AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I jumped up, throwing my hands at the walls and praying for something to grip. I wouldn’t stand here and wait to be crushed. The only good part about the walls pressing on me was the adrenaline had cleared my head, and I didn't feel on the verge of a mental breakdown. Just a furious rampage.
The rain stopped without warning, there and gone in a second. Unease tightened my chest.
I yanked hard on the bond rife with stress and cold rage in my chest.Come the fuck on, Wynvail. You love to stalk me; do your damn job and find me.
My fingers slid on smooth, solid stone, and I growled through my teeth as I slid back down. Stone pressed on my wings, so close it felt like a coffin. Cronus might have said he didn't want to kill me, but he had a funny way of showing it.
I glared at the sky—and my heart jolted in my chest. My stomach sank all the way to my boots. Where the sky had been rainy and dark, it was now a perfect blue filled with fluffy white clouds. One of which was stretching towards the high walls of the Labyrinth, four long fingers reaching for me. At first I thought fear was making me irrational, but no, those fingers attached to a palm andthere,that was a stubby thumb. A hand.A handburst out of the sky and dove towards me.
I screamed, pressing my back against the stone, heaving on the walls with all my strength and not caring that a dull ache shot through my wings when I pinned them.
Get me out of here!I yelled at Wynvail, pulling hard on the bond.
I reached for my bond with Wane too, praying for help. His soul rushed towards me, faltering at the fear drenching my entire being. I hoped he didn't know the titan was here. How much trauma must Cronus have given my mate? A hundred years—I couldn't get past it. He'd been the captive of a titan fora hundred years,and I couldn't even begin to imagine what had been done to him in that time. When we connected before, his shadows were being cut away from him.
Was that what Cronus wanted to do to me, too? Cut my power away from me? Devour it like he'd devoured his own children?
White filled my whole vision, blocking out the sky as the hand dove for me. Fingers wrapped around my shoulders, my wings, his palm swallowing my head, and I bleated in panic like I was a goat and not an angel-demon hybrid. What would he do to me? A body-wide shudder made my bones rattle, my breathing little more than gasps.
Magic blasted from the inked marks on my stomach and arm, not seeming to care that the curse had been broken on my power. My heart skipped as crimson light cut through the cloud, lighting up the hand with an eldritch glow, and I threw out my hand on instinct. I had no plans, no idea what I wanted to happen, and I didn't connect with my mates this time.
Instead, my consciousness tore out of my body and I saw—myself, but from above. It was only for a split second, but I watched the hand retreat from around me, and a strange bubble of satisfaction and nervousness filled my chest before I slammed back into my own body.
I splayed against the wall behind me, panting for breath. There was no blistering pain in my body, just trembling terror making my chest tight and breathing a ruin.
As I suspected,Cronus's voice rumbled through my head, snapping me out of my shaky terror.
He hadn't killed me. Annoyingly true to his word. I was still hoping to kill the bastard, though. He'd marked himself for death the second he took Wane.
"You might as well have saidaha!and twirled your evil moustache," I rasped, catching my breath.
You're very promising, Halwen,he told me as if that was a compliment.You'll serve me well.
"The only thing I'm serving you is a death warrant," I muttered, pushing off the wall and glaring when the others remained a foot away, not retreating to give me space. I tested my wings—both still in one piece, thank fuck—and my body—bruised but unbroken.
We'll have to work on that attitude,he commented, seemingly to himself.That shouldn't be too difficult.
I bared my teeth, a snarl in the back of my throat. "I passed your fucked up test. Let me out of here."
Passed? Halwen, that was barely the first obstacle. You've got a long way to go to prove yourself to me.
"I have zero interest in 'proving myself' to you, asshole."5
Cronus said nothing. And the pressure on my skull lifted until I could feel the full impact of the damage he'd wrought. I bit my tongue as pain erupted like an active volcano, my head pounding in three places, and a migraine right behind my eyes.
Cronus was gone. And I was still trapped.
"Fuck," I snarled, and kicked the wall.
11
It had taken me two hours to wedge a gap into a crack between two walls with my knife. All I had to show for my work was an inch of space and a very bent blade.1
"It'll have to do," I told myself, stashing my bent knife and grabbing the edge of the wall with both hands, wrenching on it with all my strength. "Come—fucking—open," I groaned, muscles straining in my arms and back as I heaved on the solid stone.
The entire thing didn't come open, just a space a little higher than an average door. I couldn't begin to understand how the whole Labyrinth worked, and I didn't care as long as I could find my way back to my mates and out of this damned place.
"Stupid—bloody—maze,"I grunted, yanking on the stone hard enough to prise it open a few more inches.
