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“What do you feel?”
His question prodded me from my temporary stupor. “It’s cold.”
A half-lie. I was sweating, but the air was cold around me.
“I feel the stone bench behind me, the damp fog around me, the breeze against my skin, and the hunger inside me.” I broke away from his intense stare. “I see trees and a crumbling abbey and a misty blue forest. And you. What’s so strange about any of that?”
He reached for me, and his thumb grazed my cheek, then he let out a startled, single-note laugh. My heart flipped, and I sucked in a breath.
“Did you say blue mist?”
“It’s sort of silvery blue.”
He snapped triumphantly. “That’s it.” He backed away so fast he pulled a cold breeze behind him that tugged at my loose hair. “Vera, there’s no mist here.”
I glanced around. The forest was covered in it. “But…”
“It’s summer. There isn’t heavy mist in summer.”
“This is the Labyrinth. I assumed anything goes.”
He tilted his head back, smiling. His long hair brushed his shoulders, and I was distracted by the point in his throat. “That’s true. But I can assure you, this Labyrinth is not misty. That’s entirely too predictable, and this place was built to shock and frighten.”
Wrapping my hands around my shoulders, I spun in a half circle, turning away from Ash to observe the way the mist swirled and danced, a creature all its own.
My blood chilled and gooseflesh formed down my arms. “All of that is magic?”
His voice was closer when he answered. “Yes.”
I didn’t turn to face him as my body began to tremble. “All this time, it’s been right in front of me. But I’ve never seen magic before,” I admitted, still unable to face him. “Why can I see it here?”
His heat warmed my back—he was so close. I still couldn’t fathom why I was attracted to a man I’d grown up reviling, but here we were. Turned out that the childhood nightmares about monsters in the water were more real than the history lessons we’d learned about the war.
“If you’ve never seen magic before,” he said, “then the only explanation is that someone locked an enchantment on you to keep you from seeing it and that the enchantment broke when you entered the Labyrinth. Outside spells can’t make it through the door.”
Warmth flooded down my spine so suddenly I shuddered. Whirling around to hide my tremor, I peered up at Ash.
“Who would do that?”
His jaw worked as he considered this. “Someone keen to keep you from discovering your magic.”
A quiet breath rushed from my mouth. “The only people I can think of that fit that description are my mother and the king, and the king doesn’t know I exist. Or at least, he didn’t until his minions threw me in here.”
I swallowed. Could my own mother have done this to me? The memories I kept buried, her screaming at me or ignoring me, all flooded my mind. I choked on my next breath. Ash touched my shoulder hesitantly, and I pressed my hand over his, relishing the warm, comforting touch.
“But she’s not a mage,” I whispered, unable to look up at Ash.
“Then it was someone else. It had to be a lock.”
When my eyes finally met his, I couldn’t stop the steady shake of my head. The only other lock I knew was Nan. But why would she want to keep me from my magic?
“Will it always look like mist?” I asked, eager to turn my thoughts to something productive and less painful than the reality that someone had caused me to be so bad at magic for so long—to be an outcast.
“No. It can vary, but it seems we’ve found your lens. You can see magic.”
“What’s your lens?”
His jaw worked a moment before he answered. “I can taste it.”
