Dangerously Charming

by Deborah Blake

  CHAPTER 22

  JENNA stared after him for a moment, torn between grief and anger. She couldn’t believe it. She’d offered him her heart on a plate and he’d simply turned and walked away.

  Maybe she’d been wrong, and he didn’t really want her after all. Who could blame him? She certainly came with enough baggage, although she doubted that was the issue. Maybe when he said he liked children, he’d meant other people’s children, and simply wasn’t interested in a woman with a baby. Or maybe it was because the baby was another man’s?

  She hadn’t thought Mick was that shallow, but then, she hadn’t known him for that long, and no matter how much they’d shared in the course of their journey together, perhaps she didn’t really know him at all.

  Or maybe she’d been right the first time, and he was too scared to take the risk on love.

  She didn’t suppose she’d blame him for that either, although she didn’t know where that left her, since somewhere along the line, she’d fallen madly, deeply, truly in love with this blond son of a god with his strong muscles, huge heart, and broken spirit. Perhaps he was just too broken for anyone to fix, no less a woman with her own scars and hidden damage.

  Well, Jenna, none of this brooding is going to get the job done, is it, now? She could hear her grandmother’s voice ringing in her ears as if the old woman stood right in front of her. Worry about Mick later. Find the third Key and save your baby now. She straightened her back and marched off after him, more determined than ever to save herself, since it looked as though she’d be doing it on her own for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  AT first, there was nothing to see but the tall sides of the maze, a monotonous vista of grayish white, slightly glittery shrubbery that grew taller than Day’s fingertips stretched up over his head and thickly enough that neither one of them could reach a hand through it. The shrubs had long drooping needles, much like a pine on the other side of the doorway, but thicker and with a vaguely citrus scent that grew stronger when they brushed against it.

  The plants grew toward each other in the middle, so all Day and Jenna could make out was a sliver of sky up above them, and soft, mossy ground under their feet. Even Krasivaya’s hooves made no sound as they walked, and Day began to wonder if they had all turned into ghosts, doomed to wander forever. It would have made a very suitable Russian tale, but not one he particularly wanted to star in.

  Time seemed to blur as they walked, but eventually they came to a place where the path forked: one part veering off to their right and looking much like the way they’d come, and the other turning to the left and becoming paved with flat cerulean stones of varying sizes. Some were as large as the saddlebags slung over Krasivaya’s withers, and others were as small as the palm of Jenna’s hand. Day had a bad feeling about that path. Of course, he didn’t have a better one about the other choice. That was the problem with mazes.

  Jenna looked from one option to the other, gnawing her lower lip. “What do you think?” she asked, suddenly sounding less sure of herself. “Do we stick to the path that looks just like the one we’ve been slogging down forever, or take the one that looks like it should lead to civilization? Maybe that one is too obvious, and it is a trick.”

  Maybe they are both a trick. This is the Otherworld, after all. “Or maybe it is so obvious, you’re meant to think it is a trick and take the other path,” he said.

  “Oh. Crap.” Jenna rubbed her belly, then stretched her back out. Clearly, the long walk was starting to bother her, but she’d refused to get back on the horse, who seemed to be feeling even more claustrophobic than her companions. “How are we supposed to choose?”

  “We could try one direction for a while and then turn back if we don’t get anywhere, but I don’t like the idea of spending any more time in here than we have to,” Day said.

  “Flip a coin?” Jenna said, trying to sound lighthearted.

  Krasivaya tossed her head, snorting loudly, and trotted off to the left, her hooves making clicking noises as they struck the stones. She was soon out of sight around a curve in the shrubbery.

  “Or we could let the horse decide,” Day said, his lips compressed. This is what comes of allowing your transportation to be both magical and sentient. They set off after her at a brisk walk.

  Only to discover after a few steps that the stones were neither as random nor as steady as they had appeared to be. Day took the first wrong step and jumped quickly to the next rock as the one under his feet tilted as soon as his boot was upon it. Behind him, Jenna gave a surprised squeal, then had to hop quickly over to his side as the rock under her right foot simply disappeared into thin air.

  “Crap squared!” she said. Day muttered something a lot worse than that, and hoped she didn’t understand Russian.

  They went forward another few yards without incident, but then the stones started to sink when trod upon. Not every one, or even every other, but just enough so they were constantly off balance—especially Jenna, who was already struggling to keep herself upright with the unaccustomed weight from her belly throwing her off. For a bit, Day tried carrying her, but that was even worse. The rocks sank faster under their combined weight, and he couldn’t carry her and jump safely, too, and eventually he had to put her down again.

  Finally, they both found solid footing at the same time and stood still for a moment to catch their breath.

  “Well,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “Look on the bright side. If this was the wrong path, it probably wouldn’t be so difficult.”

  Jenna scowled at him. “That’s very encouraging. Not.” She glanced down the way ahead, where they could hear Krasivaya whinnying. She didn’t sound like she was in distress, which Day found reassuring.

  “How the hell is the horse doing it?” Jenna asked, sounding put out. “She’s much heavier than we are, and yet she didn’t seem to have any problem at all. I don’t get it.”

  Day thought about it for a minute and then grinned at her. “We’re doing it wrong,” he said. She rolled her eyes at him. “No, really, the horse got it right. She started moving and kept moving. Can you run?” He stared at her belly dubiously.

  “Will it get us out of here?” she said. “You better believe it.”

  Day grabbed her by the hand and said a silent prayer that he’d guessed correctly, and they took off running, jumping from rock to rock so quickly that their weight was never on any individual stone for more than a few seconds.

  Not long after, they came to the end of the paved stretch, racing between the narrow opening between the shrubs, and out into the light. Krasivaya stood nearby, chewing placidly on some bright yellow flowers and looking distinctly smug.

  “Whew,” Jenna said, leaning over with her hands on her knees. “Thank God that’s over.”

  Day turned his head back and forth in either direction and groaned. “It’s not,” he said.

  “What?” What are you talking about?” Jenna straightened up so fast she wobbled. “We made it through that part of the maze.”

  “Yes, we did,” Day agreed. “And look where we are.” He watched Jenna glance around her wildly and then back toward the center of the maze, where the white tower could still be seen, standing upright like a raised middle finger.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “We’re back on the outside? Right where we started?” She let out a small laugh, tinged with a touch of hysteria. “We have to do it all over again?”

  Day nodded, feeling grim. “I suspect that there are different paths depending on where you enter the maze. Each one will probably have its own tricks to master. Depending on how many entrances there are, it could take us days to master them all until we finally stumble on the one that actually gets us to the heart of the maze.”

  Jenna peered up at the sky, then down at her stomach again, her face drawn and white. “It’s worse than that, Mick. Look at the color of the sk
y. When we went in, it was afternoon. I’m pretty sure that’s the dawn, or at least as close as you get to it in a place with no real sun. I think that something weird happened to time inside that place.” She pointed at her belly, which Day could see was noticeably larger than when they’d gone in. “I don’t know how many times we can attempt it before we run out of time altogether.”

  * * *

  THEY tried three more times before they had to give in and rest for a while. Each time it seemed as though only an hour or two had passed, and each time the moons had shifted position in the sky by the time the maze spat them back out again. Jenna was so tired she could have wept, but they’d used up most of their water by then, and she didn’t want to waste a precious drop of moisture. She leaned against Mick’s strong shoulder, nibbling halfheartedly on a piece of fruit for the sake of the baby, who she wished would repay her by taking that tiny foot off of Jenna’s rib cage. Or at the very least, stop kicking with it. Nice to know that one of them was feeling just fine.

  “Why don’t you try and sleep for an hour or two, and then we’ll walk in the other direction and try to find another way in,” Mick suggested, his voice unusually gentle. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she felt his hand brush over her hair, so light she could barely sense it.

  She didn’t know how she could possibly sleep. But she couldn’t go on much longer without it either. “Maybe we should just give up on this Key,” she said. “Take a chance that we can somehow make the riddle work with only two.”

  Mick didn’t even bother to answer that. She didn’t blame him. For now she’d rest. In a little while, they’d try again.

  * * *

  THEY’D gotten closer than last time, Day thought. He had seen the sides of the tower rising up over the nearest bank of shrubs, so close he could almost touch it. But then they’d had to duck away from some kind of bird that spat acid from a funnel-shaped beak, and they’d found themselves back on the outside again, facing, as far as he could tell, in a completely different direction. He sincerely hoped that someday the people who lived in that tower got turned around in their own maze and had to go through this ordeal themselves. It would serve them right.

  Jenna jarred him out of his unproductive train of thought by lifting one hand and pointing off toward one distant corner of the maze’s exterior. “Mick? Look. Isn’t that Gregori?”

  Sure enough, his brother was riding toward them on the back of his glorious red steed, a horse the color of the sunset over the ocean, whose beauty came close to rivaling that of Day’s own magical companion. Not just riding, but racing fast, the horse’s strong muscles bunching as he strode across the land, his golden hooves striking sparks of rocks as they flew over the landscape at speeds faster than any normal horse could ever have hoped to achieve.

  In no time at all, the former Red Rider pulled up in front of them, neither he nor his horse so much as breathing rapidly, although he kept looking over his shoulder is if expecting something unpleasant to be looming there.

  “Greetings, brother,” Gregori said. “It is good to see you again, Jenna.” He gazed at her stomach and his eyes widened the tiniest bit. “You are looking . . . well.”

  “Did you speak to the Queen?” Day asked. “What did she say?”

  “There will be time to discuss such things later,” Gregori said, his tone calm but urgent as he turned to look back again. “Might I suggest that you follow me and ride as quickly as possible? It would be in our best interests to find ourselves far away from here.”

  “But what about the third Key?” Jenna cried. “We’ve been trying to get it for hours. Days. Maybe even weeks.”

  Gregori slid a hand inside the red leather pouch hanging at his waist. The hand came out holding a tiny shard of clear crystal on a golden chain. “This is the Key,” Gregori said with a slightly smug smile. “I just stole it, and the previous owners are a little unhappy about that. Thus the suggestion to ride away with some haste.”

  “How the hell did you get to the center of the maze?” Day asked.

  “Bribed a maid to tell me the way in,” Gregori said with a grin, a rare twinkle glittering in his dark eyes. “And then climbed up the outside of the tower and through a window.” He tucked the Key back inside the pouch and dug his heels into his horse’s side. It took off at a gallop, followed seconds later by Krasivaya, which caused Jenna to yelp and grab on to the horse’s flowing white mane with both hands.

  “Oh my God,” she shouted at Day over the wind of their passage. “Did he just say he stole that jewel? I can’t believe it. He seemed so . . . so . . . mellow and law-abiding.”

  Day laughed out loud, half from her comment and half from the sheer joy of racing at top speeds again after so long. “The law is a somewhat fluid concept for us Riders,” he said. “We are more interested in expediency most of the time. The Baba Yagas are the same, which is perhaps where we get it from. Or possibly the other way around. Besides, Gregori dedicated much of his earlier years to learning many varied forms of martial arts. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of that time was spent in the company of ninjas, assassins, and thieves.”

  He thought about it for a moment as they flew over the grassy ground. “Come to think of it, he would probably make a very good thief, should he turn his mind to it. Perhaps that could be a new career for him, now that he is no longer a Rider.” Strangely, saying those words didn’t dig quite so deeply into his soul as it had a couple of months ago.

  “Maybe you should suggest it to him,” Jenna gasped. “As soon as we stop galloping to the far ends of the Earth. Or the Otherworld. Whichever.”

  Day couldn’t believe she wasn’t enjoying the ride. “I can’t believe you ever want this to stop. It’s the best feeling I know.” He thought for a moment. “Well, one of them, anyway.”

  “Maybe that’s because you’re not a million months pregnant, give or take a month,” she said somewhat acerbically. “But if you don’t want me to give birth on the back of your horse, I think maybe we should slow down as soon as you and Gregori think it is safe.”

  Day didn’t have the heart to tell her that it had probably been safe some miles past, but he did whistle loudly to signal his brother that it was time to ease up.

  After all, he was pretty sure Krasivaya would object to the mess if Jenna meant what she said about going into labor. Nobody was ready for that, least of all him.

  * * *

  THEY finally dismounted under a cluster of weeping willows by the side of a small but elegant creek so they could water the horses and catch their breath. Well, so Jenna could catch her breath; as far as she could tell, neither the men nor their horses seemed at all tired out by their mad dash through the countryside. If anything, they look energized by it all. Gregori may have a potential new career as a cat burglar, but Jenna was pretty sure that she would never cut it as a Rider.

  “You’ve grown since last I saw you,” Gregori said, admiring her prominent belly. “How remarkable. The babe is well?”

  “She seems to be, although without an obstetrician and an ultrasound, I’m not sure how I can know for certain.”

  “You carry the child within you,” Gregori said in a no-argument tone. “You would know. Especially here.”

  “Stop staring at her stomach and let’s take a look at what you stole,” Mick said. “Thanks, by the way. We were just talking about how we were running short on time. It was nice of you to save us some.”

  His brother shrugged. “I spoke to the neighbors, and it was clear that the owner would never give it up. The Key of Zoroaster is said to bestow great wisdom upon the one who controls it, although from the sound of it, the gem had had no such effect on its current bearer. Either way, it seemed more efficient to simply avoid the argument. Our need is great, after all.” He bowed his head in Jenna’s direction, and his use of the word our spread a sense of warmth through her chest.

  “Can I see it?” Jenna as
ked.

  “Of course.” Gregori plucked the stolen treasure back out of his pouch. Jenna had to suppress a sigh of disappointment. This Key looked even less impressive than the other two. And it still didn’t bear any resemblance to a key of any kind she’d ever seen.

  She took the Key of Solomon and the Key of Merlin out of the front of her shirt—she’d been wearing them, since it seemed like the best way not to lose them—and pulled them over her head, holding them out so the others could see them clearly. As Gregori handed her the final Key, a deep chiming sound could be heard, not coming from the gems themselves but seeming almost as though it echoed through the entire Otherworld.

  “What the hell?” Mick said, his eyebrows rising.

  “I was afraid of that,” his brother said.

  The sound died away, and nothing else happened. Jenna gingerly put the trio of chains back around her neck. “What do we do now? I have the three Keys that you thought might represent the key mentioned in the riddle. How do I know which one of the three it is, or if it is even any of them?”

  Mick shook his head. “A better question might be, ‘Afraid of what?’”

  “Did you hear that sound?” Gregori said, a hint of grim inevitability in his voice.

  “Of course we did,” Mick said. “We’re not deaf. We heard that chiming noise each time we acquired one of the Keys, although it was never that loud before. I take it you think it is a bad thing?”

  “Not exactly. In fact, I suspect it is probably a signal that Jenna is getting close to solving the curse. Unfortunately, it has almost certainly alerted Zilya.” Gregori’s normally solemn face grew even more shadowed as he handed a scroll to Jenna.

  “Before I could appear before the Queen, Zilya approached me and gave me this message to pass on to you,” he said. “Presumably, she figured that since Mikhail was helping you, I would be able to contact you.”