touch the moon pendant between my clavicles. I feel a weight lifting
off my chest, a truth I didn’t want to see in my own heart.
“My father loved me.”
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.”
I shut my eyes. I see him walking in front of the car that day. I
see him crossing the street while looking back at me.
“It wasn’t hard to find you. There aren’t many of us left, you
know? Everyone knows someone, but none of them had your potential. A
score that big, I could get the Devourer to keep up her end of our
bargain. To set me free. All I had to do was swap out your Deathday
ingredients with mine, and your power would get sent here. It was easy
to do when I dropped off my delivery. I didn’t expect your whole
family to get in the way to protect you. I didn’t know what would
happen, Alex. The Devourer still wanted you. Without you, none of this