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We pick up the pace, sprinting towards freedom.
He stares at me as the maze’s roof arches upwards again, the walls around it dropping down to form a bridge identical to the entryway I came in by.
“But she can’t have,” Ruskin insists. “She wouldn’t be able to get past the banishment magic.”
“Fortunately, the stone gave me a little more than curses before I left,” Cebba says. She’s standing alone in the clearing in front of us, her expression taut with a kind of menacing excitement.
“Hello, brother,” she says.
Ruskin pushes me behind him. A gesture that doesn’t go unmissed by his sister, her eyes flashing from me to him.
“Hello, Cebba. I’d say I’ll have to make my banishment stick next time, but you’re not going to live to see ‘next time.’”
Cebba tuts, pushing aside her cloak to place her hands on her hips. “Such venom. I see my curse has made you quite bitter. How is it, by the way? Can you feel every little thread of gold, eating you from the inside out?” She says the last bit with relish, her eyes on the spot where Ruskin’s petrifying heart beats.
He shrugs. “It hasn’t killed me yet.”
I watch carefully as they banter back and forth. They’re not exchanging chitchat for the fun of it, they’re sizing each other up, trying to work out who is going to make the first move.
I edge away from them, round to the side of the bridge. The ground slopes down beneath it, and the dip offers some shelter for when the magic starts flying around. I’m not stupid enough to think I could hold my own in this fight, but I keep my eyes open, looking for ways to help Ruskin.
“‘Yet’ being the operative word,” Cebba continues. “But given time, you know you would’ve fallen to it.” She lifts her hands a few inches and I tense, ready to warn Ruskin. I can tell she’s thinking about conjuring, but it seems he’s already noticed, because there’s the scrape of steel as he draws his sword.
“That’s your problem, Cebba—you’re always so convinced of your success. Where are your friends, by the way?”
For all her wonderful acting as Fiona, Cebba’s mask isn’t as good as Ruskin’s. It slips now, her mouth twitching with annoyance, and that makes Ruskin laugh, his next words dripping with condescension.
“Oh dear, did they get lost in the labyrinth? Didn’t you tell them not to get separated from you? You really are a terrible leader, Cebba. How you ever thought you could rule is beyond me.”
Cebba snarls, lifting her hands. Ruskin drives forward, sword raised in one hand, his other twisting at the wrist. When Cebba releases her spell, it bounds forward in a billow of a darkness, but Ruskin slices it in two with his sword without hesitation. It parts, allowing him charge through, just as a thick root erupts from behind Cebba, attempting to wrap around her. She grunts and throws herself away from it, redirecting her smoke to swallow the root, leaving it a blackened pile of ash.
Ruskin bears down upon his sister with what I’m now realizing is no ordinary sword, simultaneously sending the branches of a nearby tree snaking down towards her, creaking with malicious intent. But with intimidating strength she reaches up and snaps one of the branches off, jabbing the jagged end towards Ruskin’s torso, forcing him to abort his attack.
He dances back, lifting his arm, and before Cebba can throw the branch down, a rock flies towards her with startling speed. She bats it with the thick tree branch, stopping its momentum in a flurry of splinters. But then a second stone hurtles through the air. I see where it comes from this time—a curling vine snapping its leaves as it reaches for another round of ammunition—and I realize Ruskin has spelled them. His High King link to the realm, to the earth, must make it easy for him to enchant the plants to follow his bidding, the way they did in the library when we… But no, that’s not a thought I can afford to get lost in now. I keep my focus on the fight.
The second rock finds its mark, glancing off Cebba’s temple when she’s too slow trying to turn away from it. But fae skulls are hard, it turns out, and she doesn’t slump, unconscious, like a human would. She shrieks in pain, and a trickle of blood runs down her face.
When she lifts her head again, I see the blow has knocked the illusion magic right off of her. The evidence of my attack in the lodge is plainly there to see, her nose a mess of bloody teeth marks.
“Stars,” Ruskin says, looking surprised despite himself. “What happened to your face?”
Cebba whips her head round, her bright eyes fixing on me. Ruskin follows her gaze, and seems to realize something.
“No!”
He darts in my direction as a cloud of Cebba’s black magic rolls across the clearing, straight towards where I cower by the bridge. I try to scramble out of the way, but my body is tired and weak, and I stumble.
Ruskin gets there in time to swipe the magic away before it hits me, but he isn’t quick enough to save himself. As he stands half a dozen yards away, banishing the spell meant for me, dark tendrils strike him in the back. Cebba appears as the smoke of her sorcery dissipates, standing behind him.
“Ruskin!” I scream.
He goes down on one knee, but sweeps his blade round and manages to force Cebba further back from him for a moment.
Her spell has done its job, though. I can see threads of gold climbing up his neck from beneath his shirt, like lustrous veins. Not only has Cebba’s magic weakened him enough to wipe his own illusions away, it’s forcing the curse to spread with horrible speed.
This is my fault. If I’d found a way to stop the curse before now, his High King powers would be more than enough to defeat Cebba. If I hadn’t been a distraction, he wouldn’t be weaker now. I watch, helpless, as Cebba attacks again. Ruskin is still on his knees, but he manages to lift a hand, trying to conjure up something to stop her. Yet the trunks that push up through the ground move too slowly, as if they’re running out of energy.
Cebba dashes forward and kicks Ruskin’s sword from his hand. It slides across the grass towards the bridge, slipping down the dip beside it, just six feet from me. I look up to see if Cebba’s noticed, but all her attention is focused on conjuring another spell for Ruskin, one I fear he won’t survive.
