Page 33 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

In the old stories, he knew a shade could linger when something was unfinished. When fear or regret tethered it too tightly to the place of its death.

He knew Taleon had never escaped the Labyrinth. He just…

Corin pressed a hand to his mouth, bile rising in his throat. The Labyrinth had let him walk beside a dead man. Had let him speak, listen.

Trust.

And Ariadne had known.

She had to have known. She stopped him from turning back. She said nothing when the chamber collapsed in on Taleon and Bristle. She watched him leave without correcting the lie he’d been living amongst.

His chest tightened—not with anger, but with a hollow, aching grief.

“I’m sorry,” Corin murmured, unsure whether he meant it for Taleon or himself.

The Labyrinth was silent around him now. No shifting stone. No groaning walls. No whispers of monsters. Only the quiet, oppressive stillness of a place that had already claimed what it was owed. And maybe the maze felt some sort of sympathy for the heir as it watched him understand the world he found himself in.

Corin stood slowly. His legs trembled, but they held. He did not want to linger. There was nothing left to save here. Only truth—laid bare in bone and rot and endless time in waiting.

As he stepped away, he became acutely aware of the weight in his pocket. The stone disc pressed against his hip, solid and real in a way Taleon never had been. He held firmly onto the borrowed blade and took a step, glancing down at the bones one last time.

The words slipped from Corin’s mouth before he could stop them: “Thank you, Taleon.”

The sound of his words did not echo through the halls. It sank.

The Labyrinth was not pleased.

XII

The stone beneath his feet shuddered violently, a deep furious groan rippling through the corridor as if the Labyrinth had drawn in a sharp breath. Dust rained down from above. The walls flexed, tightening by inches as though the passage was clenching around him.

Corin swore and staggered back, nearly tripping over Taleon’s body again as his heart slammed against his ribs.

“That was a mistake,” he breathed out. “I’m sorry!”

The Labyrinth answered in fury.

A sharp cry thundered through the darkness—high, furious, and intense. It rolled toward him not as a sound but as pressure, vibrating through his body. The floor trembled in anticipation of something large and charging directly towards him.

Then, another shriek. And another.

Three cries emanating from darkness and getting louder by the moment.

Harpies.

Corin spun just as the corridor behind him tore open and three harpies burst into sight.

They were a bit larger than Corin with wings spanning the length of the hallway easily. The Labyrinth seemed to widen its halls for them to fit their entire wingspan into as they flapped towards him.

They sharply called out his name in unison, and Corin glanced back to see their faces ragged and dripping with some sort of eerie liquid. Their dark brown feathers were coated in something even darker as they reflected the light from the golden veins. Blood.

Corin tripped again, stumbling only slightly but enough for one of the harpies to barely graze him with her wing. He bolted down the corridor, boots slipping on damp stone as the harpies had no problem flying above.

The sounds were deafening: stone cracking, sharp roaring noises, haunting whispers of his name.

His foot caught on something hard and solid, shoving his body forward. He just managed to catch himself on the wall before tumbling over. It only took a moment, but that was a moment he didn’t have to give.

One of the harpies reached out and grazed his ankle. He pressed his body forward, hoping they hadn’t gotten too close to him in his stumble. He kept running, sprinting down the hall as fast as he had ever run before.