Just keep moving.
I took slow, purposeful steps along the uneven ground. And I quickly learned that striving for stealth was going to be beyond difficult when the floor was littered with debris. Everystep scraped stone, crunched leaves, or crushed little pebbles. Worse, every sound echoed and carried.
Cursing in my head, I kept moving. The further I walked, the stronger the scents of moist stone, rotting greenery, and stagnant water became. It was dark, but not so much that I couldn’t see well. There seemed to be a preternatural source of faint light. Still, there were too many pockets of thick shadows; too many places where something could hide.
There were also some surprising things lying around.
Headless statues, crumbling spires, animal totems, and the remains of broken walls.
It was like walking through the ruins of an ancient cave-city. I wondered if maybe whoever created the labyrinth had initially made it look quite pleasing to the eye; wondered if it had all been bashed to hell by the minotaur. I’d sure bash every cavern in an attempt to find a way out.
As I weaved in and out of a cluster of stalagmites protruding from the ground, something caught my eye. A shed snake skin. I went utterly still, my entire system recoiling. Freaking fantastic.
So, let’s review.The place was dark. Cold. Creepy. A home to snakes … and a godsdamn minotaur.
It was officially my least favorite place in the world.
Passing the stalagmites, I frowned at the sight ahead of me. The path … it didn’t exactly split, but there were two ways to continue down the cave. You could either climb a set of visibly unstable steps that led up to a narrow, tunnel-like passage and then venture through it. Or you could walk through a slimmer opening … right beneath a nest of overly big buzzing hornets.
Yeah, scrap the hornets.
I crossed to the pitted steps. They were spaced a little too widely apart. Licking my lips, I planted my foot on the first step. It wobbled, making my gut clench in panic.
I eyed the hornets.
No. No, it had to be the tunnel.
I fixed my attention back on the steps. Each swayed slightly beneath me as I carefully clambered up them—my heart in my throat the entire time. Ducking into the tunnel, I wrinkled my nose at the tickle of dangling tatters of a spider web.
Shudder.
I crawled along the tunnel, grateful that I had no fear of tight spaces—a gratitude I’d felt many times in the last forty days. Somethingpoppedinto view as I neared the mouth of the narrow passage.
And I found myself looking at a freaking jumping spider.
Oh, it’s a ‘hell-to-the-no’ from me.
Without thought, I zapped it with a crackle of moonlight that sent it zooming backwards. My pulse going nuts, I blew out a long breath. I hoped the same thing hadn’t happened to Lear—she had a real fear of spiders.
Exiting the tunnel, I found myself on a rocky ledge. There were more worn steps here. I descended them carefully, pausing each time one wobbled. Once I reached the base of them safely, the warm glow of relief filled my chest and tugged my lips into a shaky smile.
I wiped the chalky dust from my hands onto my breeches as I glanced around. It was then that I noticed a dip in the ground at the end of the hornet-filled path. Basically, anyone who thought to run through it would likely earn themselves a twisted ankle. Ruthless.
Facing forward, I walked along the passage. A drop of water plopped onto my head.Nice,I inwardly griped as I rubbed at my hair—
The toe of my boot caught on a tree root.
I landed hard on one knee—a knee that slammed down directly on a sharp stone. I sucked in a pained breath, unable tobite back a cry. I froze, my heart accelerating at the mere thought that the noise could have attracted the minotaur’s attention if he was close by.
There was a flutter of wings. A squeak. A heavy silence. And then I was dive-bombed by a crap-load of bats.
Lowering my head, I wrapped my arms protectively around it. What seemed like a hundred wings flapped at my skin, but the bats soonswoopedaway.
Breathing hard, I plopped my butt on the rough ground and palmed my smarting knee. It was official. I hated this place. With. A. Passion.
Not willing to sit around when the shrieking of the bats might have snagged the minotaur’s interest, I pushed to my feet and walked on.
The air lost more of its chill the deeper I went into the labyrinth. Or maybe I was just getting used to the cold.
