Something sharp bit her hand and she gasped, jerking away from the ivy.
“Ow!”
She checked her palm. A little red dot formed, with a thorn jutting out from it. Before she could pull the thorn out, a new pain stabbed her other hand.
She tried to grab a different part of the plant, but thorns kept sinking into her hands each time. In her panic, Kate lost her footing and fell, landing hard on her side. Pain throbbed through her body as she tried to catch her breath. After a long moment, she rolled to sit on her backside and plucked the thorns out of her hands one by one.
The ivy hadattackedher. She stared at the beautiful leaves that rippled innocently with the breeze as if nothing had happened.
Climbing was out.
“Can’t blame me for trying,” she muttered. The red welts the thorns left were another nuisance, but she could power through it. She had to. Roan was clever. It might not have occurred to most people to just climb the walls, but apparently he’d thought of it and prepared for it. And if the walls were lined with thorns, what other traps might she run into?
Kate got to her feet, brushed herself off, and held up her right hand, but she was careful not to touch the wall this time. From what she’d seen of the castle in the distance, it would take her a day walking straight through, which meant it was going to take too long to walk through the labyrinth’s twisting paths. She needed to speed up. Kate’s body ached from her fall, but she could at least jog. She was in decent shape and if she moved faster, she could get through the maze quicker.
Kate jogged for what felt like an hour before she took a break to walk and catch her breath. The labyrinth was starting to feel monotonous. The hedges seemed to go on forever in slow curves or sharp twists, yet they were somehow the same. Her own footfalls and her breath seemed to match the ripple of a breeze that moved along the walls of ivy, like the labyrinth was breathing with her. She knew logically that wasn’t possible, but it didn’t stop her from thinking that the labyrinth was somehow connected to her.
The farther she moved into the maze, the taller the walls seemed to get, and the more the ivy would overhang the gap, which meant less of the pale sunlight could reach and warm her. Was she going underground? Or were the walls somehow growing above her? She couldn’t tell. She studied the sky and had the eeriest sensation that she was being watched, but she saw no other creature near her or above her. She shivered and rubbed her arms. At least Babbitt had dressed her in warm clothes.
Keep going. Don’t stop. Just keep moving.
She was still jogging when she burst around a sharp corner and barreled into somebody who was bent over.
“Oof!” a deep voice grunted as the person she’d collided with fell flat on his face, spilling a bag of rocks that sparkled in the muted light.
“Sorry!” Kate tried to catch hold of herself against the wall.
“Oi, what in blazes are you doing here, girlie?” the creature she’d crashed into demanded, his dark eyes narrowed in suspicion.
She tried to figure out what he was. Some kind of goblin, maybe, or a very tiny troll? He was only as tall as her shoulders, though taller than Babbitt back at the palace. He had a mass of dark hair that fell past his shoulders and a bushy black beard.
“I’m solving the labyrinth,” Kate said.
A harsh laugh escaped the creature. “Are you, now? No one solves Lord Arun’s labyrinth, foolish girl. No one ’cept Lord Arun himself.”
“I’m not a girl,” Kate said, holding her temper in check.
The creature snorted as he looked her over. “Ah. You must be Lord Arun’s human pet. I’ve heard the pixies chitter on an’ on about you.”
“The pixies?”
“Oh, aye, little bastards won’t stop yammering,” the creature grumbled. “Of course, anytime the king does something, the pixieshaveto have their say, don’t they?” He sniffed and looked her up and down. “Well, who are you, then, girlie?”
“I’m Kate, Kate Winslow.” She held out a hand to the creature after he bent over to retrieve his small leather bag from the ground and collect the last of the sparkly stones, which he dropped inside the bag. He slung it over his shoulder and glared at her, but he didn’t take her hand.
“Name’s Patch. Well, off you pop, then.” He turned away and started to leave.
She gently tapped his shoulder, and he looked back at her. “What is it?”
“Forgive me, Patch, but do you mind if I ask what kind of Fae you are? I don’t know anything about this place. I only just met my first brownie. And Roan, of course.”
“Oh,Roan, of course,” he said in a high-pitched girlish voice. “You humans. Lord Arun is the most powerful Fae in the realm, and you call himRoan.” He shook his head, muttering something about young’ins and a lack of respect.
Kate didn’t want to call Roan by his title. It felt like calling him Lord Arun would give him power over her, and she desperately needed to keep him on the same level as herself.
Patch snorted. “I’m a kobold. I work in the royal mines.”
“The mines? What do you dig for?” She was genuinely curious.
