“The rules are simple,”the Guardian said.“If you wish to pass, answer three riddles, but you must all answer one. Understood?”
The three glanced at one another. Destonne and Brennen wore stiff, determined expressions while tension welled in Emmery’s chest. However, it could be so much worse than riddles. They could have to crawl across spikes, or dip themselves in acid. A little mind game wouldn’t be so bad. That’s what she attempted to tell herself even as her racing heart wouldn’t slow.
“What if we guess wrong?” Emmery asked, a tremble in her voice.
“You may not pass,” the Guardian replied.
Destonne swallowed, the sound almost painful. “You send us back into the labyrinth?”
A grotesque toothy smile lit the Guardian’s face. “Until we decide if we want to play with you again.”
Brennen stepped forward and the Guardian gave him a warning glare. His paws froze, seemingly glued to the stone. “So, if we fail, we die?”
Guardian Feylan tilted their head. “Perhaps. I suggest you answer wisely, as you have one guess per riddle.”
Wow, that wasreallynot the answer Emmery wanted to hear.
“We shall begin. The King of Asaella shall answer first.”
Emmery deduced the Guardian knew their identities from the blood they’d offered to enter, though the prospect suffocated her with new fear.
Destonne rolled his shoulders back and stretched his neck to the side as if he readied to wrestle the beast, not answer a silly riddle. “Very well,” he drawled. “Let’s have it.”
The fiery basins flickered and died down to a red-orange glow as the air stilled. A damp, musky smell that reeked of death and graves and skeletal remains engulfed the space, perhapsfrom the labyrinth’s victims centuries ago. Emmery gagged and clamped a hand over her mouth.
They didn’t breathe as the Guardian recited the riddle, offering the words like shard of a greater treasure—worthless unless used whole.“Once inside you, I take hold. Only the conniving can be so bold. I am a hidden weapon, one used at will. When a weak man is twisted, mouths do spill. I fester, I suffocate, I rule your life. And only when spoken can you wield the knife.”
Something clanged within the chamber and a clock chime rang out, then started to count down, and each tick stabbed Emmery like a spear to the gut. Hooked her panic with a shepherd’s crook and yanked it free.
The tick replicated Deimos’s mausoleum.
Every muscle in her body stiffened as if it could ward off the sound, chase away the images hunting her down, the ones she couldn’t escape no matter how fast she ran or how diligently she hid.
Her failures were always there. Lurking. Hiding. Waiting to strike.
Emmery squeezed her eyes shut, but her stomach roiled as the trauma saturated her eyelids, like parchment dropped into a fountain.
The crimson-soaked tan tile, sticky, warm, wetness between her fingers. The choking, gagging, breathless cries.
The phantom slice of her throat and bolt through her chest as she attempted to heal him. Took his pain. Held it inside herself. And the agony she’d taken from Vesper, held gladly, but now lived in her bones.
Emmery willed herself to focus, prayed for the images to release her, but she couldn’t banish them, and a small cry slipped free. She clamped her hands over her ears and focussedon keeping her shaking knees steady and not crumpling to the floor like a wilting flower.
Brennen’s cold snout pressed into the crook of her arm. Emmery allowed her eyes to open, just a slit, to glance at him. And all she found was unwavering strength in his burnt-orange gaze.I have you, it seemed to say. Seemed to cradle her in its safety.
Feeling him watching her, Emmery’s eyes slid to Destonne. His brows knit together, a firm press to his lips. Did he remember what she told him about the clocks? It had to have been him that smashed the sitting room clock. No one else knew about the ticking, though she hadn’t explained why it affected her so.
Destonne’s stare injected the words he’d said to her all those weeks ago into her mind.Don’t let your fears win. And don’t ever let your past make you feel inferior. Make it pay for feeding you doubt.
As he held her gaze like precious porcelain, he answered the riddle. “A secret.”
Guardian Feylan cackled an unearthly sound.“The first was simple.”It lounged back in the chair and clasped its gnarled claws together. “Do not expect the same for the others.”
The ticking paused, and Emmery gulped air like the sound had drowned her. With how her heart stuttered and her head swam, it sure felt like it.
The Guardian slid their attention to Brennen. “It is your turn, wolf.”
Brennen nodded his horned head in compliance.