Page 17 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

“No,” she said.

“Then why keep me here? Why have me follow you? Why not just abandon me to go on my merry way?”

She blinked a few times. “I have not yet decided to let you go.”

After a few beats of silence, Ariadne turned. She began walking once again. Corin was tempted to turn back, find another passage to take, but as he glanced behind him, the pathway was blocked with stone and old curling vines. It seemed that for whatever reason, the cursed Labyrinth wanted them together.

Corin jogged to catch up with her again, and spoke in slow, careful words, “If you won’t tell me who you are… can you at least confirm if I was right? Is that your name?”

She scoffed lightly. “You were.”

He nodded once. “And will you tell me… what you do here?”

Ariadne’s lips curved—not quite a smile. “I told you, I watch,” she answered. “I listen. I remember. And sometimes, when the Labyrinth allows it, I warn.”

He hesitated. “Warn me of what?”

“Who said I was here to warn you?”

Corin stumbled slightly. He cleared his throat. “What do you warn others of, then?”

She didn’t answer right away. The corridor ahead married into shadow, the walls etched with old carvings worn smooth by time and hands long turned to dust.

“Of promises,” Ariadne said after a long moment. “And of the cost of keeping them.”

She kept walking, and Corin followed—knowing less than he wanted to, more than he should, and certain now that whatever waited at the end of this path was not something the Labyrinth would let either of them leave unchanged.

VII

One moment, the stone passage was wide enough for two, its walls etched with spirals and broken sigils and golden veins; the next, it constricted into a long throat of shadow without warning. The ceiling pressed low on Corin, and the air turned damp and warm at a moment’s notice; it nearly choked him with the thickness. The veined light dimmed in a way that did not extinguish it fully, but muffled it, as if the Labyrinth itself were holding its breath.

Ariadne slowed, and Corin could have sworn she swore under her breath.

“This way?” He asked, keeping his voice low.

She didn’t answer at first. Her brow furrowed, eyes tracking the curve of the corridor as though she were reading something written beneath the stone. Her hand lifted, hovering just above the wall without touching it. She glanced behind them then and she seemed to count the stones from their last few steps, trying to figure out something that just wasn’t quite right.

Corin took a hesitant step forward, past her, but her hand reached out firmly, pressing against his chest to stop him. “Stop.”

He blinked. “What’s going on?”

“This should not be here yet,” she murmured.

Corin’s pulse kicked up. “What shouldn’t?”

She jumped and looked to Corin, as if she didn’t realize she had said the words out loud. She paused before swallowing and gesturing ahead. “This passage. This turn.” Her fingers tensed against Corin’s chest before they fell to her side. “The Labyrinth is… early.”

Before he could ask what that meant, the air shifted once again. It rushed past him as if running towards where the pair had just come from.

A sound rolled toward them from the dark ahead—slow, wet, and heavy. It was not a roar; it was worse than that, more threatening than Corin had ever heard before. A breath, dragged deep into a massive chest, followed by the scrape of something enormous moving against stone.

“We… we should turn around,” Ariadne suggested. She nodded once. “Yes, we can turn back.”

With the limited space in the hall, there was nowhere for Ariadne to go now that Corin was near her side. He would have to back up or she would have to move forward, neither of which seemed to be happening as Corin was frozen solid.

There was something in her tone that raced down Corin’s spine. She was scared of something, and that something was ahead of them. Whatever it was, he would protect her, make sure she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.

His hand went instinctively to his sword.