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“If it were Valentina in danger, I’d do it,” she only said.
While these same words from someone like Jillian would make me assume she wanted me gone and was trying to be manipulative, hearing them from Blaise actually gave me the confidence that leaving would be the right choice, if we came across more gobbelins.
I’d unwittingly put Nicolas and Acadian in danger from Merden, simply by loving them.
It was terrifying to think that I could be doing the same to Luca and Kas just by staying with their team. Especially my thief, who had zero chance at defending himself if the gobbelins really did make him weak somehow.
I knew if I had to live through that sort of loss again, I’d never be the same person.
As it was, I already felt like I was enjoying borrowed time with Luca and Kas, gambling with fate. Every time the mist gathered in the corners of the labyrinth, I tensed up, waiting to be dragged back to Jillian and Darnell.
But after two full days of exploring had passed and I was still with Luca’s team, I let myself relax into the idea that maybe something had changed when Blaise stole theBook of Flora, and I was free of Jillian and Darnell, at least.
It was too much to hope that they’d been killed, even though we’d heard the echoes of snarls and shouts from other teams several times.
The high walls of the labyrinth kept everything a secret, and we didn’t know if more blood slaves had been dropped, or if teams were being killed by creatures and gobbelins, or even each other.
All of us were starting to feel a little stir-crazy, and I found myself gazing up at the sky more and more, wishing I could just scale the fucking walls and escape. But just like the Flora section had mirror vines preventing a climb, here it was the threat of slipping your fingers into rocky crevices full of biting spiders or venomous snakes, plus the crackling glow of magic at the top.
Even if I could coat myself in ice armor, I didn’t have enough strength to pull the others into the spell, and I had no idea how to access theBook of Icewithout the guidance of the mist.
“I think we’ll find a new section tomorrow,” Kas said confidently, breaking into my swirling thoughts as we settled in for the night.
We’d connected pretty much all of the corridors on their hand-drawn map, and there were only a few leads left to follow. Of course, we knew the way back to Flora, but since we had my team’s book, we’d decided there wasn’t much point.
“I still think we should stay here and wait for the teams to come to us,” Luca grumbled, and Kas rolled his eyes.
Being the only one who needed regular meat, Luca was hesitant to go into sections that might not have enough food for him. And there was a distinct advantage to having the home turf, even if it was riddled with deadly animals.
“All the teams could wander forever in here and never find each other,” I said, dropping the pack I’d made from animal hide to carry the black ice lotus and my gobbelin club. I reached back to massage my neck and shoulders.
The spiked club was heavy as fuck, and although my back was mostly healed, it still got sore from the pack bumping against it.
Luca took over the massage, and my eyes rolled back in my head as he kneaded out all the kinks in my muscles, carefully avoiding the places where the gobbelin had ripped into me.
Since I wasn’t dead, we’d at least learned their claws weren’t poisonous.
“I wish I could have gotten more intel from Vento,” Luca grumbled, as he worked his magic hands across my shoulders. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d said that.
“Yeah, me too, wolf. And I wish I’d had a chance to grill Rush about his part in this,” I added.
“He’ll be back,” Luca assured me, and I nodded. I thought so, too.
No matter what had spooked him that day in the arena, I knew he’d been assigned some kind of job here in Saori Sang. No matter how he was involved with the gobbelin revival, I didn’t think he was finished in Saori Sang. Hell, he might even be back already, pretending to be a vampire noble again and fawning all over Merden.
Kas had just finished building our fire when it began to rain, falling in slow, fat drops. We’d been in the labyrinth somewhere around a week and a half, and this was the first storm we’d seen.
“At least it’s not snow,” Blaise said, staring up at the darkening sky.
She and Kas used a pair of gobbelin clubs to scoot the fire into our cave, leaving it close enough to the entrance to let most of the smoke waft outside while the meat cooked. I thought it was a reckless luxury to even build a fire, but I wasn’t going to start telling them what to do on their own team.
Maybe they just needed a cooked meal and some warmth and comfort.
Still, I was restless to enjoy any of that, pacing the mouth of the cave. It had been a quiet couple of days, and that made me nervous.
I couldn’t stop wondering if there were more gobbelins out there, hunting the larger animals, too. The stories I’d heard as a child spoke of gobbelins drinking blood, but also eating the flesh of their victims.
They were brutal killers, worse than a vampire gone rogue.
