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Fae lights flicker in the passage, leading the way, and part of me believes that this must be a back entrance into the palace. Any minute now someone will come round the corner, some servant or member of the Seelie Court, and I’ll be swiftly returned to Ruskin.
But then why are the mysterious voices still so noisy in my head? And why do I think I hear the clatter of hooves on the bridge behind me? Cebba wouldn’t dare follow me into the palace, would she?
I hurtle round a corner and find a dead end. Doubling back, I see there’s a right turn I missed. But that just opens out onto a hallway that stretches for a hundred feet, each side dotted with passages leading left and right, and no way of knowing which one to take.
I’m not in the Seelie Court, I realize. I’ve strolled right in to one of Cebba’s traps.
Chapter 35
Alabyrinth, that’s what this must be. Some elaborate stone maze she’s concocted for her human quarry. What better way to hunt us than in a maze? It makes things a challenge at least.
I bash my good hand against the nearest wall in frustration, letting myself stew for a moment in anger and frustration. But I have to keep going, not just for my sake, for everyone I care about. Each one will suffer if I don’t keep myself, and Ruskin’s true name, out of Cebba’s hands.
I forge forward down one of the passageways.
The downside is I’m about to get lost in this maze. The upside is that it at least buys me some time. Cebba might know the design of this place—perhaps by heart—but she doesn’t know where I am in it, and that at least means I can hide from her for a little while.
I hear her honeyed voice call out over the walls, light with excitement. She’s already in here with me.
“Very clever, Eleanor Thorn, getting this far. But it’s my game now.” She laughs, sounding genuinely pleased. “I might still need that name from you, but at least you’ve made this more fun.”
I have one thing in my favor: this is far from my first time in a maze. Sanna’s father would build one with hale bales for the May Day festival every year, before making a living from farming got harder. By the time I was eleven I’d worked out my method for solving them: I’d not worry about which fork I chose, but would just back track if I hit a dead end or a junction I’d been to before. I’d leave clues for myself—usually a piece of straw folded in a funny way—so I could keep track. As I throw myself deeper into the crisscrossing corridors, I’m truly grateful for our silly little human pastimes.
I’m out of gold, so I can’t do anything clever with my clues, but I still have Cebba’s knife, so when I reach the first junction, I mark it by scratching a tiny x into the wall, low down where only I would notice it. Then I turn right, following a passage curving around, carve another x at a fork in the corridors and head onwards.
That’s when I hit my first dead end. I can hear someone unnervingly close, their footsteps echoing in the passage on the other side of the wall from me. I clamp my hand over my mouth in case my breathing’s too loud, and back away. I think Cebba might have brought the Wild Hunt in here with her, which lessens my odds. Seven to one is hardly fair in a game of hide-and-seek.
I turn and lock eyes with my father.
He’s standing there, looking thinner than when I saw him shown in Ruskin’s pool, his face gaunt and his eyes filled with fear, but the sight of him sends my heart jumping. He beckons towards me, and I run to him without thinking, tears breaking loose from my eyes, drenching my cheeks.
“Dad!”
“Nora,” he says, except it comes out strangely, sounding like whispers layered over each other. I stop short, rubbing my eyes to try to clear them, because there’s something wrong about his frame. He’s not quite sharp enough at the edges, his eyes wearing an odd blankness.
“Nora, come back to me.”
I step closer, peering at him. The voice is wrong, the way he’s looking at me is wrong. He’s not moving to step towards me.
“You’re not my dad,” I sniff, my joy replaced with horror.
The voices I’d heard in the forest, the same ones from when I’d entered maze, swell around me now, incoherent but noticeably agitated.
“Why won’t you give her what she wants, Nora? Why won’t you come back to me? Do I matter so little to you? Would you rather never see your home again?”
I edge past him, sliding along the farthest wall as he begs me, accusing me of all the things I feel most guilty about. This is a trick, I know, some apparition conjured up to confuse and upset me, but it doesn’t make his words any less painful. My chest constricts with the sobs I’m holding in as I tell myself this doesn’t change anything. I have to get out.
Turning my back on my father feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Then I take two turns down and am immediately proven wrong.
I meet my mother next.
She’s beautiful, radiant. How I remember her when she was in her prime, before she got sick. Her smile nearly brings me to my knees, the same smile of a thousand goodnight hugs and reassuring conversations. Nine years of not seeing her face and I have to try to ignore it now.
It’s not her, it’s not her, I chant to myself as the tears slide loose again as I barrel down the corridor. This place is cursed, it has to be.
“Why are you letting me down, my sweet girl? Why are you abandoning your father? I would never do that, how could you? Why must you disappoint me?”
Her words are like poison, twisting my insides. But it sounds like I’m not the only one haunted by ghosts in here. There’s a shout from the next passage over, and a distant scream. I turn a corner and nearly run straight into a fae I recognize from the dinner at court. I immediately back out of view and then cautiously peek around the edge of the stone wall, wondering if he spotted me, but his eyes are fixed on the illusion of a young woman stood a few feet from him, a look of deepest sorrow on his face.
