Page 119 of Labyrinthine
I count the riders as we move. Twenty. Most are strangers. Four I recognize. Tributes. Six are dead.
Darian rides beside me again. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better.”
The others glance back. Conversations die. The weight of unspoken questions fills the space between hoofbeats. They want to know what happened. What I did. What I left behind.
They can wait.
I shift my weight in the saddle. The heat of pain spreads through me with every step of my horse. My joints throb, muscles pulled too tight beneath skin that doesn’t fit me anymore. Something stirs beneath it all—cold, coiled, restless. The magic inside me hasn’t settled. It shifts when I breathe. Prickles when I think of what was and what may come to pass.
I’m no longer the person I used to be. I don’t know what’s left—what’s mine, what’s stolen, what’s ruined. But I do know this: I’m done being steered. By men, by magic, by anything that thinks it owns me.
Darian reaches for my reins, fingers brushing mine. “You were never meant to carry this weight. Not alone. Not ever.”
His voice is soft. Too soft. I pull my hand back before he can hold it.
“If you’re asking how I killed him, I don’t know that I did.”
The words taste sour. Like failure.
Darian studies me, and I can’t tell if it’s worry or calculation in his eyes. He smiles, too quickly, and it doesn’t reach his mouth.
“I’m not worried about Mallen.”
I study him sideways. “You don’t need to be. I left him in no state to follow.”
His expression shifts. A flicker of something. Not fear. Not grief. Something closer to solace.
“He wasn’t getting up,” I add, quieter now.
I stare straight ahead. The road’s just a smear of dirt and dust, vanishing into morning light. I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to see judgment.
“But I didn’t…check.”
“I see,” Darian says, voice too smooth.
I hear the crack of bone against stone. Taste copper. Hear my screams echoing off the walls, though I don’t remember screaming. And Mallen’s silence stayed louder than any sound.
I killed a man the last time I tried to escape Starsfall. That was clean. Simple. Necessary.
But this?
This was different.
This wasn’t self-defense. It wasn’t fate, or magic, or justice. It was messy and personal and cruel. It was Mallen—his voice, his hands, his silence. It was me, screaming. Him, not screaming back.
It was choosing.
Darian’s hand closes around mine. His palm is warm, firm.
“I assumed Mallen taught you how to kill.”
“He never made me do it.”
I let the silence settle over that truth. Another fracture in the armor I’ve barely held together.
We ride in quiet for a time, his hand still wrapped around mine. I don’t pull away. Not yet. But I don’t lean in either.
