Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas #1)(58)

“Before our rebellion, Kristi?e created the path through the mountain to let other tribes pass. Their plan was to attack unseen. But their own people betrayed them, and as they crossed, the Devourer ambushed them from both sides. The Alta Bruja, leader of the tribe, used the last of her power to curse her traitors with immortal life. Gouged out their eyes and buried them beneath the earth. The Devourer found them and dug them up. She healed their bodies by linking their life force to the earth. She called them her ‘blind giants,’ guards of the labyrinth.”

“How can they guard anything if they can’t see?” Rishi asks.

“They don’t need eyes to find you,” Agosto says darkly. “Sight is the most easily fooled of all our senses.”

I look at Nova, who stares at the horizon. I wonder what’s going through his head right now. He looks more worried than I’ve ever seen him before.

I follow the twisting trails down below with my eyes. We could get lost no matter what. Los Lagos is as much a labyrinth as the Devourer’s maze. As the sun and moon start to reach their peaks in the sky, nudging closer to eclipse, their light bounces off the henge below.

“Head for the temple. Alta Bruja Kristi?e erected the circle of stones and called it the Heart of the Deos.”

“Why’s it always the heart or the eye of something?” Rishi asks. “You notice that? There are so many body parts that don’t get enough love, like earlobes and belly buttons.”

“Rishi.”

She shrugs in her I’m-only-just-saying kind of way.

I find myself touching my necklace to feel the familiar weight of knowing I was connected to someone—the way I used to when I missed my dad. I’m starting to get that feeling back.

“I take it you’re not coming with us,” Nova says to Agosto.

The Faun King shakes his head. “I must return to my people. Take them to safety. I fear Xara will retaliate soon.”

He takes my hand and presses it to his lips, then his forehead. “I hope to see you again, encantrix.”

I don’t wait to watch him go. I take off, running down the hill.

? ? ?

The temple is bigger than anything it seemed from up the hill. The stones are great pillars weathered by wind and rain. I press my hand against the groves and dips in the stone, the carvings of different moon phases and constellations. Sparks flare between my fingers.

Night falls as the moon and sun pass each other across the sky and set. Stars emerge behind thinning clouds.

“This is incredible,” Rishi says, standing in the center of the temple with her hands stretched toward the sky. “My parents do all the ceremonies in the world, but I never thought I believed in anything. After this, I might have to reconsider.”

“You’re going to start believing in the Deos?”

Rishi grins. “Or I could just put all my faith in you.”

I get closer to her. Her brown skin is bathed in the starlight. Her long, dark hair is windblown and wild around her shoulders. Something in the pit of my stomach falls, and when she smiles at me, it just keeps on falling.

“You can believe in anything you want,” I say, “as long as it feels right. Even seeing the things I grew up with, I wanted to pretend they weren’t real. I have all the proof in the world, while some people go lifetimes hoping to see a miracle. It was easier to think I was living the wrong life. It’s easier to want to be someone else.”

“I would never want you to be someone else.” She coils my hair around her finger. The ends have started to curl on their own. Magic transforms you. “I want you to be you. You’re magic, Alex. I always thought so, even before I knew your secrets.”

Her smile is full, and hearing these things, my heart feels so full it might burst. I exhale hard, look up at the circle of stones that surround us.

Then, a bright light explodes, like the flash of a camera. Nova stands just outside the temple. The worry mark on his brow is gone. His hands glow with light.

“Find anything interesting?” he asks.

“If you think ancient witch carvings are interesting, then sure,” Rishi says. She walks toward him and leans on a stone pillar.

“Well?” Nova asks me. “Was Agosto pulling our chain?”

“Not funny,” I say.

“Too soon?” He shrugs a shoulder.

I ignore him and continue tracing my fingers along the stone. The magic here is strange. It isn’t the dull pulse of the earth I’ve felt during this journey. It’s like a sigh of relief.

There’s a carving above eye level of a crescent moon lying sideways. The symbol of El Papa. I touch the necklace my father gave me. The next pillar has the mark of El Terroz, a square stone. A feather for El Cielo, an eight-pointed star for La Estrella, an arrow for El Corazon. I walk in a full circle, looking at all thirteen pillars—each one is for the High Deos—until I reach the sun, for La Mama. Here, the grass is wild and overgrown. I try to imagine what this place would have looked like in its prime. The grass would be green, not yellow. The stones would be newly etched, not fading. Brujas and brujos would stand in this circle.

“It feels so forgotten,” I say.

“I don’t get it,” Rishi says. “If the Devourer or Xena or whatever her name is was also a bruja like the tribes who built this, why would she kill them all?”