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She took my hand in hers. “Vera, I’ve made up my mind.”
I backed up as a wave of sadness threatened to crash over me. I didn’t want to lose Nan again. Holding on to a branch, I leaned out over the edge of the fort and called for Ash. In a moment, he climbed into view and joined us on the platform.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Can you convince Nan that she’s coming with us?”
Ash peeked around me at Nan. “No. She’s as unyielding as her magic.” He nodded at her with a faint smile touching the corners of his lips.
Whirling on Nan, I huffed, trying to think of what to say to change her mind. Before I could craft my argument, however, Ash cleared his throat, drawing my attention back to him. His face was down as he spoke, his expression concealed by his hair falling over his shoulders.
“Even if you’re right about the door, I can’t come with you,” he said. “I can never reenter the mortal world. I must live in this limbo forever, between life and death, paying for what I did. I’m sorry, Vera. Besides, if I ever leave, every monster in this place would be able to leave too. There would be no one to keep them from escaping through an unlocked door.” Breathless, he said again, "I can't come with you."
19
My lips parted and the breath sucked from my lungs. A door in the floor of my consciousness opened, and I fell through, sinking into a vastness that I hadn’t known existed within me. I had been alone before. I had felt empty before. But there had always been Archer and Danny. My mother’s rejection had hurt continuously for years. And now I realized that I had used this space to shut away feelings of emptiness and loneliness as well as hurt. In my weakest moments, I’d had this trapdoor, and I’d shoved my feelings down into it and locked it, over and over again. And now I’d fallen into them. I was drowning.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and pushed past Ash, dropping to the lower level of the platform. For several seconds, I stared at the massive tree trunk, shoulders heaving up and down as I tried to make sense of Ash’s words.
When I felt him approach behind me, I spun and glared up at him. “You think you're too wicked to be happy,” I snapped.
A hardness crept into his features.
“You believed what the king said, didn’t you? That you can never atone for your actions.”
His jaw flexed.
“Just because we all have the potential for evil doesn’t mean we’re all as evil as we can be. It’s our hearts that make the decisions. If we built a Labyrinth to mirror our souls, each one of us would have dangerous beasts inside. Yes, you chose wickedness for a time. But you’ve changed. You even said yourself you’ve tried to keep everyone alive here.”
Nan hummed her agreement from behind him. I’d nearly forgotten she was listening.
“But people have died here. And many others have gone mad,” Ash countered.
Nan’s voice cut through our little argument. “The king forced you to do this, to lock that magic in place. It’s not your fault the people here have gone mad—it’s the king’s.”
His eyes flicked toward her. “I did it willingly,” he muttered, as if afraid to voice the words. “I thought I was doing the world a favor.”
“No!” I grabbed his hand. “You must stop punishing yourself. Besides, you can restore their minds. You can set them free, like you did for Ferrier.”
The skin around his eyes loosened as sadness washed over his features. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
I wasn’t deterred. Shaking his hand up and down as I spoke, I pressed him to understand. “They’re mind mages. Your Labyrinth has control of their mind. If this Labyrinth is you, then you have their sanity somewhere tucked away in one of these corners that keeps shifting. The Labyrinth feeds on fear and breeds madness, but you have control over the Labyrinth.”
His eyes narrowed, then widened. My words pricked something deep within him—guilt…and perhaps, a flicker of hope.
I smiled at him. “We’re going to get out of here, and you’re going to restore the minds of all these people.”
He shook his head. It was a faint movement, barely noticeable but for the way his hair twitched at the sides of his face. “I can’t do that.”
For a moment, I studied his face, searching for answers hidden beneath the surface. He had an entire history I didn’t know, a past more haunted than I could imagine, and he was capable of terrible things. I should want to walk away from him, to nod politely and let him let me go. Instead, my blood heated at the sight of him, and I felt pulled toward him as if we were magnets drawn toward each other across space and time.
“Nobody should have the potential to do what I did.”
I recognized in him the same veiled sadness I’d carried for so long. Mine had hardened into anger that only required the tiniest prick to rise up into rage. The anger pinching his brow had the sting of guilt, and his guilt had been powerful enough to manifest a prison for himself.
“I used to think of myself as less than everyone else who could do magic at will,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as memories nipped like violent little monsters in my mind. “I hated that everyone overlooked me, that my magic was broken, so I shoved all my hurt and anger into a part of my mind I thought I could ignore. But pushing my problems away never solved anything. You can’t bury your guilt here and assume it’ll stop bothering you.” I loosened my arms and placed one hand on his chest. My skin tingled as the rhythm of his pulse echoed up my arm. “You tried that. It hasn’t worked. You need to leave it behind.”
When movement caught my eye, I jumped a little. Nan had risen to her feet and was grasping a branch for support. Her eyes were red with tears.
“Nan. Come with us!”
