Labyrinth Wolves (Into the Labyrinth Book 2), page 31
“You love him,” Harald said. Then before I could reply, he went on, “So, let’s find a way to keep him alive.”
That stopped me cold. I stared at him, unsure if I’d misheard.
There’d been no venom in his tone.
“Thank you,” I breathed.
Harald shrugged like it cost him nothing, but I saw the tension in his shoulders. “I hope we don’t regret this.”
“We won’t.”
“If you weren’t my captain, I’d criticize your taste in men,” he said under his breath. He lifted a hand to his face and dragged it through his hair, pushing back the straw-colored strands clumped together with sweat and dust. Dirt streaked across his temple where his fingers passed.
He turned toward Leif. “Which way, blood of the wolf?”
“About that…” Leif unhooked his pack and crouched, rummaging through the fabric until he pulled free a small cloth bundle. He unwrapped it slowly, then stood and extended something smooth and pale between two fingers.
A white stone.
The surface was too polished, the edges too clean, the white too luminous to be mistaken for some trinket picked up along the way. It glowed faintly in the dim light like a tiny pearl caught in the jaws of the labyrinth.
Leif offered it to Harald.
“My name card is gone. I’ve earned my white stone.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat. “How?”
“By learning the truth about my father, I suppose.” He turned back to Harald. “I won’t use it. So you can keep it.”
Harald stared at the stone like it might bite him. “It’s not mine,” he said, pushing it gently back.
“Keep it anyway,” Leif replied. “A show of good faith.”
For a beat, no one moved.
Rain hadn’t started yet, but the air had shifted—the kind of hush that settled just before a storm broke.
Harald turned the stone over in his hand before he passed it to his sister.
“If only one of us makes it out, it’s going to be her.”
Tove blinked in surprise as she took it. The stone looked too large in her small hands, a talisman of mercy she hadn’t asked for.
“I won’t use it unless we all get out.” She tucked it into the pouch at her belt alongside her herbs and small stitched charms.
“We’ll see,” Harald replied.
“Very well.” Leif turned with an easy grace that didn’t match the gravity of what he’d just surrendered. “Left.” He jutted his chin down a corridor of dim light and encroaching shadow.
And so we followed. Into the dark, into the storm, into the teeth of the gods.
The maze narrowed into a winding corridor of pale stone that was cold to the touch and hummed with an old kind of magic. Every turn looked the same—walls etched with faded carvings, floors worn smooth by centuries of footsteps.
Tove rebraided her hair as she walked, fingers weaving with practiced ease, even as her boots picked their way over the uneven stone. Wisps of golden hair caught the dim light, shimmering like fine thread as she tugged loose strands back into place. A small sprig of marigold was tucked behind her ear, but she plucked it free now, brow furrowing in assessment before casting it aside and selecting a fresh bit of sage from the pouch at her hip. She threaded the soft green sprig into her braid without slowing, the movement smooth and sure, like this small ritual kept her tethered to something softer than the stone pressing in around us.
I fell into step beside her, careful to match her pace.
“I know you’re mad about the Leif thing.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she said without looking over. She flicked a strand of dead rosemary from her braid and tucked in a bit of thyme. “I understand the attraction. I’m just waiting for him to stab us in the back.”
“He just gave you his white stone. Does that not prove his loyalty?”
“It only proves that he wants us to trust him,” she said. “Not that he won’t strike when we turn around and pluck the stone from our bodies.”
Vicious. I opened my mouth to say so, but Harald was clearing his throat ahead.
“Dead end.”
So it was. The stone walls of the labyrinth had closed in ahead of us.
“Wolf blood not working out too well,” Harald grumbled.
“We went the right way.” Leif pressed along the wall until part of it opened with a great rumble. He gave Harald a victorious look, but Harald merely pushed past him.
As we crossed through the doorway, rain started over the labyrinth.
It wasn’t a gentle drizzle, but a cold, unrelenting deluge that fell in heavy sheets, veiling the world in water. The morning sky was a canopy of solid gray, bloated with storm clouds that churned like something alive. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The labyrinth swung on its chains so violently we had to brace ourselves against the stone walls. The floor tipped beneath our feet like the deck of a ship caught in a storm, and the air tasted of metal and fury. I’d been in more than one storm on deck of the Wolf Pack over the past four years, but none frightened me as much as this one.
Within minutes, lightning forked through the clouds to lance the sky with blinding white fire.
Then it came for us.
A crack like the world splitting open—and lightning struck the ground a breath from my toes. I staggered back and screamed.
Lawson had appeared in front of me without sound or warning to use his broad frame like a shield. The lightning struck him instead. It split the air around us in a deafening clap. His body convulsed once with the force, steam rising from his cloak where the energy seared it, but he remained standing.
“Dimitri loses patience!” he roared over the wind. His voice sounded ripped from a thousand places at once like thunder echoing through a cave. “You haven’t much time left.”
“Then get us to the source of his power!” Leif shouted back, his voice barely audible above the howling wind.
Rain pelted from every direction, driven sideways by gales strong enough to lift roots. It stung as it struck, soaking us through in seconds. Tove clutched her braid, but the herbs woven into it were already slipping free, scattered to the storm like petals torn from a stem. My hair whipped across my face in soaked tangles, blinding me as I stumbled forward, each step a fight to stay upright.
Lightning arced again—closer, brighter, angrier.
Harald let out a shout, but before the bolt could hit him, Lawson moved again. The second shock slammed into him. He dropped to one knee, steam rising from his skin, his mouth twisted in a grimace of pain.
“We will make your path straighter,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “But hurry.”
The storm came mercilessly after that.
Lightning rained from the sky like arrows shot from a god’s wrathful bow. Thunder cracked so loudly it split the stone beneath our feet. The labyrinth itself bucked on its chains, groaning like it might snap free and plummet downward. Wind tore at our cloaks, ripped Tove’s thimble from her belt, nearly knocked Leif to his knees.
We ran.
There was no path—only stone slick with moss and rain, staircases that shifted as we climbed, walls that reared up where there had been none seconds before. The labyrinth was a beast in revolt, and Dimitri its furious heart, watching us scramble through his storm with something like delight.
Somewhere above, his deep voice laughed.
We ran, but the storm was everywhere.
It wasn’t just rain anymore. The labyrinth itself was fracturing. Stones cracked underfoot, walls breathed like lungs, staircases unraveled in midair only to reweave themselves in different directions. Paths we had just crossed vanished behind us, swallowed by brambles or molten light. The very rules of space had begun to fray.
And then they came.
Not wolves. Not lightning.
Gods.
A shriek tore through the maze as a spire of silver light speared down from above. It struck the wall to our right and exploded in a cascade of pale fire, searing a spiral into the stone. The air went cold and sharp.
The Silver Queen had arrived.
Her mark blazed on my skin—burning, branding, binding. I cried out and grabbed my arm. The searing didn’t stop. It flared brighter with every heartbeat.
“She’s burning me!” I gasped as I fell to my knees.
Another bolt came—this time black as pitch, humming with hatred. It struck the path ahead and left a smoking crater where Leif had been a moment earlier. He hit the ground hard, dazed and coughing, but alive.
The mark on my arm burned hotter.
From above, Dimitri’s deep, distorted voice echoed, ancient and amused. “Run, little bloodlines. Let’s see who’s still standing by the end.”
But just as the next bolt of silver raced toward us, another force collided with it midair—flame and rust and gold, crashing together in a swirl of broken magic.
Delilah.
“Get up!” she screamed. Her voice echoed from every corner of the labyrinth, sharp as a command, furious as a mother. “Run!”
Lightning came again—only to splinter midair, swallowed by a sudden gust of ink-black wind. A trail of white feathers followed.
Thief had joined her.
A glowing line of violet carved itself into the stones before us, reshaping the terrain into a winding staircase that hadn’t been there before. August Apothecary’s voice sounded in our ears like a whisper through silk: “Follow that. Quickly.”
We moved, feet slipping, lungs gasping, as magic tore through the sky above us.
The labyrinth had become a war zone—a battlefield for gods, each trying to tip the scales, each choosing a side. The sky above no longer resembled sky at all, but a broken ceiling of warring colors. Red against silver. Gold against black. Pale green light weaving through the chaos as Aurelia Brightspire tried to soothe the wounds being dealt—but there was no soothing this.
We were ants caught between titans.
A jagged pulse of heat spread down my arm. I screamed and stumbled.
The Silver Queen’s mark was blazing now. It seared my flesh from the inside.
“Ren—your arm!” Leif grabbed me. Panic cracked through his voice.
Before either of us could move, August materialized beside me, his coat dripping with celestial ink, his hands glowing with the gold of dying stars.
“It will hurt,” he said calmly. “But you must let me take it.”
“Take what?”
He reached for the mark.
Agony unfurled like a scream through my body. It wasn’t just pain—it was a memory of pain, the kind that echoed across lifetimes. I felt her claws in me, the Silver Queen’s whispers coiling around my bones. She had branded me as hers. I was hers. And August was tearing her out.
My knees hit stone.
With a final gasp, August yanked his hand back—clutching a burning wisp of silver magic in his palm. My skin still smoked where the mark had been.
“She will come for you harder now,” he said. “But she no longer owns you.”
The winds stilled.
The rain stopped.
The labyrinth held its breath.
Then, from every direction—from walls and ceilings and the cold whispering of the floor—Dimitri’s voice returned, calm as still water after a storm:
“Enough.” A heartbeat passed. Then another.
“Leif. I call upon you.”
No.
“You will come to me by nightfall, or the next storm tears you to shreds.”
The labyrinth fell still.
FIFTY
True to their word, the Stone Gods bent the bones of the labyrinth for us. Pathways that had once spiraled endlessly now turned with unusual grace, corridors straightened, dead ends unraveled before we could reach them. Somewhere—above or below or beside us—the Stone Gods were working in tandem to push back against the will of Dimitri and the Silver Queen.
It was the only reason we hadn’t perished already.
And yet, even with the divine path carved for us, the distance stretched on like a cruel illusion. We ran. Hard. Relentlessly. And still the star—burning cold above us, hovering in the distant sky—remained out of reach.
I kept my eyes locked on it as we ran, watching it grow ever closer in size but not in grasp. It hovered just above a spire of stone that must have marked the place where my father was kept. The center of Dimitri’s power. The end of this nightmare.
But no matter how fast we pushed, how much ground we devoured beneath our feet, we would not reach it today. Tomorrow, perhaps. But not tonight. Not before nightfall.
Not before Dimitri wanted to see Leif.
The worst part—the most wretched part—was that we didn’t have time to speak of it. Not really. No time to form plans, or offer comfort, or ask Leif if he was afraid. Every breath was spent on movement. Every inch of strength burned to keep us moving forward.
I’d shed my bag hours ago, dropping it into the mud without a backward glance. Only my weapons remained—slung over my back or strapped to my belt—alongside the flickering fire in my chest that refused to go out.
Tove had kept her medicines, holding the pouch tight to her ribs as she ran, but nothing else remained. Her coat was gone. Her charms and trinkets lost along the way. Only a dagger at her side and fear in her eyes.
Harald and Leif—ever the fools—clung to everything.
But they were slowing. I saw it in the shape of their shoulders, the way their legs dragged just a little more with every passing mile.
The sky above us had darkened into bruised violet. The wind shifted to thread through the stone corridors like a whisper of what was coming.
“We won’t make it,” Harald said flatly. His voice cut through the slap of footsteps and the heave of our breath. “Not by nightfall.”
“We have hours left,” Leif snapped back, pushing harder, shoulders braced forward as if he could outrun the dusk.
Harald didn’t even raise his voice. “Leif. We won’t make it.”
The words were final as a slammed gate.
Leif skidded to a stop. His hands curled into fists at his sides while his shoulders rose and fell in a hard rhythm.
We all slowed behind him. Tove pressed a hand to her ribs as she tried to catch her breath. Harald folded forward with his hands on his knees. I leaned against the wall of the maze where its cold stone leeched the heat from my spine.
We were still deep within the Stone Maze. The walls here were tall and narrow, rising like jagged knives into the darkening sky.
The star blazed brighter now—but it was still too far.
Too far to reach before the sky went fully black.
Too far to save Leif from whatever summons awaited him when the night turned.
A heavy stillness fell over us, broken only by the sound of our breath and the distant, cruel laughter of thunder.
Leif stood tall. But in the silence that followed, I could feel the shift in him—like a blade steeling itself before it’s thrown.
“What do you think happens if we ignore his summons?” I asked. I already knew the answer—horrid things, unspeakable things—but I couldn’t bear the thought of sending Leif back to Dimitri.
Harald stood with his arms crossed, jaw tight, every inch of him carved from battle-worn resolve. “We shouldn’t mess with him right now,” he said. “Go. Hear what he has to say. Then make it back to us.”
The pause that followed wasn’t long—but it felt like a chasm opening beneath us.
Leif let out a dry laugh and raised his hands helplessly before letting them fall to his sides. “Go where, exactly?”
He hadn’t even finished speaking before the labyrinth answered.
A thin trail of black smoke unraveled before us. It slithered forward, carving a path into the deeper tunnels. A cold wind followed, so sudden and biting it made me flinch.
I swore the temperature dropped ten degrees.
Aurelia Brightspire stepped from the shadows like a ghost in glass. Her silver robes shimmered like moonlight on a still lake, but her presence cracked the air like frost on bone. Her golden eyes flicked toward the smoke, then to us, as if measuring how much we could endure before we broke.
“You shouldn’t refuse him,” she said.
Her voice, normally velvet-soft, held an edge now—like she too had been running. Like even the Stone Gods were tiring.
“And if he kills Leif?” I asked. My voice broke in places, but I didn’t care. “What then?”
“He can’t,” Aurelia replied, gaze steady. “He can beat you down with a storm though, or keep you alive forever to torture you. There are fates worse than death that will have you crying for an end. He’ll pick one of those fates if you don’t show.”
“Can one of you go to protect him?” Harald asked.
“The rest of us are occupied,” she answered. “Dimitri is not the only threat in play. We’re holding Vincent back… and the other one.”
“Other one?” All our voices echoed.
Aurelia hesitated—a rare crack in her composure. “A man,” she said slowly. “I don’t know his name, but Vincent called him S.”
The ground seemed to shift beneath my feet.
S.
My father’s last meeting.
The unfinished note in the ledger. See S.
A name buried in ink and half-truths.
The spy.
My mouth went dry. I glanced toward the others, but Harald’s eyes were on the smoke trail. Tove looked ready to collapse. Leif, grim-faced, stared into the dark path ahead as though it had teeth.
But my mind was back with the Silver Wings.
Every false lead. Every time we moved and Vincent somehow kept pace. Every time our plans seemed known. Was it Jorin?
It might not be. It could be someone Vincent brought with him. But I got the sickly feeling that Jorin was the one who’d betrayed us all along.
I swallowed hard, forcing my breath to stay steady. I couldn’t unravel it here, not while the sky pressed so dark above us and Dimitri waited like a beast in his den.
Later. I would follow that thread later.
“Go,” I told Leif, forcing my voice to hold steady. “We’ll wait here. And we’ll come after you if you’re not back by morning.”
