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I tried to reach for the door.
“Not so fast,” my captor cooed.
My arm remained pinned at my side. My glare hardened, and the sweat intensified as my anger deepened. This woman could control certain muscles in my body while relaxing others. It was a level of control I’d never dreamed was possible.
Nan had lived through the war, seen the atrocities mind magic had performed. She’d been young, one of the last mind mages to receive official training. She never complained when her magic was outlawed, never complained when the king literally burned every temple and toppled every statue dedicated to her affinity. She always said it was for the best, always complied with every regulation, every new law restricting her magic. She’d passed away before the regulations had intensified and the king had decreed that every mind mage was to be thrown into the Labyrinth.
My Nan had only ever performed mind magic in front of me once. It was the day Grandpa died. When my mother found him face down in the garden, she nearly lost herself with grief. She’d had a sharp trowel in her hand, and I’d been attempting to take it from her madly flailing hands. Nan had stilled my mother’s movements and loosened her grip on the metal blade.
No one had reported Nan’s use of magic, but she’d felt burdened to do so. Watching Nan walk through the streets, her wrists in iron shackles, had pinched my heart with an ache that never really let go. She was too old and frail for such humiliation. My family never recovered from the incessant snide remarks, both about Nan and about my mother; the details of why Nan had used her magic had been publicly announced by the magistrate as he’d manacled her in the town square.
My eyes drifted to the woman. She was clearly well-educated in forbidden magic. I’d heard rumors of secret Guilds, underground academies for mind magic. Archer had teased me about running off with these secret mind mage Guilds every time I came home late from the market or after wandering too long in the meadows by our house.
But in my entire life, I’d never made anyone do something. There had never been proof that I had Nan’s magic—in fact, there was more proof that I had Grandpa’s magic, spotty as the evidence was.
I couldn’t lift my arms or legs, but when I tried again, I loosed my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
“Where are you taking me?”
The woman tsked at me. “You should have asked a better question—”
My tongue once again froze in my mouth.
“—while you had the chance.” She flashed a mirthless grin. “You will see where we’re going when we get there.” Her shoulders shifted back and forth in a satisfied way.
The carriage soon rolled from cobblestones to dirt road and passed the last buildings at the edge of Westburg, their outline through the lace carriage curtains fading into the dull green and brown of the Imperial Forest.
She was going to dump me in the Labyrinth without a trial.
I’d never even performed mind magic and likely couldn’t pass the tests they’d put me through at the Guild. I never thought I’d want to go to the Guild for the mind mage probes, but everything inside me burned with fury at the thought of being denied this right.
I tried to make my eyes say what my tongue couldn’t.
The woman chuckled at my scowl but pressed two fingers to her lips. Sweat beaded on her brow, and I sensed it was not merely from the heat.
Holding me captive like this was draining her.
If only I knew how to use mind magic, I might be able to resist her, to break free of her mental hold. But my magic was finicky, and even if I had learned all the mysterious ways of mind mages—of meddlers—my powers always slipped from my fingers right at the moment I needed them most.
After several more silent minutes during which I glared at her and she ignored me, the carriage slowed to a stop. My heart lurched. We were deep in the forest.
Like an actor following stage directions, I moved toward the door, unlatching the handle and stepping out into deep shadows. Stumbling off the carriage step, I fell to the ground in a part of the forest so thick that very little sunlight reached me.
I glanced back at the woman in the carriage. She waggled her fingers and flashed a sinister smile.
Her magic compelled me forward. My foot hooked a root, and I went down again. For the briefest moment, I felt my mind return and my limbs flood with tingling energy. I scrambled to my feet and turned, only to find the movement excruciating.
I groaned and turned back the way the woman wanted me to go, toward a single, free-standing blue door half-covered in vines that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The paint on the door had cracked and worn off, showing the dull brown wood beneath. I knew this door. Every child in Westburg and Varich had heard tales of this door.
The door that populated infinite myths and nightmares.
A scream tore from my bespelled lips, overriding the magic that controlled my movements for a single, earsplitting exhale.
This was the door to the Labyrinth.
For the first time in my life, I wanted nothing more than to possess my grandmother’s power. I tried to remember what I’d heard other mages say.
Concentrate.
