Page 22 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

A pause. “Yes.”

“And how many of them did you stop from doing the one thing that can let them out?” He pressed. “How many did you beg like you begged me?”

“You are incorrect, heir. Fighting the Minotaur is not the only way out. You should know that.” She shook her head as her fingers curled against his side. “But to answer your previous question, not many.”

That answer sat heavier than any lie.

Corin glanced at the branching corridors ahead. All of them looked identical, yet all of them felt wrong. His arm throbbed. His certainty was gone.

They kept walking, deeper into stone and shadow, with Corin limping alongside her—not because he trusted her, not yet, but because nothing else in the Labyrinth felt moderately safer than being with her.

“I came in here knowing what I was supposed to do. And now I don’t know anything,” he admitted softly.

Ariadne sighed, her expression unreadable. “Then you are truly seeing the Labyrinth as it is.”

His escape had been inches away.

And he had let it go.

IX

The passage they moved through shifted with little notice. One moment, it was narrow and close, the walls damp as it brushed against Corin’s skin; the next, it released them into a vast circular chamber that stole the breath from his lungs.

The air shifted instantly. It was cooler, cleaner, carrying the faint scent of damp grass and sunlight that had no business existing so deep beneath the earth.

Corin stopped short, stumbling slightly and forcing Ariadne to catch him.

The room was enormous, much larger than Corin’s chambers back in the castle. It was closer in size to the Hall of Due and clearly just as old. Its floor was worn smooth by centuries of passage. Several entrances yawned from the curved walls, each leading back into darkness and each identical enough to be dangerous. But Corin barely noticed them.

His gaze lifted.

There was no ceiling.

Above him, impossibly far away and impossibly close all at once, the sky stretched open and endless. It was a brilliant blue, unmarred by any cloud. Sunlight spilled down in a wide column, warming the stone and painting everything in the chamber in a soft golden hue. He could just make out the edges of flowing overgrown grass caught by the wind. The same wind drifted through the open chamber, real and gentle, stirring Corin’s hair and carrying with it the unmistakable smell of an open field.

He staggered forward a step, then another. Ariadne’s hands slowly faded away from him as he moved further into the chamber. He stepped into the direct light of the sun, feeling the golden rays grace his skin and warm his bones.

“That’s… outside,” he whispered.

Beyond the ring of stone that circled the opening, he could see it all clearly now: tall grass rippled in the wind, wildflowers soaking up the warm sun, a horizon so normal it felt obscene. There were no walls. No watching stone. Not above the ceiling.

He cursed. “That’s impossible.” His voice was low as if the words themselves might crack the illusion above him. “We’re under a castle. Or Knossos somewhere. There’s no way–”

His eyes shot back to Ariadne. She remained near the threshold they had entered through, half in shadow and half in light. Her posture was careful, her expression unreadable, but her eyes hadn’t left him.

“It is real.” Her head tilted. “And it is not.”

Corin let out a shaky laugh and turned back to the sky. He squinted against the brightness, raising his injured hand as though he might touch it. The ache in his muscles was nothing compared to the longing he felt for the fresh air above him.

“I can feel the sun,” he whispered. “I can smell the grass.”

“I know.”

His chest tightened. Is this how I leave? Am I done?

He glanced around the rest of the chamber. All of the stacked stones and discarded items that littered the space were far away from the opening. There was nothing nearby for him to use to climb out. Any stone large enough for him to climb on would require much more strength than he had.

“Could I leave? Through there?” He gestured helplessly toward the open air above them. “Why isn’t there a path? Some steps?”