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“Rush,” I hissed again when the voice stopped, shaking his shoulders and cupping his face between my palms.
I kept scanning the entrance, hoping nothing dangerous would come down the corridor while he was so vulnerable. Our luck held, and finally, his eyelids fluttered closed. When they slid open again, he blinked around in confusion, his natural green and turquoise eyes still dull and clouded.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse as though he’d been screaming.
“You gave me another prophecy,” I answered, sitting back on my heels and feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion slide over me.
I didn’t want another fucking puzzle to figure out.
I wanted my life to be simple and easy to understand, with clear choices and consequences. I’d promised several people now - and one Goddess - that I wouldn’t die being a martyr, but I sure as shit didn’t want toliveas one, either.
Was it too much to ask for just a regular old boring life? Did I really have to be the one in charge of solving every problem, settling every dispute, and hunting down every bad guy?
And if that was what it meant to be a Goddess, then fuck that.
“Repeat it to me?” Rush requested, thankfully interrupting the spiral of despair in my mind.
Locking away the emotions, I recited back the new riddle, already mentally comparing it to the other two. He frowned, his lips moving silently as he processed the words.
“You have another weapon to find,” he finally said, looking up at me curiously.
“Nicolas?” I guessed, hoping, but Rush looked doubtful.
“He’s not truly able to fight for you from the mist, love. And while I don’t know as much as you do about the mist, I’ve never heard of someone being pulled from it.”
“Except for me,” I pointed out. And Blaise, Nineve, and anyone else who had died in this Trial.
Of course, Nineve had stayed dead the second time, so there were limitations. I knew I shouldn’t get my hopes up for Nicolas - it would only crush me that much more when the mist went silent again after the Trials.
“It could be someone new. Or perhaps it’s your blood slaveaima,” Rush suggested, and my heart seized at the thought of Cade, still stuck in Merden’s magic. I would give anything to help him.
“What about the rest of the riddle? What kind of key? And isn’t the dark already open, if the gobbelins are here?” I asked, helping Rush stand.
He was a little wobbly, but he started to walk anyway, shaking off the effects of channeling whatever source gave him these crazy prophecies.
“That would make more sense, wouldn’t it? And it could be a real key, or perhaps an answer, like the key piece of a puzzle,” he answered, giving me exactly zero answers.
“Too many puzzles,” I grumbled, feeling sympathy for what my friend Carlyle had gone through to open the Path. Sure, I’d had my own struggles during that time, but at least I’d been free of these fucking annoying riddles.
“It would be so much easier to be a human,” I added, thinking of how they never had to deal with magical bullshit like this.
“Your blood slaveaimawas human, wasn’t he?” Rush asked, and I nodded.
“He died on Earth before I met him. Nicolas gave him blood and magic to reawaken as a turned human, then brought him back here to Haret before the Path failed.”
Rush was gazing into the distant sky, looking thoughtful.
“You know... there is an old story my mentor Tante told me once. About gobbelins. She said the reason gobbelins had to be eradicated wasn’t only because of their threat to Haret, but to Earth as well. Apparently, their blood isn’t actually poisonous to humans. Instead, it’s addictive. Gobbelins using the Path to get onto Earth were causing too many disturbances - creating what humans call zombies with their blood. The humans were growing suspicious of magic, and it was becoming dangerous for anyone from Haret to even visit for fear of being hunted and killed.”
“So Cade might be immune to their poison?” I asked, wading through the history lesson and trying to decide how that immunity might help, especially since he wasn’t actually human any longer.
“He could be. I don’t want to test it, of course, but it might be a thread to pull later,” Rush said, and I smiled at him, grateful that he wasn’t as ruthless as most of the vampires I knew. Like Jillian, who would gleefully test anything on a blood slave.
“Did you see any gobbelins in the countryside as you traveled back from Aralia?” I asked, checking around a corner to make sure it was clear.
I had taken lead, and I was trying to find my way west, into the History section, which I had guessed was north of the Fauna section.
“I did not, though the villages and streets of Saori Sang are full of rumors. I suspect many are true. I did gain a little information about this Trial,” he added, checking the next corner. The labyrinth was eerily quiet today, and it was making me jumpy. I made a gesture for Rush to continue. “Nobody mentioned your death, but there is at least one competitor who has died twice, and not returned from the mist.”
