Page 154 of Labyrinthine
The smile that curls his mouth is so tender it burns.
“It wasn’t supposed to be her.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me, like he’s already won. Like this is a game he’s been playing for years, and now I’ve finally arrived to lose it.
“But she betrayed me.” His fingers stroke the pommel of his sword with reverent care, as if it’s a memory he treasures. “For you.”
The air thins. The world narrows. I can’t breathe.
My mother’s face flashes before my eyes. It’s not real. I never saw it long enough to remember. I’ve only seen it in paintings, in portraits he once had hung like relics. I don’t even have fragments of memory. No lullabies. No bedtime stories. No silk shawl stained with her perfume.
I look at him—and Isee.
“She was going to leave. Killing you would have kept her mine.”
“You poisoned her,” I say, voice rising, cracking.
A pause. A single flicker of silence.
The flames rise higher and fade back down.
“I tried to save her. But she wouldn’t stop fighting. For you.”
I take a step forward, and the shadow ripples with me.
“Her death looked like childbirth. You let them blame me.”
He spreads his arms. “Starsfall needed someone to mourn.”
And now the fire wraps him again, searing the marble at his feet. The nobles flinch deeper into the shadows.
“She screamed for you,” I say, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I want it to be. I need it to be. “While you watched her die.”
His sword scrapes free of its sheath.
I raise mine to meet it.
“Once I’d hoped you’d be a worthy heir,” he says. “Now I know you’re a blight sent to ruin me.”
I breathe, and the darkness coils through my fingers and dances up the blade like frost on steel. “Not a blight. Your ruin anyway.”
He strikes.
I block and then vanish.
The darkness swallows me, draws me into its fold. I am night. I am death. I am the thing he tried to kill in the cradle—the afterbirth of ruin and miracle. Not daughter. Not shadow. Not girl. I reappear behind him, the edge of my blade slicing for his spine—but he turns, too fast, too practiced. Flame bursts from his hand and sends me flying back, slamming against the blackened pillar.
Pain bursts open in my ribs, red and bright and ringing, like a bell struck from the inside. I can’t tell if they’re broken. It doesn’t matter.
He stalks forward, fire rolling at his heels. The shadows flee before it, but they’re not gone. They’re circling. Watching.
“You always knew to fear me,” he says. “Even when you were small. You’d scream when I came near.”
“I knew what you were,” I gasp.
He raises his hand, and the fire lashes out—but I’m already moving. I dive into another shadow, and the floor buckles beneath me. The world warps, bends,shifts. My body snaps into nothingness and back again, not where I meant to go as I move through the dark, but close enough. I stumble out of the shade,disoriented, barely catching my balance. I swing my sword on instinct.
And this time, it catches flesh.
