If you asked Emilia, she would say the third challenge of the labyrinth should have been babysitting the children. Forget anything actually designed by the labyrinth, this was harder than anything it could possibly throw at her. Before the second challenge, they had largely floated along the path, guided by Emilia and V and the older children, even if those older children had been glaring daggers at one another.

The most despondent of children had been ushered along by the other kids, the smallest carried by Emilia and V and occasionally Gale. Several of the other children had volunteered to carry them as well, but their too small bodies would have been worn down too quickly by the added weight. Those children had been sad, to have their help rebuffed, but they understood.

They had just wanted to be helpful. It was sweet, even if unnecessary and potentially more trouble than it was worth.

Now, Emilia, Gale, Miira, and Sawyer were left practically begging the others to help. They needed to move. They needed help moving the smallest children, their legs too weak to walk much more, their brains screaming at them to sleep. They needed the few children who weren’t staring into the middle distance to help move the ones that were.

There were too many who were, and the ones who were holding on had no idea how to get the others moving.

At the very least, Gale and Miira were talking again. It was a small silver lining, with so much of their group now gone, but it was there. Emilia had learned during the war to hold on to positivity, even in the middle of a nightmare. Latch on to hope and encouragement, even in the midst of a firestorm.

It was what had kept her alive during that final battle. It would keep them alive now.

⸂Any other ideas?⸃ Gale asked as she and Miira gave up trying to haul the dead-eyed children off the ground. The moment they got their feet under them, the moment the two girl’s hands fell away, they would fall to the ground again. Knees tucked close, expression empty and hopeless.

Sawyer had already given up trying to get his friends moving, instead gathering the few boys who were still moving and talking against one wall, along with their friends who weren’t so active. They were playing some sort of word game now, the mood subdued, but occasionally one of the quiet children would speak up, so whatever they were doing was working, if slowly and haphazardly.

Astra pulled closer to Emilia’s neck, her eyes fluttering as the girls began to throw more ideas between them about how to get the other kids moving. The children who knew Sawyer might be coaxed out of their stupor by his easy friendship, but the ones who didn’t… well, one of them had bitten him when he tried to play with them. Another had kicked, and then he’d given up on helping the kids he didn’t know.

Given up for the moment, at least. Every so often, the little boy’s eyes would float back to the other children, and if any happened to look interested in his game, he would pop up to drag them over. Stubborn little thing.

Emilia herself had sat down, a dozen children tucked into her as they napped. Some of the older children had joined the younger ones, any embarrassment they had for seeking comfort from an adult—let alone one who was a visitor—falling away in the wake of so much—

Not death. Emilia wasn’t going to think death, and any time someone dared speak or even suggest those who had disappeared were dead, Benny would pipe up to tell them to knock it off, or he’d knock them off their feet. Seeing as the boy couldn’t have been more than six, setting him firmly in the middle of the group’s age range, it wasn’t the most effective threat. Gale’s glare, however, was, as were the sparks of barely controlled magic shuddering over her hands.

“I don’t think they’re dead,” Emilia had tried to tell them. The combination of stress and sadness and no common language meant that her words had gone misunderstood, several of the kids becoming convinced she knew they were dead. An argument had ensued, Emilia shaking her head vigorously as she tried to make them understand that she did not know anything.

She hadn’t brought it up again—had said very little since then, for fear that she’d make things worse. Realistically, she didn’t know what she’d been thinking, bringing it up in the first place. Sure, she really didn’t think the others were dead, her mind constantly fluttering back to the first labyrinth eating people before dropping them into other locations.

They’d never found Cade’s guard, but for all they knew, he had just been dropped elsewhere and never made it to the end. The labyrinth may not have killed him outright. V had said he almost got trapped in the caves. She herself had almost fallen off the rock wall several times, then been trapped in that lake cavern until Key arrived. Perhaps something similar had happened to the Enclave man. Yes, Key had said the labyrinth was more liable to leave locals alone if there were visitors inside, but he hadn’t said it always did so, and—

Emilia cut her thoughts off, eyes clamping shut, as though that could cut off both the noise in her head and the chaos of the children arguing over whether trying to scream the others into movement was a good idea. Had they been able to communicate, perhaps she would have shared a few stories of her military training—of the screaming soldiers who thought that was the way to get them moving.

✮ ✮ ✮ Three Decades Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮

It was raining. It never rained in this part of the country, tucked far to the south, not quite the Grey Sands, but close enough to be a veritable desert.

“It’ll be raining on the front!” their teacher screamed, a response to someone’s muttered complaints. “You better fucking get used to it, sniv’liers!”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

There were more murmurs from the group of young cadets, as though no one had ever heard a teacher swear before, let alone had one call them names. Maybe they hadn’t. Emilia wasn’t one of them—she’d driven Olivier to swear at her in class a few times, both before and after he had agreed to be her lawyer. That had been in anger, though. This guy, thick with too much muscle in his neck and shoulders and not enough in his lower body, just seemed to be yelling and swearing and referring to them as insects for the fun of it.

Or for effect.

“Why can’t we use skills?” a girl asked—a silverstrain just like Emilia. The girl hadn’t cut her hair yet despite the repeated warnings about safety concerns, the dampening curls falling to her mid-back. The girl was cute, and popular it seemed, despite her irregular deviation. Around her, a dozen other girls leaned out of the perfect posture expected of them and towards her, like she was their sun.

The man who had been tasked with giving them the most basic of training—far too little for where they were going, but the brass had decided there wasn’t time to learn everything they needed, and they'd have to learn on the job—stepped in front of the girl. Emilia had met men like him before, through her father’s work. Bullies. Men—and occasionally women—who believes violence and threats and being bigger gave them power over others. Assholes who believed it gave them the right to strike someone who was barely into adulthood for asking the question that everyone had been thinking.

He yelled something—probably something about skills attracting their enemies and the risk of running your aetherstores out, points that would have been reasonable if not screamed. His hand pulled back when the girl sneered, her mouth opening as though to say something more.

That thick, skill-enhanced fist came down. The girl’s eyes widened. Someone else was moving, trying to get between that fist and her face, but they were too slow—Emilia got there first.

“Fucking rude,” she spit as she flipped the man easily onto his back.

Nearby, a boy from one of the Free Colonies whistled. It wasn’t until later that he’d introduce himself, and she’d learn that he’d seen her teacher—the great Blood Rain General—in an exhibition once. “Recognize that style anywhere!” he’d cheer. The first of many people to follow Emilia just because a great hero of the Free Colonies had liked her teenage self. Her adult self too, technically.

In that moment, however, Emilia had barely registered the whistle, her focus trained on the man at her feet, the girls at her back, now pulling in behind both her and the other silverstrain girl. What a pair they made, girls who so many assumed were empty brained, genetic wastes.

“You!” the man started to say, eyes growing wide as her power pressed down on him.

“I didn’t sign up to get yelled at or watch people I should be able to respect beat on their students,” Emilia sniffed, holding herself back from leaving—from following half the class leave, mostly the girls and Free Coloniers, she’d later learn—in case the man decided to try something else. Another boy joined her, aether flooding out of him in silent threat, his appearance so out of place that it had taken a moment to realize she knew him—knew him well, unfortunately. “Halen!?”

Halen’s lips pulled up into that terrible, arrogant smirk of his. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you of all people here, Em.”

✮ ✮ ✮ Present ✮ ✮ ✮

Three children tumbled off her as Emilia bolted up and towards the group of children, who were quickly growing too irate—too handsy—in their attempts to get the others to move. “Don’t,” she said, hand clasped around the wrist of the boy who had been looking like he was about to hit the boy at his feet. No one could hear her, but her intention was clear enough: there will be no violence between us.

She sighed, making a series of motions that thankfully Gale was about to decipher. Everyone needs to rest. Do not hit. Sorry, I rolled a bunch of kids off me. One of the children she’d disturbed grumbled in complaint, tucking themself into another child who was somehow snoring through their aethervoice nearby. Astra yawned and pushed herself up, wiping furtively at a patch of dirt wiped over her nose. The third child watched her sleepy, half-hearted attempts at cleanliness through wide, blurry eyes. They laughed, the sound like a bell of calm hope through the room.

It had been an hour, maybe two, since a third of their group had disappeared. No one had laughed or smiled since, not until this moment. The girl leaned forward and wiped the smear of wet dirt off Astra’s cheek, laughing and smiling. Gale’s mouth twitched, and Emilia could see the sleepiness there. It hadn’t been long since they’d entered the labyrinth, nowhere close to how long they’d spent in the library labyrinth, but it was late into the evening now. Everyone was tired, practically sleep-deprived and starving, and when Gale’s laughter broke it was as though everyone was pulled along with it.

Miira’s shoulder’s shifted with her silent laughter—a body laughing even if its owner’s voice could not. The aether ruffled over with laughter echoing out of heads and magic, splattering over the room. Several of the children rolled their eyes before letting them fall shut, something understood between everyone that if they weren’t laughing—weren’t loosing their shit and falling to the ground in painful giggles—that it was time to sleep. They still smiled, though, lips pressing tight as they tried to fight down amusement over nothing and everything.

Hours of strain and sadness exploding out in inappropriate giggles. It would have been more understandable to hit, kick, bite their way through the stress. Giggles were better, although Emilia knew that if they didn’t find the others—if they really did turn out to be dead—then this moment would haunt them.

It probably would haunt the children who returned home to find family and friends had died in the stampede. How many times had the laughter and joy of those final hours before Alliance Ridge haunted her? Of course, no one that day had known what was coming. They’d known the next day, though, when they’d drank themselves into unstoppable laughing sobs.

So much death. So many people never coming back. Olivier’s arms lifting her up. She’d never found out why he’d come—who’d called him. For so long she’d assumed she’d known, and only in hindsight did she learn that person would never have called him for her—would never have given her a flicker of kindness as they both broke under the weight of grief and regret.

“Rest,” Emilia whispered in Astra’s hair, into the hair of another child they didn’t know the name for. The child wouldn’t speak, and no one knew them. Mystery child, one of the ones who rarely let go of her. They couldn’t hear her, of course. No sound for their ears, no lips or hands moving for their sleepy little eyes.

Emilia blinked up into the white stoned ceiling of the cave. Water from the slides still poured out, loud to her own ears, silent to everyone else. Someone needed to stay awake, but she knew she wouldn’t manage it. There was a strange middle point, between stress enough to keep you awake and too much. Too little and you slept, too much, and it pulled out down. She certainly had too much in her—too many little lives relying on her.

It was too much, and her body knew it. There was no fighting, and when sleep took her, it took her deep and soundlessly.

Soundlessly, until it didn’t.