Labyrinth of Stars(85)

Or not.

I looked at my hands. Silver on the right, demons on the left. “I can’t not go after them.”

“You are vulnerable,” replied the Messenger. “I will make you stay.”

I stared her dead in the eyes—and kept staring. Sometimes if you hold a silence long enough and fill it with your rage, even genetically modified warrior women get a clue. The Messenger blinked and looked away.

I settled my gaze on Lord Ha’an. “How are your people?”

“Unwell,” he said. “I can feel their weakness in me now. It will not be long before I fall victim to the poison. The Osul have fared little better.”

“You’re going to help them,” I told the Messenger. “And Mary. As much as you can, for as long as you can. Stall this thing.”

Dismay flickered through her face. “I cannot.”

“You’ll try.” I backed away from them, rubbing the armor with my left hand—which felt as though it might tear from my body. Lord Ha’an swayed toward me, long fingers twitching.

“My Queen,” he said in a grave voice. “If you are hunting for what will save us, we should hunt alongside you.”

It was so tempting. I was not at my strongest. One good blow would kill me now—if the pain didn’t get me first.

But I had my own walls to bring down, on the inside. And it was time for me to start chipping at them.

My right hand squeezed into a fist. The Messenger took a step toward me, and, for the first time, I saw the fear and urgency in her eyes, and the doubt. “Time moves differently in the Labyrinth. If you return, this may not be the world you left. We may already be dead.”

“Then you won’t have to worry about the Devourer,” I said, and fell into the void.

My body disappeared, and for those long seconds, the sudden absence of pain was so immediate and profound it was like having a second body—I could feel where my skin should be, the outlines of wild, miraculous relief—and I gloried in it.



WHEN I fell back into the world, it was still night, and the full heat and agony surrounded me again. I choked down a gasp, sprawled in the grass, my mind a total scramble of need and memory, and doubt. From where I lay, I could see the boulder that covered my mother’s grave. I hadn’t gone far. I hadn’t wanted to. I had something to do here that I’d been putting off since the beginning of this nightmare.

I rolled on my back, stared up at the stars, and prayed for help.

I didn’t keep track of the time, just the pulse and throb of the boys on my body, struggling harder now, with greater strength. The closer they came to freeing themselves, the more it hurt. I was nearly blind with it, crippled, when a tingle from the armor cut through the hurt—a cool interruption that I felt in the bones of my right hand.

“Father,” I whispered. “Please hear me.”

For a moment, I thought the stars began to move toward me, but that was just my vision blurring. So I listened instead, and heard the wind. And the wind deepened, and the wind grew strong, except the leaves of the oak were silent, and the grass was not moving around me.

Pray to the night instead, whispered the darkness. Pray to what holds your heart and lives in your blood. Pray to yourself, young Queen, young Hunter, young Mother. You are the last of all these things. You, who are both flesh and god.

I will never be a god, I said.

“Hunter,” murmured a soft voice outside my mind: smooth and warm as fire. I opened my eyes and found Oturu looming over me.

I let out my breath, so relieved. I realized, in that moment, where my trust lived, and it was not with the Messenger or any demon lords—or even, anymore, old men who were my grandfather. It was with the boys, and Grant—and one other.

“Oturu,” I whispered. “My friend. I need you.”

“We are with you,” he murmured. “We will always be with you.”

I cracked open my eyes and glimpsed the shining daggers of his feet, spading into the grass. His cloak breathed against the direction of the wind, flaring like wings and swallowing light—and within its darkness, shades of movement: faces and hands, bodies roiling in the abyss.

Tears burned. I would have told anyone who asked that it was the pain—but it was the gentleness of his touch, the reassurance it symbolized: that I was not alone.

“Young Queen,” whispered Oturu.

“It’s time to hunt,” I told him, hoarse.

And the boys finally woke up.





CHAPTER 26




IT’S easy to forget pain. We do it all the time. All the discomforts of life fade away, and we forget—within minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Time heals.

Unless it doesn’t. Because there is some suffering that cuts to the soul—and that cleaves deep and does not fade. It burns, almost eternal.