip into the human world and give it a look one day, but dealing with even just one of these mortal things each year was more than enough for me.

Still, why would someone feel that way? The last woman to die in the maze had seen sex as power. She lived to seduce the weak willed monsters and men alike, and her nightmares were little more than growing older and losing her youthful beauty.

The one before her took endless joy in fornication, and she saw the devils of the maze as a series of unique dildos. Well, up until she encountered Rai, anyway. When he gored her through her stomach and threw her into the hands of the Cronus, the dildos weren't so fun anymore.

She had a great time up until that point though.

Yet when I touched my fingers to Butterfly's temples to read her deepest desires, she seemed to associate sex with an action that gave power to others. She wasn't allowed to want or seek it, or it would make her somehow less valuable and less worthy of respect to those around her. It was like she wanted it but was so afraid to admit it, she needed someone to give it to her, potentially against her will, rather than offer it. I suppose that would explain how arousal got so muddled with her kidnapping and death scenarios.

Funny. And fascinating. What kind of environment breeds such unhealthy dynamics? I wanted to ask, but getting to know someone who would likely be dead in the next few hours was fairly pointless. Jericho had expressed interest in protecting this one a bit more than usual, but that hardly guaranteed survival.

I wondered if she'd forgive me if I explained my intention had only been to show her something to get her uncomfortably hot and bothered.

But no, no, no, we're not going to victim blame. This was still my fault for not taking the time to better unravel her tangled yarn ball of a mind before plunging her into darkness. Just because she had a head full of intrusive thoughts, didn't mean she'd given anyone permission to use them.

Still, it made me less bothered by her presence than I'd usually felt around the tributes. Ordinarily, this time of year was another boring and bland ritual slaughter. This year might actually keep me entertained for five minutes. Of all the orders Jericho had given me, this one could actually be worth following.

"So what brings you to the Labyrinth, Butterfly?" I asked casually, despite the million thoughts running through my head. Jericho usually picked specific people for specific reasons, and I was sure she was no different. There was always a story, good, bad, or boring.

"Pumpkin." She spoke idly while inspecting the wall. The door was literally three feet to her right, but she looked cute examining those flowers, so I wasn't going to say anything yet. "My cat," she clarified. "Jericho stole my cat to get me to follow him, and apparently that worked, because here we are."

"A cat." I pondered on that for a moment. "Is it a cute cat at least?"

"The cutest ever." She grabbed a pink lily and yanked on it, as if she thought that might be a secret lever to open the door that, again, was three feet over there. Nothing happened, so she resumed her inspection. "He's a mix of a Persian and a tabby, so he's got this kind of half normal, half squished face that makes him look like a forever kitten, and he's the prettiest shade of orange. When he rolls up into a little ball, he looks just like—"

"A pumpkin?" I raised a brow.

"Yeah." She confirmed.

I shook off the thought that listening to this woman talk about her cat was the actual cutest thing ever. I cringed internally at the fact that such an idea had the nerve to traipse through my mind so lackadaisically. I nicknamed her Butterfly because she looked so pretty pinned to a table, but now she was giving me ‘Muffin' vibes. I think I liked her better when she was writhing in pleasure while full of nine inch nails.

With a sigh, I ran a hand through my hair, pushing it back between my black horns. "What are you doing exactly?"

"I'm looking for an entrance."

"And you think it's somewhere on that wall?"

She pursed her lips, and her whole brow scrunched. "I don't fucking know. We've been walking along this wall for an hour with no obvious entrance, so I assume there's some kind of secret switch. The king of this place only gave me seventy-two hours to figure out a way through, so I need to find some way in sooner than later." She pointed up at the Twilight Clock, where sixty-five hours remained, ticking down one at a time.

I knew that part already, but that didn't explain why she was looking in all the wrong places if she was aware of the time limit.

Still, I played along, just like I always did. "That was harsh of him. This thing is something like eleven miles long if you guess right on every single turn. Could be a thousand miles if you guess wrong. What happens if you lose?" I recited with only slightly more inflection than reading a script.

"He gets to keep Pumpkin." She pouted. "And he'll make me his ‘queen' and his ‘slave' and never let me leave."

I resisted the urge to full on snort laugh. Because that would be unbecoming of a deity. What kind of a threat was that? " Fail and you and your pet will become my immortal companions and rule all the realm." Oh no. Not that. How horrifying.

What ever happened to "lose and I'll systematically take your children as tributes until your entire family line is wiped out," or "your eternal soul will be banished to the eighth circle of hell" ?

Jericho is getting soft .

I should have been given an award for not rolling my eyes, and instead coddling her with a simple. "Wow, how awful."

"Exactly." She nodded along, oblivious to my sarcasm. "Wait so… you said this Labyrinth is eleven miles if you guess right. That means you've done it?" Her eyes rounded with an innocent, hopeful, and weirdly precious curiosity.

I scoffed in her general direction. "Of course I've done it. I'm the Dream Weaver. I've existed since the dawn of consciousness. I'd get bored if I didn't have puzzles to solve."

"That makes sense. So Jericho is like the guy who comes up with the crossword puzzles in the newspaper, and you're like an impossibly old person trying to keep their mind sharp."

My whole expression flattened. I was about to take back everything nice I'd thought about Butterfly. Maybe I would even start calling her SEE-luh. "Something like that. "

"Will you show me how to get through?"

"Well—"

"Considering you murdered and fucked me on a table before even introducing yourself, I think you owe me at least that much." She interrupted before I could turn her down. Not that I would turn her down, but still.

"I'd like to reiterate that I can only form illusions using the tools in one's own consciousness as my medium. I put none of that in your head myself." Well, I possibly constructed it in a way she wouldn't have necessarily envisioned on her own, but that was neither here nor there. I still wouldn't be specifying how much of my own consciousness I had to share to enter her mind and execute such an intricate illusion in full. Though she should thank me for giving her that merciful out of orgasms to escape the rest of her twisted brain.

She didn't respond to that. Only stared at me expectantly with judgment in her shiny blue eyes. Judgment that I really should have been lobbing at her. And yet.

"The entrance is here." I relented with an exhale, before directing her attention to the false wall three feet from her side. I stuck my hand through the illusion just to build trust.

"Oh." She laughed sheepishly before she tested the space herself. She first stuck her hand through, then waved her wrist about, searching for the edge where the wall became real again. "The illusion is so perfect. How will I even know what direction I can go?"

A pouty frown formed on her lips, and I had no idea why that made a frown form on my own.

"There are signs if you pay enough attention." I motioned towards a carved swirl in the stone, nearly hidden beneath the ivy, that didn't exactly match the rest of the pattern by barely a millimeter or less. "Small imperfections that don't line up are the easiest giveaway. But if you're not very observant, you're going to have a hell of a time." I shrugged. "Are you sure you want to go in there?"

"I don't really have a lot of choice in the matter." She traced that imperfect swirl with her fingers, seemingly memorizing the subtle mismatch. When she was satisfied, she took her first step into the Labyrinth. I followed, staying by her side, as I was likely going to have to do if I wanted her to have any hope of surviving this place. Playing in my dream space and chasing down Jericho was one thing. The living maze and its denizens would be another.

But then, was she really my problem? Yes and no and completely up for debate, depending on how I chose to interpret my latest orders.

"Thank you." Butterfly said, smiling up at me. An uncomfortable feeling squeezed at my chest, and I wondered if this was what a human heart attack felt like. My own central nervous system didn't typically act like this, but I'd seen it enough in various nightmare spaces to know that was most likely what it was. Odd.

I shook my head to dismiss the thought. It was best to get this over with quickly so Jericho could get back to doing whatever the fuck he does when he's not making weird bargains with random humans to spite Olympus and torture lost souls.

This whole tribute situation was so outdated, but then, Jericho was the King of pettiness even more than he was the King of Tartarus itself. I was fairly certain that the reason he picked a prickly woman as tribute, nine times out of ten, was more to spite Pasiphae than it was about worthiness or anything else.

That was his prerogative, I suppose. It's not like there were rules. Children and animals were the only protected species, but not even Jericho himself was that cold, so no one had ever argued that provision. I wondered if stealing a cat was borderline against regulations, but as long as he fed, protected, and homed it, it was a grey area. Rai was a softy for furry, defenseless things anyway, so there wasn't much to worry about. No new wars would be started over animal abuse under the Minotaur's watch.

Whatever. I just played along because I had nothing better to do, really. Maybe little Butterfly over here would be 1% fun, provided she could survive long enough.

We'll see how resilient she is soon.