The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake

Author:Olivie Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

. INTERLUDE .

The castle was something of an eccentric touch, Gideon thought while squinting at the parapets. It was a bit too fairy-tale for his taste, though presumably Nico would find that funny. Not that Gideon was meant to be thinking of Nico at this moment, because being here was already challenging enough without inviting in all the other things that came with thinking of Nico. Regret, namely. But Gideon was—also regrettably—a man of his word, however unclever that happened to be, and he’d promised his mother he’d do her one favor. Just one.

Beside Gideon, Max whimpered.

(It had all seemed so innocent at the time.)

“Can’t you make that thing be quiet?” said Eilif, who had not been invited along. Or so Gideon would tell Nico later when he inevitably asked why Gideon’s mother had come at all. (Assuming that Gideon did not get killed inside the weird, haunted playground of somebody else’s consciousness. Which was a definite if.)

“Max does what he likes. And be nice to my friends,” Gideon said before adding perfunctorily, “Mum.”

“I don’t see why you’ve brought him,” muttered Eilif, who had a general suspicion for mammals. She didn’t care for warm blood. “I told you, this will all be much simpler if we do it alone.”

“We,” Gideon said, “are not doing anything. And it hasn’t been simple.” He had expected telepathic wards, but this was nearly the degree of difficulty that getting into the Society had always been. There was a labyrinth around the castle, full of bramble and shifting cypress trees, and the occasional intrusion from some sort of dream creature that had to have been born in a nightmare. If Gideon were not already accustomed to the sorts of things that lurked in the dream realms, he would not have gotten this far without damage. “You told me this was going to be easy.”

His fault for believing his mother, he supposed. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been stranded here, but he felt certain it had been weeks, if not months. This was not a dream. This was not any layer of subconscious, which Gideon had known but not understood when he accepted the task. Whoever had created the castle had left something behind that was functionally flypaper for Gideon, who could not free himself from its grip. Gideon had been trying to make his way out of the labyrinth and couldn’t, so the only remaining option—aside from successfully breaking in, which seemed less likely every day—would be to force a return to his corporeal body and wake himself up, which he couldn’t do because his mother would follow, and then he would be at her mercy in yet another dimension.

Again.

He sighed with another surge of self-hatred. Why had he done this, again? To make some sort of infantile point to Nico? He had been bored, but what had come of this? He had been so close to finding Libby, and now, because he had thought—very idiotically—that his mother might somehow speed things along, he had gotten himself trapped inside the errand that was only supposed to take a few minutes, at most.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.