Page 45 of Let Me Win You

With a feral roar, a minotaur ran after us. As he got closer, he dropped to all fours, somehow galloping even faster that way. His bovine mouth opened wide, baring two rows of sharp teeth that belonged to a predator, not a bull.

“Invi, your tail!” I screamed.

The nightmarish beast snapped his teeth, taking out a chunk of Invi’s tail, just above the rattle.

The muscles in Invi’s neck bulged out. He growled, making one final push to propel us out of the disappearing corridor just before its walls slammed closed together.

We fell to the ground, Invi’s tail dropping in coils on top of us. A thick black liquid burst out from between the closed walls, spraying us with the sticky, stinky mess.

“What is this?” I shook my hand, trying to get rid of the stuff.

“The minotaur. All that’s left of him.” Invi pushed from the ground, still clutching me in his arms.

Disgust brought bile up to my throat as the full meaning of his words registered with me. When they had slammed together, the walls of the maze liquified the minotaur monster into the black, foul-smelling goo that was covering my entire arm.

“You can’t be here.” Invi scanned our surroundings quickly, as if expecting more monsters to jump out at us any minute.

With the roof over our heads, it’d be completely dark if it wasn’t for Invi’s glow. The walls had closed all around us, leaving only a narrow passage up ahead.

“You know what?” I tried to wipe the black gore off my arm, but it clung to my skin like tar. “At this point, I’d say you shouldn’t be here, either. This race is fucking dangerous, Invi. This could’ve been us!” I thrust my filthy arm his way with black goo dripping from my fingers.

“You,” he corrected.

“Pardon?”

“This could’ve beenyou,Nic.” He turned to me, trapping my eyes with his gaze. “You are the one with a mortal body, not me.”

“I’m sorry, but being flattened into a pancake between two stone walls couldn’t possibly be pleasant regardless of whether one has a body or not.”

“It’d be a torture for me,” he agreed. “But I would recover. You, however, my dear, gentle, fragile human… You would be dead.”

I swallowed hard, fighting the heavy ball of dread sinking in my stomach. I’d narrowly avoided being crushed to death with that minotaur in there. Had Invi been just a little slower or that minotaur a little faster… We wouldn’t be talking here right now.

Invi gently ran his fingers over the hair above my ear. “I came here fully aware of the danger, my darling. But I’m not prepared to put you through this.”

I drew in a long, shaky breath of the stale, musky air. “What are we going to do now? How can we stop the race?”

“We can’t. The maze is closed. The only way out now is by going through it.” A deep frown crossed his features. “Dammit. This was not in the rules!” He slammed his fist into the nearest wall.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay in the saddle.” I dropped my shoulders in regret. “Riding a flying horse turned out to be quite different from riding a regular one.”

“It’s not your fault” His voice softened. “I’ll blame myself before I’ll ever blame you. I was the one who brought you to Purgatory in the first place. And for that, I’m deeply sorry.”

This was new to me. The few men I’d dated would’ve seized the opportunity to put the blame on me, even if just to graciously forgive me right after. Invi had made one mistake on impulse, but he had fully accepted his responsibility for it and had apologized more than once already.

“How’s your tail?” I asked. “He bit you pretty hard. Does it hurt?”

Invi lashed his tail over the ground to test it.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We feel pain differently than mortals do. The bite doesn’t bother me at all. We should be going.”

Setting me down next to him, he peered cautiously into the narrow passage ahead of us, which was our only way forward.

“You have a race to win.” I nodded, heading alongside him into the passage as he moved ahead.

“No. I have a mortal body to protect, one that I’ve grown quite fond of and wouldn’t want to see damaged in any way.”

“Oh, you mean this old thing?” I gestured at myself casually. “Getting a new one can be an upgrade,” I quipped in an attempt to lighten the mood.

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