slides in next to me, not even tasting her food as she eats, a yawn splitting her lips. Nos and Lucy are still busy, so it’s just Griffin, Jair, and me. Griffin eats quickly, and with a kiss on her lips, leaves us with her. We are all trying to be considerate, to make an effort. For her.
“Want to lie down?” I offer when she is finished eating. She looks at Jair who smiles at her.
“My love, go. I will be by your side tonight, we have the rest of our lives. Right now, Dume needs you. Go,” he murmurs, and leans over to kiss her solidly before going back to eating. How did he know I needed her? That man is an enigma, and an honourable warrior.
She smiles and grabs my hand. We wander around the house for a while until we find a room with a giant fireplace. I rush upstairs, grab wood, and hurry back, lighting the fire for her before lying down and pulling her into my arms.
This is what I need, just a reminder. Just her.
She cuddles against me, the flames dancing over her pale skin clad in nothing but Griffin’s shirt. She wraps a leg around me and sighs in happiness, finding solace in my arms as do I in hers. I don’t always need to feel her desire or feed it, sometimes I just need my mate.
To remind me why I fight when the pain of my memories gets to be too much. When I feel the chains wrapping around me again and my bull snorts and fights in my head.
“Will you show me more? Take me away from here for a moment. I always wanted to see the world...wondered what it was like in different eras. Will you show me?” she requests.
Lifting my head, I look down at her. “A lot of my memories are bad until I met you, Draya.”
“There must be one,” she whispers. “Please, my bull, today is all about escaping. We all know what’s coming, can feel it bearing down on us. I might never get to do this again.”
“Anything for you, Draya, you know that,” I murmur, and search my memories for something not tainted by bloodshed and death, or hurt and pain. I blink when I find one I had forgotten about. I had pushed away my past, so angry and hate filled at what happened, that I had suppressed that one night.
The only night I felt free.
Alive in the splendour of my home surrounded by my people. And she’s right, I want to share it with her, to have our own secrets, to show her my soul the way she shows me hers. Taking a deep breath, I dive into that memory, opening my mind so she can see it with me.
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,