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Whether my voice was in my head or out loud, I didn’t know or care. I had thought the Labyrinth fed on fear, that it would stop punishing me if my fears disappeared. But I was wrong. No exits had appeared, no saviors had arrived. I searched frantically for a way to unlock the door in my mind that caged my fears.
The door was still there, but it was padlocked and arrogant. My own magic had bested me, the novice, and was gloating about it. The tunnel was so dark that the images I saw in my head appeared in front of my open eyes. The free-standing door where I’d locked away my fears sat at the end of the passage, mocking me as if it were real. I was in a reality apart from that door, and yet I had to reach it, had to open it.
I ran forward on clumsy, cold feet. My muscles jerked and my limbs clunked like I was made of wood. The door remained fixed, and as I neared it, a blaze of hope sprang up, that it might in fact be real.
“Let me out,” I muttered, over and over.
Let it out.
Was that me or the maze?
I stumbled into the door. My hands pressed against the rough wood and iron braces. The door felt real. Could this be madness?
My desire to escape didn’t stem from fear of remaining in this dark and cold place, but from a longing for victory over this test and the need to see my brothers’ faces again, when I finally left the Labyrinth. As my hands roved over the lock, I sensed it wanted something from me—a key. I had no physical key, of course, but if this door was in my mind, I must somehow have a way to open it.
But in the few days I’d been practicing magic, I’d never learned any of this.
Maybe this time, I’d shut too much of myself in the locked room. What if everything around me was merely in my head?
What if all of this was a lie?
The Labyrinth always lies.
The walls swayed, and I didn’t know I was falling until my shoulder bumped painfully into the bottom of the door. My forehead hit next. My arm was so frozen I could barely feel it squished beneath me. Still, no fear laced my veins at this dreadful knowledge.
In the place of fear, anger swelled. Anger that I was losing. Anger that I might have what it took to survive, if I knew how to harness my magic—and what to do with it.
“I don’t know what you want! I can’t do this!”
Carefully, clumsily, I pushed myself up and traced the edges of the door with deadened fingers. They did little to help other than prove that the door stood apart from the walls, attached to nothing and with nothing behind it.
The mind mage who’d thrown me into the Labyrinth talked about how I’d been able to fight back, to resist her—at least a little. If only I’d had a tutor! If only I hadn’t been shoved aside my entire life. I briefly wondered who had locked me away from my own magic for so long and why. I’d like to punch that person about now.
I would die here, in this tunnel, because I was foolish enough to attempt magic I didn’t understand.
The king’s bearded face swam before me, as if on the face of a playing card, the same smug, stern frown present in all his portraits. Mind magic was dangerous…outlawed…forbidden.
My stomach churned with the notion that the king was at least partially right—my magic was dangerous, and I might have just sealed my fate by using it on myself.
A new sound, small and rhythmic, jolted me from my macabre thoughts.
Footsteps.
Elation fluttered through my veins. Help was coming!
“Over here!” I shouted. Reason, fighting hard to be wise in the absence of my fear, drove a warning through me that whatever approached might not be pleasant. But reason without fear was merely blind optimism.
There wasn’t one set of footsteps, but two. Possibly more. They drew nearer.
A pale light flashed at the far end of the tunnel, illuminating a small frame. Ferrier bolted toward me, her arms pumping, a strange ghostly light shining all around her. Her red hair whipped back and forth behind her head. Perhaps this place wasn’t only in my mind.
I glanced behind her for Edith, but the young girl’s face told me it wasn’t her sister chasing her.
The locked door behind me clunked a little as I backed into it. Ferrier would slam into me in a few moments, and whatever pursued her would overtake us both. The door rattled from the other side, my fear trying to break free.
“Vera!” shrieked Ferrier, tossing a glance over her shoulder. “They’re coming!”
My face fell. I had little to offer as yet more anger poured down my spine. At least the fury was warming me—but not nearly enough. I still shook from the cold.
