Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“You give in to panic, you’ll lessen your chance of getting through this alive,” said Keyes.
Seneca bit her lip. “Does he remember once being a man?”
Talon shook his head.
“He has no memories of that time,” Ajax explained. “Think of it as a past life. This is his existence now. He knows only animal instincts.”
“If we do come across the minotaur,” began Bevan, scratching his neck, “what do we do?”
Ajax gave him a sober look. “You die. No one who encounters him ever lives to tell the tale.”
“How long will it take us to reach the heart of the labyrinth?” asked Sable.
Talon held up two fingers, frowned, and then added a third.
Two to three hours? I silently groaned.
“Once you finish this, you finish Xalbia,” said Ajax. “Let that be your motivation to keep going when things get tough. And they will get tough.”
Talon pointed at Bevan and then jabbed his thumb toward the cave.
“Good luck,” Seneca told him, her brow creased with worry.
Bevan straightened his shoulders and took slow, hesitant steps toward the cave. Ducking his head, he then walked inside.
I inhaled deeply and rubbed my palms along my sides. I felt no shame in admitting that I was dreading the moment when my turn arrived. However, standing around waiting wouldn’t be much better. I’d only become more and more tense as time went on.
None of the candidates looked confident. Some were rigid, some fidgeted, some rocked back and forth on their heels.
Even as I made a concerted effort to stay calm and steady, I found myself nibbling on the inside of my cheek, unable to wrestle back the sense of dread winding its way through me.
Once fifteen minutes had passed, Sable was sent in. Lear went inside soon after. Then Finian. Reeve. Seneca—
“Anara, you’re up next,” Ajax told me.
My throat felt tight all of a sudden. Clearing it with a quick cough, I made my way toward the cave opening. Talon gave me a You can do this look.
I hoped he was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stepping into the cavern was like walking out of a toasty warm house straight into a winter’s night. Looking around, I felt my skin pebble at the chill. Stalactites hung from the arched high ceiling. Tree roots poked out of the stone curved walls that boasted patches of moss and lichen. Small clumps of hard foliage were dotted around the debris-ridden ground.
There was a deathly quiet here. One that made my nape prickle. Occasional droplets of water pierced the silence as they seeped from the ceiling cracks and pattered the ground. Other than that, there was only the occasional low whistle of air coming through the fissures in the walls.
My pulse beating a little too fast, I rolled back my shoulders and dragged in a steadying breath. I could do this. I could. To prove it, I started walking, my boots scuffing the dirt and dead leaves underfoot.
I froze as I heard the flutter of leather wings. Bats. I barely held back a shudder.
Just keep moving.
I took slow, purposeful steps along the uneven ground. And I quickly learned that striving for stealth was going to be beyond difficult when the floor was littered with debris. Every step scraped stone, crunched leaves, or crushed little pebbles. Worse, every sound echoed and carried.
Cursing in my head, I kept moving. The further I walked, the stronger the scents of moist stone, rotting greenery, and stagnant water became. It was dark, but not so much that I couldn’t see well. There seemed to be a preternatural source of faint light. Still, there were too many pockets of thick shadows; too many places where something could hide.
There were also some surprising things lying around.
Headless statues, crumbling spires, animal totems, and the remains of broken walls.
It was like walking through the ruins of an ancient cave-city. I wondered if maybe whoever created the labyrinth had initially made it look quite pleasing to the eye; wondered if it had all been bashed to hell by the minotaur. I’d sure bash every cavern in an attempt to find a way out.
As I weaved in and out of a cluster of stalagmites protruding from the ground, something caught my eye. A shed snake skin. I went utterly still, my entire system recoiling. Freaking fantastic.
So, let’s review. The place was dark. Cold. Creepy. A home to snakes … and a godsdamn minotaur.
It was officially my least favorite place in the world.
Passing the stalagmites, I frowned at the sight ahead of me. The path … it didn’t exactly split, but there were two ways to continue down the cave. You could either climb a set of visibly unstable steps that led up to a narrow, tunnel-like passage and then venture through it. Or you could walk through a slimmer opening … right beneath a nest of overly big buzzing hornets.