Page 103 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Labyrinth was an elaborate maze of green hedges, looming in all directions, as high as castle walls. They grew thick with silver thorns and thistles, meandering back and forth in intricate patterns impossible to discern, especially in the glance allotted to the Tithes from the cliff’s edge. Pippa was not entirely sure if it was more terrifying to teeter buffeted by the winds, or to be expected to solve the Labyrinth and reach the center, where water churned violently around a small island.

A moment ago she had been in the most magical library she had ever known, with Lachlan, and now she was clinging to a narrow outcropping wearing her circlet of flowers and feathers. The other Tithes were lined up on either side of her.

“Your task is to get to the center of the Labyrinth and bring back the Grendel’s head.”

She could not see who was speaking. The voice traveled on the wind.

Grendels were rare. There were more stories than actual sightings, and those were mostly gory warnings of humans being eaten, bones being crushed, blood sipped like mulled wine. Hosts of warriors massacred. They were as big as ogres, as strong as orcs, as clever as minotaurs. Deadly. Almost impossible to kill.

Should one even want to attempt it.

Pippa could think of a thousand things she would rather do.

“Begin!”

Pippa stepped into the towering green.

There was no fighting through the tangles, no shortcuts to be found or forged. It was only shadows and eerie rustling, and sharp thorns gleaming at eye level.

And mists.

They rolled in almost immediately, curling like pale serpents around the ankles, drifting higher and higher. Someone cursed nearby. Her fire pushed at her witch knot, at the shiver of dread and unease provoked by the fog.

She could stand here and panic or she could walk and panic.

Not panicking did not seem to be an option.

She forged ahead, her moth leading the way. It’s just a maze, she told herself. Fancy people build them in their gardens for fun.

The fancy people currently enjoying this entertainment were not the British aristocracy but the Fae courts, peering at her through the shards of mirrors hanging in the greenery. A leaf-green eye, that yellow eye with double pupils. A whisper of sound: cheering, wagers being shouted. She searched for Lachlan’s violet gaze but could not find it.

She walked for what felt like an hour.

And, as it turned out, walking a hedge maze was rather dull.

She made progress, came up against a thicket she could not fight through, turned back, did it all again. She tried leaving markers, but they vanished the moment she looked away, which hardly seemed fair.

The mists followed her as though they were curious, conscious.

Vengeful.

The first prickle could have been the work of the cold, Pippa’s nerves, a grasping thistle. The second was considerably more uncomfortable.

Was this how Lachlan felt? Constantly scraped at?

The mists pressed closer, disorienting and painful. The hedge walls loomed. Pippa had a moment of panic to wonder if she would ever get free. It seemed impossible. Then she gave herself a stern talking to. There was no giving up. They had found the Red Grimoire, and if she knew nothing else now, she knew she had to win. She needed that wish more than ever.

And she would not let one of the other Tithes be murdered.

She sent her moth to float up high, farther away from her than they both liked, but it was the only means she had to find her way. Above the mists, the glow of her moth led her around corners, past dead ends, ever closer to the lake at the center of the Labyrinth. The thorns scratched at her, then recoiled. Thistles knotted at her hair. The space between the hedges grew narrower, the mists hungrier and hungrier. Pippa pushed herself to run faster. Eyes gleamed in the fog. Something clacked its jaws.

By the time she pushed out of the grasping greenery and onto the pebble beach, her throat was scraped raw with panting.

The lake was not quite a lake and not quite a pond, but something in between the two. It churned and frothed, waters dark as the purple storm clouds above. They flashed when sunlight threw shining spears of light.

The island seemed impossibly far away.