Lexa
I slowly turn to Austin’s voice, opening my eyes to first my feet, then slowly look up at figures standing before me. Dozens of them. Faces I recognize. Eyes I know by heart, now milky and unseeing with death.
My body’s paralyzed with fear when Austin parts the crowd. My regiment. Warriors I trained with since I was a girl.
“Did you love me as I loved you?” he asks, his voice distorted, gravely. His golden hair is stained dark with blood, and his body is… ravaged, by violence and death.
“You’re not real!” I shout, my chest tightening painfully. The warriors behind him fade into the darkness, but he remains. He steps toward me, reaching for me, and I feel the touch on my cheek. I scream, stumbling away from him.
He smirks, sucking his teeth, looking me up and down, his gaze lingering on the mark on my neck, and then his gaze turns murderous. “You were mine!”
“I wasn’t. Not ever. Not during the night we spent together, Austin, I would have known!”
“You fucking whore,” he snarls in a tone I’ve never heard him use before. It’s disgusting. Barbaric. Laced with so much hatred, I can taste it. It’s not him.
“You’re not real. This isn’t you–”
“I died for you to live, not for you to fuck the first stranger that crossed your path. Your regiment died for you. Your mate will die for you, Lexa, and then you’ll be alone.”
“No,” I whisper, trying to blink past tears. The maze groans around us, leaves fluttering in a phantom, freezing cold breeze.
“You’ll be completely alone. Unloved. Unwanted. Look at me, Lexa.”
“I won’t.” I close my eyes. “You’re not real. None of this is real.”
He touches me again. It’s a firm–but incredibly cold–touch, like he’s frozen. Like he’s wet, suspended in the very sea that choked on his spilled blood that night.
“He’s the enemy. You fucked the fae. You disgusting pig. You traitor. Do you think the Goddess will ever bless you? Do you think the scum you’ll breed with that filth will be allowed to live?”
I scream and shove him, but my hands pierce nothing but thin air. I open my eyes in shock.
The maze whispers around me. I’m alone. Austin is gone. I’m all alone..
I whirl back and forth, my heartrate skyrocketing to the point I can hear my heart hammering in my ears. I claw my cheek where he touched me, trying to scrub the icy feeling of his dead flesh from my skin, but it’s useless. A keening, otherworldly cry funnels toward me, rustling the leaves. My voice.
It’s my own voice raised in the deepest kind of sorrow lifting through the maze. I slowly turn to the source, but the maze spreads out in a straight, shadowed line, beckoning me to follow the sound.
I turn in the opposite direction and run.
The hedges pass in a blur. I trip, stumble, but manage to stay on my feet. I’ve never felt fear like this. I try to tell myself it’s manufactured. I summon Kaleb’s warning, but it feels so far out of reach. Tears blur my vision. Austin’s image cuts through me like a blade, and the wailing grows louder, stronger, like I’m standing outside of my body, screaming at myself, begging myself to turn around and witness the scene already branded in my brain.
Chessie’s death haunts me, hunts me, as I run for my life, running from the guilt, shame, and despair of the battle on the beach, of the complicated feelings I had for Austin, for his death. I run because my life depends on it, but I’ve lost all sense of direction. Darkness invades my senses, rendering them useless, and now I’m at the mercy of whatever magic is here trying to bore holes in my mind, finding my deepest fears and bringing them to life.
A hedge moves, a new opening rolling into view through my tear blurred vision, and I stumble again, this time falling hard on my knees.
My mother’s cry of anguish bounces through the maze. She calls out my name, over and over again, and I can’t take it. I scream–wail in despair–but my body refuses to move, to get up. I cover my ears and scream again. I want it to stop. I’d do anything for it to stop. I’d cut my ears off, cut out my eyes if it meant I didn’t have to see or hear any of this and just–
“Get up.”
I open my eyes wide.
Blake is standing a few feet away, cloaked in black, his violet eyes misty and bright in the darkness all around him. His voice cuts through the agonized screams of my mom, Chessie, and Austin as I stare at him.
“You’re–you’re not real!”
“You have to get up, Lexa, please,” he hisses, glancing around. He extends a hand but then thinks better of it, and his powers seem to dim before he reins them back under control.
“I can’t take it,” I cry out when my mom’s scream echoes past me again. I press my hands against my ears until my head throbs, and then he’s dragging me to my feet and shaking me so violently I feel my spine crack in several places.
“Wake up, Lexa! You have to get out of here, all right? Look at me.”
I screech, trying to pull away from him, but he tugs me close and… hugs me.
A sense of relief sweeps through me, pulling me into his current. Blake’s warm. He’s solid. He smells exactly like I remember.
We were close as kids. I idealized him, worshipped the ground he walked on. I think I was one of the first who noticed when he started to change and pull away, and after that, Brie was the only one he let get close. It had been a loss I struggled with, especially in the years after Logan left for training and rarely came home. I felt abandoned. Those feelings shoot through me, cutting through the fear that’s rendering me useless.
My hands tremble when I wrap my arms around him under his cloak and squeeze.
Into my ear, he rasps, “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop this from happening to you. I knew. I knew you’d be taken, but I couldn’t see why. Now, I understand, and I’m going to fix it. I need you to keep your head on your shoulders. I need you to win this, Lexa, no matter the cost.”
I’m not sure if he’s really here. He can’t be. Nothing in this maze is supposed to be real, right? This is just a trick of my dying mind, something thrown at me like a life preserver, a last ditch effort to keep me upright.
“Hannibal is in control of this game. You need to fight it. He’s throwing everything he has at you, but he doesn’t know who you are yet. He’s playing on the shallowest levels of your fear, that’s all. You need to keep him out of your head. Block it all out, Lexa. You were trained for this. It’s a mind game. You know how to play those.”
I clutch him tighter.
“It’s just hedges. Leaves, vines, and alders. That’s all it is.” He takes an unsteady breath, his chest rising and falling with the motion. “I will find you soon. You can trust Silas. He’s a good man.”
My fingers lock on his back at the mention of Silas’s name.
“Kaleb will keep you safe. He swore.”
I begin to pull away in shock, but he prevents me from moving, squeezing me tighter and keeping me from looking up into his face.
“I am so sorry for how this ends.”
“What–”
“I’m going to fix it for you both. I’m going to find a way. Trust me. Please, just trust me.” His voice breaks, and he begins to fade in my arms, his touch going slack. I fall in on myself as his body turns to mist, and then he’s gone, and I’m left reeling.
“Blake?” I whisper, blinking. The view of his chest becomes the maze again. “Blake?!”
Silence greets me. Chills fizzle down my arms. I slowly look around. The cries and screams of everyone I love have faded, replaced by an eerie, unnatural quiet that’s almost more terrifying. I reach up, dabbing my aching cheeks, and realize I’ve scratched myself raw.
I think of the fae man, my fellow competitor, and know how close I am to losing my mind just like he did.
What did Kaleb see here?
It was probably worse than anything I could possibly conjure.
I set out in a walk, actually thinking about my next moves instead of just sprinting. I round a corner, sure of my footing, and feel that icy cold wind nipping at my heels again but allow it to guide me for just a moment. Call it curiosity or delirium, but I don’t shy away from the image in front of me–the answer to the internal question I just asked without even speaking the words out loud.
Silas closes a door, refusing to let Kaleb–ten years younger than he is now, my age, I believe–from entering the room he’s guarding. Silas’s shirt is deeply stained with blood as he holds Kaleb back, shaking his head, his eyes full of tears.
I know Alice is in that room without having to see her. I know the scenes playing out as I walk blindly through the maze aren’t mine to recount, but I watch them, following a young Kaleb, bound in familiar chains, his glorious hair shaved to his scalp, around a corner. I keep walking, seeing his culling taking place, where he watches friends from the Glade die in front him, where he refuses to kill a single soul until the very end, when he breaks the neck of a massive fae male, his eyes set on the king.
I keep walking even when thunder booms overhead, and it begins to rain, clouds rolling in to shield what little moonlight I had to guide my path. I keep walking as Kaleb’s games play out–vicious and bloody–blurred by the years he’s spent trying to forget them.
Blake was right–at least, the image of him my mind created to try to bring me back from the point of no return is right. My fear is my greatest competitor here, the one thing capable of bringing me to my knees.
Kaleb’s memories have somehow impacted mine. I have to use them to remind myself what he fought for and what I’ve been called to finish.
I will not be afraid. Not of this maze. Not of the games. Not of the king and his Trials. Not of the uncertain, ever changing future ahead of me.
I turn another corner, and the storm begins to thunder. I stop dead in my tracks. Something glows on the ground only a few feet away. My body aches with exhaustion. I’m not sure how long I’ve been moving, trapped here, but my legs strain when I crouch, my fingertips brushing a pale greenish-blue dragon scale.
It feels real. Heavier than I thought it would be. I look at the black sky, squinting against the cool rain calming my inflamed cheeks. Lis told me the rain that had finally come to the Glade was my doing, that I’d freed the dragon, and she’d blessed us with her gift. Water.
I clutch the scale and notice the rivulets of water rushing over the uneven cobblestone, draining… somewhere.
Draining down.
I grew up in the wilds of the Deadlands. I had miles upon miles to roam whenever I wished because I could always find my way home without fail. Follow the rivers and creeks. Let the power that runs in our braided waters guide me home, to safety.
I squeeze the scale in the palm of my hand, whispering, “Thank you.”
I swear on the Goddess that I hear the dragon’s answering grunt as the rain patters my shoulders with more fervor, and I move.
More screams cut through the rainy darkness, but I ignore them. Instead, I think of my parents. I think of Silverhide cloaked in snow and Solstice trees adorned with lights, the smell of cider and wood smoke. I think of the couch at home and the coffee table strewn with Nora’s painting supplies. I think of an incredibly full dining room table and the lifted voices of my entire family as they gather, those rare occasions when we’re all together. I think of home and find myself wrapped in Kaleb’s embrace. I think of the look in his eyes when he’d turned to me in the ballroom, when our bond snapped into place.
I think of him on that balcony when I’d turned my arrow on the king, how he shook his head and turned away.
He knew then.
He felt it then, hadn’t he?
My throat closes on a sob. I move faster, breaking into a run, leaping over a self-mutilated body curled on the cobblestone. More bodies. Bodies of my competitors. Meg isn’t one of them. It’s the only thing I notice when I turn a corner and find myself face to face with a wide, open… exit.
The arena expands before me, a gate spilling light and the sound of the spectators. The ground vibrates with their shouts and applause, but I skid to a stop, panting.
This is real. I know that without a shadow of a doubt.
But I turn back to the maze, to the darkness that claimed at least five of the remaining competitors, leaving me and two others. For now.
“Show me Chessie,” I command, my voice breaking as tears fill my eyes against my will. “J-just once. Just so I can say goodbye.”
Nothing happens. The rain falls, heavy and cold, washing the scent of my competitors blood away.
“Please?” I whisper, but I’m met with a cool, gentle breeze, a soft command to just… go.
So I do.
I step into the light of the arena against gasps of shock and riotous applause, clutching the dragon scale in the palm of my hand until it breaks the skin.