Chapter 23

I didn't realizewhat was happening until I was already covered in vines and shrubbery.

This was not my first time falling through a bush. As a kid, it was actually quite common. Even when there was not a thorn in sight, the fall was painful. The green needles would poke my skin while rough sticks scratched me all over. These ones didn't, though. Not to say that they were soft or silky to the touch, but they were alive, and they were gentle with me. It was as though they made the conscious decision to handle me gingerly. Like their intention was never to scrape my skin or roughhouse me.

It was almost entrancing, being held by nature itself.

Maybe that was the mushrooms.

They spun me around, tumbled me a bit, and then they released me.

Much like the last corridor we'd entered, I found myself in a hallway of bushes. Ahead was a winding pathway, dimly lit by the stars and moon above.

Behind me, Warren exhaled deeply. "What the hell was that?"

"I guess they wanted us to split up," I murmured, looking over his shoulder. There was only a foot of clearance. "Dead-end. I guess we gotta go that way."

Following my gaze, looking behind him, left and right, he held out his hand. "Guess so."

I accepted, then recoiled at his touch. He was warm. His skin was as smooth as always, but warm. "Hey, you okay?"

Walking past me, taking the lead, he glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

Illusions are all. Trust not your eyes within these halls.

I studied him a moment longer, but all that lay behind me was a dead-end. Straight ahead was a man wearing my boyfriend's face.

Maybe I was being paranoid. Hallucinogens did have that effect, if memory served. But the lady of the lake made one thing clear. This maze was about trusting our instinct, what we felt. My eyes would fool me, but my instinct wouldn't.

So until we got out of this dead-end, until I had somewhere to run, I did my best to form a genuine smile. "The bushes. I was just making sure they didn't hurt you."

"No, I'm just fine, love." He carried on ahead, not so much as glancing my way. "I don't see the yellow light anymore. Do you?"

Warren never called me love. Rainbow, that was my name. Occasionally, darling, but that was usually Ezra's. Love was what Ezra called me.

But if I was right, there was no use in saying so. Not until I could defend myself.

I fingered the blade at my hip. "No. The foliage is too high here. I think it wants us to follow the path."

"That's what I'd assume, yes," he agreed. Even his inflection was wrong. Warren's accent was unusual. Most of the time, he sounded like a modern American. Occasionally, he would use older verbiage, the kind that my grandma would use, but still, like a modern American.

There was the slightest tinge of an English accent on some words this man used.

Probably because he wasn't a man at all, but an illusion. Or some shape shifting Fae creature I didn't know enough about.

For a few more strides, we walked in silence. The trail wound in and curved left and right. My sense of direction was distorted already from the tumble through the bushes, but I used the moon as my guiding post. It had been behind me when we were following that yellow ball, but now it was on my left.

"What did the lady of the lake say again?" the man asked. "Something about the stars."

I remembered every word. But why was he asking? To tail me once I escaped him? Because he, too, was stuck inside the maze and trying to escape?

The question in my mind, I didn't allow to roll into my voice. "The sky will catch your fall."

"Right. I knew it was something like that." The man halted. So abruptly that I almost tumbled into him. I caught myself just in time. "What do you think this means? Should we go through it?"

Craning onto my tiptoes, I peered around him. A body of water, not nearly as big as the lake, lay a few feet before him. Rather than the crystal clear liquid at the lake, this was brown with green algae and lily pads on its top. Roughly twenty feet ahead was another archway carved into the bushes.

"Looks like our only option," I said. "After you."

Taking a few steps forward, giving me enough room around the clearing so that I wasn't stuck directly behind him, he sunk down. "Here. Hop on."

No fucking way was that happening.

"It'll be slick in there." I held out my hand. "Probably better if we just hold on to one another for stability."

"Sure. Of course." Twining his warm fingers between mine, he gestured ahead. "Ladies first."

I did not like this.

I did not like it one bit.

No way was I getting in that swamp with a man who may or may not have been my boyfriend behind me. He was going first, or we weren't going at all.

The Elvan ore dagger on my hip would kill Warren, if it was truly Warren. I stayed mindful of that.

"Usually, I'd agree with that." Pointing at the water, I laughed. "But I don't know, baby. This time, I think I prefer the gentleman to lead the way."

"If you insist." He chuckled. Slowly, he edged forward. He lifted his foot as if he was going to take a step forward.

Then yanked my arm.

I collapsed.

The murky, slimy water slapped against my skin. The heat of it brought an instant sweat to my flesh.

Heavy. It was so heavy.

I knew how to swim, but this was like trudging through quicksand. My arms flailed, and my legs kicked, but to no avail.

Weight. So much weight pressed down on me. Not only the water, but him. His body.

I thrashed against it. Wailing my fists into him, I fought with all of my might to hold my breath. Eternal or not, I doubted this would feel very good in my lungs.

But when I hit him, I didn't hit the fabric of his clothes or smooth skin.

Fur. My knuckles touched fur.

Like the fur of a pit bull or a lab. Never been much of a dog person, but I knew what skin felt like, and I knew what fur felt like, and?—

Something hard rammed into my cheek. I tried to open my eyes, to peer through the water—the mud—but all I saw was the glint of something shiny. Metal. Molded onto the hooves of a horse.

Kelpie. That's what it was. That's what he was.

Graham had talked about them like the boogie man when I was a teenager. "I had to kill one when I was a lad, you ken," he'd said. "It wasn't after me, though. Usually aren't. They like women. We were walking home from school—a few friends of mine and a couple of older girls. We were crossing a bridge, and some young guy was standing under it. He called out to one of the girls. She had to have been fifteen or sixteen? But there was something wrong with his eyes. I said so, and she waved me off. Said she knew him.

"So she follows him down there, and as soon as she touches that water, he's in there with her. Before her eyes, he turns into a horse. That's when I knew. Grimy little bastards, they are.

"We all went down, trying to catch her before he took her too deep, but we didn't know how to kill it. One kid tried stabbing it, but his blade was too small. It wasn't doing any real damage. A friend of mine was hitting it, but the fucker wouldn't go down.

"And I was the only one with power over water." That part, he had spoken with pride. "So I manipulated it. I created rip currents. One for her, and one for the kelpie. Once they were separated, when he wasn't pinning her under the water, we were all able to get a hold of him. We stabbed, and we stabbed, and we stabbed, and for a day, I got to be a hero."

Grabbing ahold of the water around me, as if it were a layer of clothes atop my flesh, I pulled more and more water into it until I was in the center of a giant bubble of water. In heartbeats, those hooves only smacked the outside of the water sphere I had created. I willed it to move, to float onto the shore, and suddenly, I was spinning. No idea how I managed to hold my breath for as long as I did, but I was spinning and spinning until the water burst out around me.

Gasping, panting, I grabbed a hold of the air around me. I slung it under my feet, hoisting myself up toward the sky.

Good thing I had, because when I was a few feet above the ground, a neigh sounded. I blinked hard to clear the water and mud from my eyes. Still levitating above the ground, I watched the horse charge the spot I'd just left.

Finding that dagger on my hip, thankfully still strapped in place, I swung the wind in a 360-degree radius. It spread out, and I fell. I used the kinetic energy to guide me onto the horse's back, still kicking and thrashing around the soil.

Using the air once more to stick my landing, I hit its spine dead-on. Struck by the sudden weight, the horse fought desperately to buck me off, throwing itself on its hind legs and thrashing around the clearing. No matter how hard It fought, it wouldn't win. I wrapped an arm around its neck, my other hand still holding the blade of Elvan ore. Then I lodged that blade into its skull, and it squealed.

I stabbed again, and again, and again.

With each thump of my hand, blood sprayed. It was like a fountain of it, that much brighter and warmer because of the drugs in my system. Aside from the stars overhead, it was the only color I saw.

And it was beautiful. More beautiful than it had any right to be. All that blood, steaming when it hit the cold wind. The ache of my arm with each slash, and the relief that came with it. The power of knowing that I had done this. That I protected myself, just as I always swore I could, just as everyone around me seemed to believe I couldn't.

Only when the horse was silent beneath me did I look at the damage I had done.

Its face was unrecognizable. If not for the body attached to the neck, I wouldn't know what animal's face this was. A horse, a cow, a dog—it could have been any of them.

That made my stomach turn.

Which wasn't such a bad thing, because it reminded me that I hadn't lost my humanity yet.

Panting hard, staring down at the bloodied, butchered horse, now able to tell that its fur was white, I grabbed one of the bushes nearby for stability.

Luckily, I was on the other side of the pond now. Right behind me was the other archway, leading to another path.

So that's where I headed.