I see his eyes flash dark. He advances on me.
Then, the winds change, wrapping around me like wings. I can feel them—my family. All of them. The Tree of Souls is so close. I can feel their love brushing against my skin. It banishes the shadows that crawl all over me. Even if they’ll never forget what I did to them, I know in my heart that they still love me.
“I am loved.” I push against the shadow and fear that surround me.
He staggers, snarling. The dark moves around us. Shadows gather, taking the shape of a person. The gray skin of the dead. One human leg, the other a stump, replaced by gold. Like Oros, the duende of the Luxaria. A swollen belly marked with bites and bruises. Bony arms with sagging flesh. Its face, misshapen and contorted. Teeth covered in black and green decay. It looks at me, and there is no looking away from eyes so black it’s like staring into the terror of the unknown.
“You are the one with all the power,” it tells me, limping around me.
“You’re a duende,” I say, turning to keep him in my sights. “What do you want? Gold? This?” I touch the crescent moon around my neck.
The duende grins, tapping his long, thin fingers against each other. He’s missing two on each hand. He deeply inhales the air around me.
“I want to hear you scream,” the duende says.
It waves a hand, and for a moment, I feel like the space around us spins. The hedges turn over. The sky is beneath me, then above me again.
I blast the duende with my magic, but it goes right through him. He tsk tsks at me.
“You’re supposed to be the chosen girl. You should know that wouldn’t work on me. I am fear. I am the shadow of your mind. I have no name. I am everything you hide, and I cannot be defeated.” Then slowly, the missing fingers of his hands start to grow back.
The duende snaps his teeth in my direction, hungry for more. Then it sees something behind me.
“Be gone,” Nova commands him. “The Devourer sent me for her.”
“I am never gone, girl,” the fear duende says, bowing to Nova. “Remember that.”
Nova walks around me like a hawk. He presses his palms to his temples and screams. “Why are you doing this, Alex?”
“If it bothers you so much,” I shout, “then stop following me. Go back to your master.”
“I can’t!” He takes a step toward me, and I blast out a shield. He presses his hands on it. His perfectly healed hands. “I can’t watch you die.”
I let my shield down. “But you can watch my whole family die, right? You’re so noble.”
“I’m trying to make this right.”
“Try harder!” I shove him to the ground.
When I turn around to run, there’s a snarling shadow beast at the end of the path. The maloscuro’s snarling teeth are wide open and coming for me.
“Get down!” Nova shouts, blasting his light. The labyrinth starts to change again. He grabs my hand. “Come with me.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the maloscuros.” I pull my hand out of his.
Nova shoots a blast of burning light at the maloscuros running toward us. I swing the mace like a baseball bat and slam it into the shadow creature’s face. Blood sprays my skin. My hands tremble as I pull my weapon back just in time to swing at the next one.
We’re surrounded in seconds. The blind giants turn a corner, their feet shaking the earth. Nova creates spears of light in his hands. He slings them at the giants, piercing the tender, unprotected skin of their eyes. When the giants scream, it echoes all through the labyrinth.
I look up just in time to see a saberskin ready to pounce on me. I push my borrowed magic into a shield. It’s weak and it flickers, but it keeps the beast away long enough for me to get a better grip on my mace. I conjure flame in my hand and light the head of my weapon. Then, I bash it into the creature. Its oily skin catches fire. I blast a horde of bat-like creatures that attack overhead. Nova burns them to a crisp.
There are too many of them.
I can hear the Devourer cackle. It sounds like it’s coming from all directions. I concentrate on singling it out, then take the open path to my right when a light blinds me. I don’t have time to scream. His hand clamps down over my mouth. Nova pulls me into a pitch-black corner.
“Sh,” he whispers in my ear. He’s holding me around my waist. The hands of a stranger. They seem empty without the black marks covering his skin. The Devourer is on the other side of the wall. She’s speaking to herself nonsensically. Every now and then, she stops and laughs, then screams and cries out for blood. She curses at the moon and the sun and tells them to hurry up.
“Withdrawal,” Nova whispers.
“No, I had withdrawal,” I whisper back. “That’s something else.”
“She gets this way toward the end, when she hasn’t fed since the last eclipse.”
We’re boxed in my black, trimmed hedges. I remind myself of Nova’s betrayal. I remind myself I can’t trust him. I throw my elbow back and dig it as hard as I can into his gut. Slam my boot against his foot. He grunts and falls, and I lift my hands into the air to—kill him? Can I?
“Take me to the tree,” I tell him.
“Wait, Alex, please.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“Fine,” he snaps. He gets back on his feet. “Encantrix, let me explain.”
I call my borrowed power to the surface. I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to make him hurt the way he hurt me.
He meets my power with his own. I fall back on my ass. “Alex, don’t.”
“Don’t say my name.”
He makes a frustrated gesture at the air. “We don’t have a lot of time. I’m trying to help you.”
“Then get me to the Tree of Souls.”
“I’m trying. You just—you have to know. I was just doing my job. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You didn’t have to try.” I take a step away from him. “You just did. You made me think you were on my side. You made me think I could trust you.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. There’s more I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t do it in front of Rishi.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet. I can see the indecision in his face. He takes several steps away from me, hugging his body. He looks up to where the moon is touching the outline of the sun. When he turns around, he moves so quickly, I don’t have a chance to react—my hands are still raised in the air, and he stops inches from me. I can feel the hum of his heartbeat. Like the time I stole his life force, like the time he carried me in the mountain pass.
“The job was to gather power for the Devourer. I scouted you for weeks.”