The fire roars before me, the gold and amber flames dancing, reaching for the sky within the labyrinth walls. The stone, plant-covered walls curve around where we camp.
Laughter and talking fills the air as the others dance and drink. Mead and the scent of sex saturates the air and my nostrils. Here, I am free to change and be who I want. With them. My people.
Tomorrow I will be taken back, returned to my cell. Tonight is my prize for my fifth victory, yet more proof of how powerful my queen is. My people are imprisoned here, yet they don’t see it. Don’t see how she controls the walls coated in magic. The mist directing them back and forcing helpless humans in here to be killed. Her enemies.
My people are happy, thriving...but kept here like animals. The walkers of the maze, the killers. Yet, they laugh. They mate. They die and live here, never seeming to realise it is wrong. It’s possible I know this because I have left the maze, I can see past the magic, but they cannot.
Yet every time I am allowed back here, I take it, because it fills me with a sense of kinship, that loneliness fading away from just being in their presence even though I sit apart from them with my back to the maze wall, the palace of my queen visible behind me. Only I sit at this fire. The others before me.
Together yet apart.
Until a child breaks from the gathering and heads my way. She’s small, so small, her brown hair brushed back in warrior braids, the lower half of her face covered in a red hand mark. Horns, small ones, protrude from her head, which shows she is a high blood. Only the high blood—descendants of the original monsters of the maze—can change into human form. Or shift features.
She stops before me, her head tilting adorably, that small arm outstretched towards me with a skin of mead. “You should drink.”
“Why?” I rumble.
“You look sad, and whenever they look sad, the drink makes them happy again,” she states matter-of-factly, and thrusts the skin at me again.
A small smile curves my lips as I accept the skin and draw a long drink. “Can I have some?” she inquires, her voice small but strong. She plops herself down next to me, her feet kicking near the fire. She’s unafraid in my presence...not like the others who look at me with fear and pity.
“No,” I tell her, and look at the fire, dismissing her. She shouldn’t be around me. I’m a killer.
“Why?” she questions.
“You’re too young,” I grumble, and she seems to consider the answer before leaning forward.
“I’m thirteen tomorrow,” she whispers, and I suck in a breath.
Thirteen, only three years until she is forced to walk the path...to find her own way in the maze. A barbaric act, but one given to every child of the labyrinth.
“Still too young,” I tell her, and she sighs, the sound older than her time.
“My daddy says the same.” She pouts.
“Where is your dad?” I ask, looking around, but no one pays attention to the child.
“He left me here, said he heard something in there.” She looks at the dark opening of the maze, fear and wonder in her eyes. “That was two weeks ago, I hope he comes back soon. I can never fall asleep at night without him singing to me,” she murmurs in fear.
“The screams?” I query, and she nods solemnly.
“I hear them all the time, they are scary,” she replies sadly.
The screams of the lost souls, the dying. If her father is out there...he’s responsible for the screams in her nightmares...but two rotations. That’s a long time to be gone. Usually they do one sun turn, not two whole rotations. That means he’s overdue to come back to his baby girl. I hope he is okay.
“Will you sing to me?” she whispers. “I-I want to sleep.”
“Child—”
“Please?” she implores, her big eyes pleading with me, leaving me unable to say no.
Sighing, I throw back the skin and drain it before wiping my mouth on my arm. Focusing on the moon, I begin to sing. A tale of a pale goddess, the moon, coming to earth. She walks among us, through the maze, and frees us. Breaks the chains of the monsters and releases us, her heart so big that she loves us all. But she has to go home, she has to leave. She returns to the sky without her monsters.
As my voice croons into the night the girl shifts closer until her head is on my lap, her eyes closed. I don’t move, dare not disturb her as I feel her small body relax. When I look away from her, still singing, I see the others gathered around my fire.
Their voices slowly join in, tales woven together through time. Tales of sorrow, of love, of hope, and pain. A shared destiny, a shared understanding. And here, next to the flames and before the palace of my oppressor, I find my people.
They no longer look at me with fear...but with understanding.
With hope.
I am one of them, a beast of the labyrinth.
I pull back from the memory and look at Dawn. “It was the first time I felt at home. I heard they all died when I escaped, whatever was left of them.”
“Thank you, my bull,” she says, tears in her eyes.
I wipe them away and kiss her softly. I want my life to be like this forever, and I will learn from the past. I won’t let my hate ruin this, and when I look back, I will remember all the good that came with the bad.
Because of her.
Draya, my goddess.
Our saviour.
I made a deal. We all had our time with her today apart from Lucy and Nos. Nos agreed to spend time with her tomorrow, and Lucy... well, who knows about him. So tonight, she is mine. All mine. I pull her closer. Dume dropped her off where I had been waiting, laying in the silk, four-poster bed with candles around the room. I prefer them to real lights, as Griffin called them.
She jumped on the bed and crawled straight into my arms. I turned us and pulled her back to my chest, our legs locked together. This is what I missed most, holding someone when the night dawns and the cool comes. When the dark blocks out the light, I missed holding someone through it, to not be alone when the nightmares rear their ugly heads and those skeletal fingers of death and the souls I have taken reach for me.
“Jair, do you wish you had longer with your family?”
I debate her question, not wanting to offer her false information. “Yes and no. I can never forget the time I had with them, it is precious because of everything that happened. Yes, I wish they had a longer life that never had to end that way. But everything happens for a reason. I wish...I wish for a great many things, my love. But wishes are not reality, what happened, happened, and I cannot change that. All I can do is learn from the past and do my best to treasure the time we had together, even if it feels like they existed with and loved another man. They were happy, we were a family. Now that time is over, now my time is with you. I have learned, I have lost, and now I have love again. A love so strong I feel like a new man. I feel all those shadows and grey areas becoming whole again. Why?”
“For everything that’s coming, I’m afraid. Afraid to lose those I love. I never had much to lose before, just me, and now I’m scared I’m going to regret this. Regret not spending more time with you guys, not finding us a way out that means we don’t have to face what’s to come,” she admits, her voice wrapping around me.
“That would make you a coward, my love, and you are no coward. You are a general, a leader, a warrior. You head into fights without thoughts for your own safety, but that of victory. Do not change now, you would never run from this. You will always do what you think is right, even if it means the worst. I, for one, will live every second with you like it is our last, never wanting to miss one moment,” I whisper, and drop a kiss on her shoulder, nudging the shirt away until I can place another over her drumming pulse.