Page 60 of Labyrinthine
For a moment, he looks like he might protest. Then he thinks better of it. He nods and leaves without another word.
The guards file out too. Only Mallen remains.
“Azhara, I?—”
“Don’t. I can’t bear to talk.”
He bends to start picking up broken pieces, as if that can repair what just happened.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t need to.
The guilt is eating at him, but that doesn’t undo the wreckage. Doesn’t silence the jealousy that still coils beneath his ribs. Doesn’t fix the fact that I’m suffocating in this palace with one man trying to protect me like a secret, and another trying to save me like a prize. And underneath it all, the magic of death bound in me is growing hungrier, more sentient, more desperate to devour everything I love.
Everything is shifting, and nothing sits right. I cannot say how, only that the Reaping is wrong this year. This was not meant to happen. More is hidden from me than I dared believe, and the truth presses close with no way out.
I walk away and lean against the archway leading onto the balcony. I stare out at Threnos, at the marble towers burning gold in the daylight, the silken banners drooping as another afternoon passes, the thousand windows watching like eyes I can’t escape.
Starsfall gleams like a dream, but I know the rot beneath.
I know that beauty can be a prison.
I cry. It rips out of me, its pain violent and loud and soul-deep. An agony so sharp it won’t let me sleep tonight. Won’t let me breathe. My chest caves in and I know—without doubt—what this hurt is.
My heart’s breaking.
It burns. It scorches. And I realize why too late.
A heart can’t break unless it loves.
And I do.
But Mallen loves like a wound, not like a cure. He is the storm I keep walking toward, praying it won’t devastate me. He was never going to save me. Because the terrible, inescapable truth isthat the only shield strong enough to face what’s coming is the one I build myself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My hands shakeas I read my father’s note for the third time. The ink has bled through the parchment. His fury can’t be contained by the page which has been tortured where the quill caught and dragged. He’s livid I missed the banquet last night. Furious about yesterday. Anxious that Darian might have lost interest.
The servant who brought the message is pale, trembling, eyes flickering between the note and me as though he expects my rage too.
“Tell my father,” I say, folding the letter, “that Darian wants a chase, so I’m giving him one. I’ll meet the prince this afternoon. No sooner.”
The boy bows and leaves like he’s been unshackled. Mallen closes the door behind him with a soft thud that sounds heavier than it should.
The silence isn’t peaceful—it’s taut.
It’s the quiet before the first drop of rain falls.
I reach for a book, hoping he’ll give me space, but his presence is like a night that summons the tide toward the shore. Heavy. Measured. I can feel him across the room—every inch of him—like heat from a fire I don’t dare get too close to.
I feel him watching. Too contained. Wanting.
I want him too.
I ache to let his arms wrap around me, to know the strength of his body as he closes off the world. There’s comfort in his control, in how completely he commands danger away. But yesterday, that control slipped. I saw what he keeps beneath the surface—jealousy so sharp it cut through the room—and it shook me.
It wasn’t the aftermath. It was the hunger in his voice, the shadow in his eyes when he thought Darian might take me from him. I know the heat of that possessiveness. The lengths men will go to when it consumes them. The terrifying certainty of it. And I’ve seen what that kind of obsession becomes if no one stops it.
“We should talk about yesterday,” he says, voice lower than usual. Too careful.
