"But if I'd just—"
"No." I pulled him closer despite the pain screaming through my shoulder and back. "We're in this together, remember? Whatever happens, we face it together. The map burned. It's done. Now we move forward."
Footsteps echoed through the darkness. Constantine's footsteps. He was circling back.
"Move," I whispered urgently.
I grabbed Rafael's hand and pulled him in what I hoped was away from the footsteps. We stumbled through the blackness, hands outstretched. My fingers finally found a wall.
"This way," I whispered.
We followed the wall, moving as quietly as we could manage. The chain still clinked between us, but there was nothing we could do about that. Behind us, I could hear Constantine's slow and steady footsteps.
He was enjoying this.
The wall curved. We followed it around until my hand found an opening. A passage. We stumbled into it, and the walls closed in on either side again. At least in the narrow corridors, Caesar couldn't attack as easily. The bird needed space to maneuver.
My ear was throbbing, and Rafael's breathing was too fast, too shallow. He was panicking. I could hear it in the way he gasped for air.
"Rafael." I stopped and turned to face him in the darkness. "Breathe with me. In through your nose. Out through your mouth."
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can." I found his hand and pressed it against my chest so he could feel my breathing. "Match me. In. Out."
He tried. Failed. Tried again. Gradually, the panic in his gasps faded into something more controlled.
"Better?" I asked.
"Yeah. A little." His hand moved from my chest to my face, his fingers tracing my features in the darkness. "I'm not good at this."
"At what?"
"Being helpless. Being lost." His voice dropped. "I've spent my whole life knowing exactly what I'm supposed to do. How to fight. Who to kill. What to believe. But now I don't know anything. I can't see. I can't navigate. I can't protect you. I'm useless."
"You're not useless." I kissed him again, slower this time. "You jumped that pit while half-blind. You fought off Caesar. You've kept us alive this long. That's not useless."
"But—"
"No." I pressed my finger against his lips. "We're going to get through this. I don't know how yet, but we will. Because I'm not losing you. Not to Constantine. Not to this maze. Not to anything."
Caesar shrieked from somewhere in the darkness behind us. Constantine's footsteps grew louder.
"We need to move," Rafael whispered.
"I know." But I didn't move yet. Just held him for one more moment in the absolute darkness. "I love you."
"I love you too." His lips brushed mine. "Now let's go kill that bastard."
We moved forward into the darkness, hands joined, the chain clinking between us. We were lost. We were bleeding. We were being hunted.
But we were together.
And that was going to beConstantine’s undoing.
We moved through thedarkness for what felt like hours.
Time had no meaning in the absolute black. We could have been walking for ten minutes or three hours. My sense of direction was completely gone. The only things I knew for certain were Rafael's hand in mine, the chain between our ankles, and the stone walls under my fingertips.
