Page 97 of Labyrinthine
A nightingale calls once, sharp as flint, and then falls quiet, as if it never meant for its song to be heard.
Neither of us speaks for a long while. The space between us is filled with questions that neither of us dares ask. My steps are uneven, and my heel catches on a root, my ankle twisting as heat sears through the joint. I hiss through my teeth and keep walking, though I’m dangerously close to hobbling.
Darian doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t offer to steady me. Just slows his pace a fraction more, as if he understands that even kindness would scrape too raw right now.
I wrap my arms around myself, jaw tight. The ache in my ribs pulses in time with the pounding in my skull. I should’ve been smart. I should have ridden back to Starsfall and left Darian with the wounded horse. But I decided to walk, and now we’re both picking our way through the half-wild edges of the forest with no torchlight, no trail, and too much between us to name.
The path forks ahead, the right veering steeper, stonier. My boots slip as I angle toward it, and I’m sure that this will hurt on my injured foot. Darian clears his throat softly. “That will take us along the ridge. Left loops around toward the base. Might be easier on your ankle.”
I hesitate. Then take the right anyway.
He doesn’t argue.
The only sound is our footfalls and the wind shifting through high branches. Every step jostles my side and makes my breath catch. But pain is simple. It’s real. It doesn’t wait for answers or apologies.
“What was in the reports?” I ask suddenly. “The ones your spies intercepted.”
Darian glances at me, brow furrowed. “You want the full list?”
“I want to know what you do.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “There were details about troop movements. Trade routes. The new tariffs on ships from Rivenmere and Hawkshold?—”
“Stop deflecting.”
“There was a letter,” he says slowly. “From one of your father’s advisors. Marked confidential. It referenced the ‘progress of the pairing.’ Said Mallen had earned your trust. That you looked to him. That you relied on him.”
My lungs turn brittle.
Darian keeps his voice low. “It said the match was proceeding better than expected. That you’d grown ‘attached.’ That Mallen was...keen.”
I keep my eyes on the trees ahead. The leaves are thinner here. I can just make out starlight pressing through the canopy in fragments.
“He was protecting me,” I murmur.
Darian doesn’t answer.
I swallow, my throat burning. “He was buying me time. He thinks that if I’m strong enough—if I can fight—then I don’t have to be anyone’s pawn.”
“Princess,” Darian says gently, “very few things in life are either or. He can both love you and serve your father. I’m not questioning his emotions. Only his motives.”
We crest a rise. The trees begin to thin. I see a glint of silver ahead—moonlight on stone, or water, or the edge of the road that winds out of the forest. Home is closer than I thought.
I don’t want it to be.
Darian stops walking, but I keep going, slower now. Limping more openly. The adrenaline has faded and everything hurts again.
Then I hear it.
A voice—rough, low, ragged with relief and something sharper.
“Azhara?”
I freeze.
Mallen bursts out from the trees to the right, barely keeping his footing as he crashes through the underbrush. He looks wild, disheveled, his cloak askew, his hair damp with sweat. His eyes rake over me like a man who’s been searching for hours. They flick to Darian, and the shift in him is immediate—tense, coiled, hand flying to the hilt of his blade.
“Did he hurt you?” he demands, surging toward me. “Tell me you’re alright? Did he?—?”
