Marin jerked backward, her boot catching on a brittle branch. It cracked beneath her. Her mouth opened in a sharp yelp, but I lunged, catching her around the waist just as the branch snapped and tumbled into the pit below.
The sound of it faded into silence. My grip tightened around Marin, my pulse hammering in my throat from the near miss.
“Thanks, Gav,” she said with an embarrassed wince, flicking a glance between me and the hole she’d nearly fallen through.
“Those are bats,” she muttered. “You know I hate bats.”
“They won’t bother us as long as we leave them alone.”
Marin shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. It’s been a pleasure, Gav, but this is where we part ways. I’ll live out my last fewdays by the pool at the inn.”
I chuckled under my breath and gave her waist a firm squeeze. “I'm not letting you get away that easily. We’ll just sneak past them.”
Marin sighed, eyeing the bats warily. “Fine, but if my death is bat-related, I will haunt you.”
“I should hope so.”
With a grumpy snarl, Marin swiped a line of red paint across the rock near another statue, this one peering up at the bats as if it, too, had doubts about the dangling creatures.
“See? This guy gets it. He doesn’t like bats either,” she grumbled, brushing her fingers over its coarse stone claws before crouching low under the tree branches to crawl past.
“If they try to swarm, swing your pot at them.”
Marin whipped around, leveling me with a sharp glare.
“Never mind,” I said smoothly. “That look should take care of them.”
I schooled my features to keep from smiling.
Marin Nichols, she can take on a bog monster, but not a bat.
We wound through the maze’s twists and turns for nearly an hour before we spotted the first set of bones. They were scattered in a loose pile, the skull half-buried behind the gnarled roots of a vine. A cracked gargoyle lay toppled nearby, its wings broken like the bones near our feet.
“A weary traveler?” Marin joked, stepping lightly onto a thin rocky foothold.
“Probably. Thankfully, I’m not tired at all. How about you?”
“Me? No. I had the best sleep of my life.” She winked, and I shook my head.
“First, you flirt with me outside the wall, now inside themaze. In front of a stranger.” I tilted my head toward the bones.
Marin laughed and punched me softly in the arm. “Have some respect for the dead. This place is probably cursed, and the last thing I need is another one of those.”
She paused to sip from her flask, then bent to right the toppled gargoyle, as if it were a monument for the poor soul trapped inside the maze for eternity.
We kept moving, walking deeper into the mist. The path narrowed further, forcing us into a single file. A heavy scent of damp stone and rotting wood hung in the air.
Then, up ahead, a streak of red paint.
I slowed, signaling Marin. She followed my gaze and let out a curse.
“We’re walking in circles.”
I ran a hand down my face. “Yeah.”
Marin exhaled through her nose and tapped her boot against the ground. She studied one of the pillars that stretched past the treetops, disappearing behind the foliage. Vines coiled around its surface. A second pillar stood on the other side, shorter, with another statue perched at its peak, wings folded tight. She cocked her head, chewing the corner of her lip.
I knew that look.
