Page 29 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

Corin stopped pacing.

“That’s it?” he asked incredulously. “That’s always been the answer?”

“No,” she corrected with a small tilt of her head. “That’s what people turned it into.”

A sacrifice.

He had to sacrifice something to escape. He thought back to his family’s legends. He wondered if his uncle or father or any of the other people in Knossos that had spoken to him about the Labyrinth knew that it was just demanding a sacrifice.

Though the more he thought back to his lessons, the more he realized a sacrifice was never mentioned.

Corin frowned as his mind raced. “My uncle. He said he killed the Minotaur. Took its psyche. That was the sacrifice.”

Ariadne’s mouth tightened, but she said nothing.

“And my father,” Corin continued. “No one ever says what he did, what he… sacrificed, I guess. Just that he came out… different.”

She softened then. “Sacrifices are not trophies to be collected. They are not meant to be spoken of.”

Corin sank on the stone bench near her pallet, staring at the worn floor. His thoughts tangled, circling memories and histories and half-truths he’d grown up with but never questioned.

How could this woman know so much yet not share with other heirs? How had he never been told these things? How had so many escaped the cursed maze without knowing the full truth?

“My uncle,” he said quietly, “won’t even look at the Labyrinth anymore. First time I actually saw him enter the Hall of Due since his own trial was during my ceremony.”

Ariadne’s eyes watched him carefully.

“He drinks too much,” Corin went on. His hands rubbed up and down his thighs, as if to wipe away the growing perspiration. “Laughs too loudly. He celebrates everything like it might be taken from him tomorrow.” He swallowed as realization struck him. “He’s afraid.”

Corin shook his head. “And my father… he used to stand at the windows for hours. I remember. Like he was listening to something no one else could hear.”

Ariadne didn’t interrupt.

Corin lifted his head then, resolve hardening beneath the uncertainty. “Whatever the Labyrinth wants from me,” he said, “it’s not blood. And it’s not a monster.”

“No,” she agreed.

“It’s something I have to give up.”

“Yes.”

“And how do I know what I need to give up?”

Her lips tightened into a sorrowful smile. “You do not know. No one does. You just do.”

Silence stretched between them, thick and expectant.

Finally, Corin stood.

“Then I’ll find it.”

Ariadne searched his face, something like approval rising briefly to her expression before it vanished just as quickly. “Be careful what you offer the Labyrinth,” she advised. “It does not ask for what you expect.”

Corin nodded, determination burning bright despite the fear coiled beneath it.

“Then it’s time I stopped expecting,” he concluded and turned toward the dark, ready at last to face whatever the Labyrinth intended to take. There was a sense of resolve that felt stitched together rather than solid, but it was there. He was ready.

He rolled his shoulder first—testing it out of habit and hope—and the absence of his weapons hit him then. The familiar weights that should have been there on his sides were no longer there. He patted one hip, then the other out of instinct, fingers brushing leather and finding nothing but air.