Page 25 of Divine Oaths

There was a voice in the distance, from farther off in the maze. Honey’s voice. She’d followed me to the courtyard. But then the voice of a man joined her giggles. Their chorus of whispered laughter heightened to moans. She wasn’t following me. She was stealing a moment with someone in secret.

“What just happened?” I whispered, straining to look at Kasem, afraid to move or use my hands in any way, lest I be pulled into another psychic vision. “You saw that. Tell me you saw that. The maze. It was alive. And that person—”

He quickly pulled me into a corner at the maze’s center, where shadows and foliage obscured our presence. Then he took off his blazer and put it over my head, using the sleeve to wipe my face.

It smeared with red.

The fresh traces of my blood.

I dabbed the blood dripping from my nose with my fingertips. In an instant, the world around me flashed into scenes from my past.

Kasem tightened his grip on me, wiping my blood from my hands.

“Why would you do that again?” he said, a mixture of annoyance and fear in his voice.

Gasping, I pressed my eyes shut, trying to orient myself.

“I was just trying to see something.”

I’d never gotten visions when I touched my own skin with my burnt fingertips. But when they’d touched the blood dripping from my nose, I’d somehow channeled into my own lifeline and seen visions of my past and future all at once.

“You ran into the statue. I caught you before you fell.”

He gestured behind him to a stone statue depicting a man in a military uniform carrying a stack of books. The statue stood on a raised platform. Westfield’s lily emblem was engraved in its base, along with a nameplate that had rusted with age, the words barely legible, if not for the initials: KSJ. Kent Saint James. But Kent’s statue had no hoodie in sight, though its pupilless eyes were just as cold and eerie as those of the figure I’d seen in the maze.

I shook my head. “No, there was a man—a man without eyes. I was trapped in the maze, and he was coming toward me—saying something about blood debts. A warning. And you grabbed me and pulled me to safety before he could—”

I couldn’t finish my sentence. He’d meant to kill me. Whoever the figure was, he hadn’t intended for me to make it out of his part of the maze.

“You must be remembering wrong,” Kasem said. “You hit your head rather hard.”

“I know what I saw,” I snapped.

He looked down at me, his gaze cool, irritation bleeding into his expression. His russet eyes trailed from my wrist to the cowrie shell bracelet. His bracelet.

“Really?” he said. “Because I don’t think you do.”

He was lying. I could see it in his eyes, see it in the way he held my gaze firmly, waiting for me to simply agree. What had just happened—it was a thing of nightmares. But I knew it was real.

Before I could interrogate him further, two figures emerged from the maze, joining us in the center: Honey and the older brunet guy from earlier. Kasem and I tried to press ourselves against the foliage, but it was only a matter of time before they’d spot us. At the moment, though, Honey and the man were preoccupied, laughing and whispering to each other. The brunet pulled her into the center of the maze, pushing Honey against the statue as she ran her hands up his shirt. She moaned when his lips found the curve of her neck and his hands explored her thighs.

I looked away, but Kasem tensed beside me as he watched.

“Wait,” Honey whispered. “I think there’s someone there.”

“It’s just us.” The man lifted her shirt over her head, exposing her lacy purple bra. But she pushed him away, ducking from his hold and approaching where Kasem and I stood in hiding.

“Hello?” she said, stepping forward and covering her bra with her arms.

When she spotted Kasem, a surge of emotions clouded her expression. She seemed speechless at first, but then she gathered herself.

“Kasem?” she whispered. “Is that you?” Her eyes widened, and relief pooled in her gaze as she took him in.

Her voice, how Kasem’s name sounded leaving her lips, sparked my memories of the stabbing. I realized it then: Honey was the girl I’d spoken to that night, the one Kasem had been talking to on the phone.

“Angelica’s been looking for you,” Honey said. “Should you be walking around? It’s only been a few hours—”

She stopped mid-sentence when she spotted me cowering in Kasem’s bloodstained blazer.