All That Burns Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You’re one of the few Mab trusted with prisoner transport.”
    “That was ages ago . . .” My memory, just like my gracefulness, is one of the things that’s fallen victim to my newfound mortality. Ever since I latched hands with Herne, since that power was taken from me, the vastness of my past has been melting. “Most of my transports were minor infractions. Frithemaeg who committed treason. Soul feeders who went on killing sprees big enough for the mortals to notice. Never a prisoner locked away so long. Certainly none with magic like this . . .”
    “It is unique,” the Faery queen says.
    “And the Ad-hene don’t know who it was?” I ask this question carefully, dance around my growing panic.
    “This is the Corridor of the Forgotten,” Alistair sighs out his answer. “Queen Mab’s most dangerous prisoners were sent to this wing: nameless, left to rot. She even placed her own warding spells on it, as an extra assurance none would escape. Those spells died with her. Queen Mab preferred to . . .” Alistair’s voice coasts, searching for the right word. “. . . have a more direct control over this place.”
    “Mab was unmade months ago,” I say. “That can’t be the reason this prisoner escaped.”
    “I don’t claim it was,” Alistair says, “but things have been changing in the Labyrinth. Things even we Ad-hene do not completely understand. There are shiftings in the earth. Old powers waking.”
    Old powers . To hear a spirit as aged as Alistair say this is something indeed. I find myself wondering if there was even an island here when he first took form.
    “Yes. I know the old powers are rising. I feel it in my very core. It’s the same everywhere. Since last week. The first Lights-down,” Titania says. The Faery queen’s jaw is grim and jutting as she turns to the Ad-hene. “But you must understand my suspicion, Alistair. The Ad-henehave been the only way out of these tunnels for millennia. I cannot overlook this fact.”
    “And we have served the Faery queen for just as long.” For the first time Alistair looks awake: eyes sharp, lips pinched. The mark on his arm flares extra bright, writhing like a knot of silver snakes. “The Ad-hene are loyal, Your Majesty. Prisoners only leave the island if the Faery queen lets them.”
    I stare back into the cell’s emptiness and try not to be sick. A creature Mab deemed dangerous enough to lock up for eternity, a creature powerful enough to solve the Labyrinth’s maze, is now free.
    It is free and it is angry.
    “What about the other prisoners?” I’m grasping at straws. “Have you asked them?”
    “There are no other prisoners in this wing.” Alistair hesitates. “Except . . .”
    “All secrets sound the same in the dark.” The voice that says this is small, fragile. I follow it, find myself staring into another cell. There’s no writing on these walls. Just empty, blank space.
    And then something moves.
    What I thought was a boulder jutting out of the floor is nothing but. Gray rags and hair break apart, revealing aface which looks more like a mask of bone than a human profile. Its eyes are sunken, filmed with eerie, sightless white. The hair on its head is stringy, impossibly scant but long. And the skin . . . it’s ruined and spotted, like a plate of raw liver.
    Those eyes—the ones I was so sure could not see—snap onto us. More words leave the withered lips, all rasp and shriek.
    “Come to gape at the four winds meet? Fools, puppets, knights, kings. All of them sacrificed. No matter. They die with smiles on their faces.”
    The sentences and syllables make no sense. They’re gibberish. But that doesn’t stop every molecule in my body from burning. Every atom inside me is alert. Agitated.
    “What—who is that?” I tear my eyes from the ruined creature, back to where Alistair and Queen Titania stand in their magnificence.
    The voice doesn’t stop. Words keep spilling out. “I will show you ruin. Kingdom’s