32. Labyrinth

thirty-two

“Twenty percent, and keep away from Keir.” Lou tugged on Milla’s wrists, pressing her thumbs against the triskelions. “If you feel anything resembling a loss of control, if you catch the slightest whiff of rot, get as far away from the cultists as you can and find me.”

“Are you sure about this?” Milla rubbed the tips of her fingers against her palms, squirming under Lou’s grip. “It’s only been a week.”

“You’ve been drinking your tea?” Lou pressed down. Milla nodded, and she sighed. “Toby makes a good argument; we need you functional at Beltane or Constance and Dina will have my head and have you cleaved.”

“M’already cleaved.”

“You glean my meaning,” Lou retorted. “Besides, it’s a bad look to arrive in another witch’s demesne and not leave an offering. Consider this a trial run. If you fuck up now, I’ll keep your Way bound and let the steward assume control of your demesne.”

She jerked her arms, more out of surprise than any desire to steal them back. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t even know who this steward is, much less trust them to run St. Augustine.”

Lou snorted indelicately. “Once upon a time, my brother reported that you thought of your demesne as a burden.” Light gleamed in her eyes, the low, eerie foglamp glow of her Way. “What changed?”

“I grew up,” she mumbled.

“Prove it.” At that, she pressed down hard enough to curl Milla’s fingers. “And a little advice? The Morgenhexe did not raise a weak daughter. This Way”—she tapped both thumbs—“belongs to you; you do not belong to it.”

Her lips parted at the quasi-vote of confidence from the least likely witch. She nodded again, her posture relaxing, and inhaled slowly, steadying herself for the rush of her Way.

“But to err on the side of caution,” Lou added, “keep to the back of the pack.”

“No worries, I couldn’t keep up with Darkly and the front runners if I tried.”

Something resembling a laugh left Lou, and she whispered her intent. “ Oscailte. ”

A trickle of warmth bled up her arms, puddling in the crook of her elbows. It stopped there, pulsing lightly at her upper arms but unable to surge into Milla’s center. She flexed her fingers, and when Lou let go, she crossed her arms tight across her front as if she could make the magick stronger through sheer will.

A cry rose from the cultists, and Darkly’s voice sang over the din, “Pearls she wanted, a necklace she got!”

“Oh, I don’t work there anymore!” The crowd joined in on the verse, laughing and cheering as he and Josh linked arms and skip-to-my-loo’d in a circle.

“I’ve never understood how he tolerates the spotlight, even with his Way.” Lou shook her head, not bothering to hide the fond smile blooming on her face. Though it was rare to see Lou slip into emotion, it was something Milla had noticed about the Light Witch whenever she stepped into her Way. The stern facade retreated, and she became almost tolerable. Smiling and sharing confidences, where without her Way she was a stone-cold ice queen. Darkly was firmly the opposite. Arrogant, yes, but he was quick to smile and wore his heart on his sleeve unless calling on the Shades and revealing his darker, more terrifying side.

“I always preferred working behind the scenes,” Lou continued, lost in a memory. Milla liked her like this. Her guard down, the tension in her face and shoulders eased. Confiding a piece of herself. This was Lou, she thought, a big sister in an impossible situation, tasked with keeping her idiot brother safe.

She did not envy Lou’s task, especially now that she had Milla to deal with. Two Forbidden and Foule witches to keep out of C.R.O.W.’s sights. Goddess, no wonder the witch was constantly bitchy.

“Me too,” Milla admitted. Across the green, the cultists flocked to Darkly, savoring his enjoyment. He beamed under their attention and let little ribbons of shadow, invisible unless you knew to look for them, slip free. A pulse filled the air, one Milla recognized on a deep, visceral level. He had done this in the swamp, using his Shades to bring them both pleasure. She pressed her thighs together at the memory, rubbing a knuckle against her breastbone at the uncomfortable pang of the memory.

Now, instead of feeding his arousal and pleasure into the crowd, he sent them elation. Joy. Giddiness. Rousing the pack and whetting their hunger.

“Never could keep him away from the clowns,” said Lou. “Growing up, if we ever lost sight of Keir, we’d find him with the clowns.”

A whistle blew on the far side of the pack, and Lou blinked, clearing her throat and settling her face into its trademark scowl.

“They’re moving out.” She gestured to Tobias, lingering on the fringes. “I’ll be here if you need to hurry back. Your only role is to be seen supporting a fellow Witch of the Demesne, do you understand?”

“You’re not running with us?”

“Please.” Lou scoffed. “I only run from bears.”

Milla settled into an easy jog, keeping the rear of the main pack in her sights and the walkers behind her. A string of cultists bridged the gap, like when she’d run with the St. Augustine crowd. Though most of the arcane symbols meant to hold the pack were solved by the time Milla reached them, a few had been freshly set.

“To zhuzh it up a bit,” a cultist explained when Milla toed the fresh pile of flour. “Trail probably doubles back on itself at one point; the more we run certain key areas, the more we stir shit up.”

“So we’re not just running in one big circle,” Milla asked, “but running in circles?”

“Pretty much!” The cultist chirped and ran off in the direction of a distant whistle. Twilight had fallen fast, thanks to a rush of thick, gray clouds that felt too purposeful not to be meteomantic. Milla adjusted the headlamp Josh had given her, clicking it on and following the woman’s bobbing ponytail.

As she settled into a steady pace, her worries and concerns fell to the side. Even her Way was satisfied, thrumming warmly beneath her skin in a happy reminder that it was there. Her wrists were still heavy, but it was tolerable, nearly forgettable the longer she ran.

True to word, the trail took a left and a left again, now running through the neighborhood they had been skirting behind. It reminded Milla of the labyrinth in Morgen’s garden and the circuitous path she walked each morning.

She came up behind a pair of cultists on the next turn, speedwalking in a way that suggested they had just fallen behind the main pack. Not wanting to startle them, she slowed to a walk, catching snippets of their conversation.

“—friend said she ran with him in Glasgow a few years ago,” one of them said. “Sheer luck; she had a layover with her fiance, followed the scent to a trail, and there he was.”

“Jesus, can you imagine the high you’d get off that witch?” her friend asked.

“Girl, my panties were wet just listening to him talk, but, god , his magick.”

They sighed in tandem, and Milla smirked. They weren’t wrong, not that she’d admit it out loud. Darkly was a strong witch, and his Way was as unique as hers. With that thought in mind, she sped up a little, pooling what magick she could into her palms to give them something else to sigh about.

“You thinking about moving on to St. Augustine?”

“With a Witch of the Demesne like that?” the first cultist huffed. “I’m already looking at apartments. My girlfriend in Vilano says he shows up to every run.”

Milla nearly tripped over her own feet as the words slammed into her. Darkly? Witch of the Demesne? She was the Witch of the Demesne. Sure, a steward cared for things while she was in that Horned God-awful cell, but she’d been tending St. Augustine almost every morning since. Not once had she felt any hint of another witch encroaching on her territory, much less Darkly.

When Anaisa stole the demesne, there was a sucking sensation down to the very roots of her Soul. The demesne had drained Milla, taking everything she was and demanding more, but every day she’d been back, it had been…

Temperate and level.

Balanced.

Except for that weird instance at the casting range when Darkly had knocked Lou on her ass with a shadowblind. He had looked for Milla, stepping in her direction, glancing at the ground in surprise, and in the same instant, she had felt a tug. Slight, faint enough to ignore, but all too familiar a sensation, and Darkly had noticed. He had felt something on his end of that and—

“Catch.”

Tobias had lobbed a fireball at Milla’s face, forcing her to react with a killing hex. And another that she spun into dreadfire before she’d lost control, summoning Darkly’s Shades and making a thrall of the witch.

“Oh, Goddess.” She fell still, the cultists’ voices fading as they moved further away.

His second match with Lou strobed in her mind’s eye. Every hex and allure his sister had flung, every hit he’d taken, and the weak shadows he sent in return.

He pulled his punches.

Now that she was thinking it, she couldn’t unthink it. From her arrest to his actions in Constance’s office, on their runs, and at the casting range. Goddess, even in their duplex—Horned God-dammit, her duplex. Getting higher than a kite to be useless for any Enforcer work, sleeping on her couch, driving her to the cult, Lou berating him for being distracted. All of it was because he was the steward of her demesne?

“Mother fucker.” She broke into a run, fueled by too much anger to care about the Way bleeding from her palms or the giddy shrieks of the cultists as she sped past. She needed to find him, strangle him, smack him, call him on his bullshit, and demand to know what else he was keeping from her. How many more lies?

She darted across a busy road, flipping off a car as it blared its horn, and dipped under a low branch, skidding to a halt at a random intersection.

Forget the bottling. Forget that he wasn’t fucking Rai in his black satin bed. Forget that he’d pulled his punches and kept from stealing her demesne outright. It was the principle of the thing. It was that he kept lying . Whether on purpose or by omission, he kept doing it.

She picked a random direction, kicking the pile of flour in the middle of one of the cult’s marks as she sprinted by. Thin magick crackled over her skin, a faint static that rose the hairs of her arms like the aether before an oncoming storm.

The audacity of this witch to keep shit from her over and over again. Like he knew better. Like he was—

Like he was Ezra.

Heat shot up her arms, churning in her chest and burning in her palms, demanding a release. She followed the shadows onto a narrow trail, aiming away from the houses. As mad as she was, she couldn’t risk losing control now. Not when Lou had finally trusted her enough to let her have some facet of her Way. Not when there was a Dark Witch to take her anger out on. The damn fool couldn’t seem to stop himself from touching her, but this time—oh, this time, Milla didn’t care if she rotted the idiot.

What was the point of keeping all of those secrets? Milla was reasonable. She was an adult. She wasn’t some hair-trigger hex-lobbing witch.

Except for every time she was exactly that. Hexing Darkly, possessing him, summoning his Shade. Over and over again in those first few weeks. And what had she done when she was allowed to cast her magick again?

Summoned his Shades and enthralled the witch, proving she couldn’t be trusted with her magick, much less any truths she thought she was owed.

A cramp pinched her side, and she cried out from frustration, from the pain of it. It slowed her sprint to a jog, down to a walk. Pine and oak blocked out stars and streetlamps, casting the wooded area in a deep twilight. Not a speck of flour or chalk marked the trees, but a tease of magick danced in the air. A subtle suggestion to turn her head, a breeze prompting her to walk in a certain direction.

She adjusted the beam of her headlamp to hit the trees rather than the ground and followed the trail. The faint crackle of energy grew to a buzz against her skin, a happy humming that danced over her limbs. Muffled voices carried through the trees from a cluster of cultists around a cache of magick, or so she assumed.

Ducking under a branch, she tripped over a low line of bricks, less than an ankle in height. It curved away from her in both directions, barely illuminated by her headlamp. She followed the arc to the left, straightening when she realized she was looking at a labyrinth.

Constructed of low grey and red bricks set in the ground, the arc of the outermost path circled a wide clearing before doubling back on itself and diverting in the opposite direction. A small mirror ball sat on a plinth in the center, humming with magick Milla could hear as well as she felt it.

Directly across from her was a small gardener’s hut, a cement birdbath, and a wrought iron table where a man sat with his back to Milla, one hand gripping the table’s edge. He dropped his head back on a gasp so full of passion that heat rushed up her neck. The beam from her headlamp reflected off of round glasses and illuminated the shoulder of—yep. That was a man on his knees.

“Oh, shit,” she mumbled. “Sorry, y’all, I’ll just—”

The man on his knees raised his head. Dark, shoulder-length hair tumbled free around his face, and though her headlamp half-blinded him, he stared at Milla in a way that made her want to die.

“Peque?a bruja?”

“Wha—” A choked little sound left Milla, surprise pinning her in place.

Diego wiped the back of a hand across his mouth as he stood. “Milla, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing? What are you doing?”

“A good job,” the other man said, hastily tucking himself into fitted, cuffed chinos before facing Milla. Slender and half a head taller than Diego, the man was weirdly familiar, his face and build tickling a part of Milla’s brain she had not accessed in a decade. His sandy, floppy brown hair was everything her 90s cartoon boyfriend dreams were made of, while the look on his face gave, “say one mean thing to Diego, I dare you.”

He stepped beside Diego, twining their fingers and whispering something low in his ear. Diego glanced at him, the shock and—was that anger? What in the nine rings did he have to be angry about?—anger fading. He cupped the man’s cheek, nodding and kissing him softly before addressing Milla.

“I did not plan for you to meet this way,” he said with a sheepish shrug. “Milla, this is Trav.”

“Trav,” she said, squinting across the distance. “Who the fuck is …” Trav raised a hand to shield his eyes from her headlamp, waving his fingers in hello, and at the boyish grin he shot her, it clicked. She ripped her headlamp off to stop blinding the pair, blurting out a name she hadn’t spoken or thought of, in years. “ Bergs? ”

“Hey, Milla.”

Diego whipped his face to Trav, finally joining the dumbfounded party. “You know her?”

“Yeah.” Trav cupped the back of his neck, cheeks deepening in color. “We were conversation partners.”

“Senior year Spanish, what the fuck , Travis.”

“Trav,” Diego corrected with a glare. “And I would appreciate you not speaking to my boyfriend in such a way.”

“Your—” She backed away, dumbstruck, dumbfounded, just fucking dumb. “I—” Her heel caught on one of the low bricks, and she tipped backward, about to land on her ass, when a firm, familiar set of hands grabbed her elbows. Cool strength rushed down her forearms into her palms. Milla tore free, whirling around to find Darkly there. Her shock vanished instantly, replaced by the anger that had brought her to this point, only for it to waft away, unable to take root.

“I can’t—” She sucked in a breath, too thin, too shallow.

Number two: talk to Darkly.

But how could she talk to him now? Seeing Diego on his knees with a man he called his boyfriend had torn apart all the lies she had told herself over the past week.

Seven days. She’d been home for seven days, out of the cells for seven days, telling herself she’d made progress, that she was healing and moving forward. That nothing had changed, and everything was fine. Spending all her energy throwing her anger at Darkly for his lies and deceit when, in truth—

“Talk to me, Milla,” Darkly pleaded, asking what she needed and how he could support her. Being the same damn witch he’d been from the very start.

“I can’t .” She darted around him, stumbling into a run and praying to the Horned God she didn’t rot anything.