Page 4 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

Breathing out a harsh sigh, he entered the hall.

The room was built around the entrance, not before it, as though the stone at its heart had existed long before the castle dared to rise above it. The walls were high and narrow, curving inward rather than out and carved from dark marble veined faintly with gold that caught the torchlight in dull, uneven glimmers.

No banners hung here. No tapestries softened the stone. The entire rest of the castle was covered in banners and tapestries and colored fabric. Just not here. Not yet. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, it would be decorated grandly.

The air was cool and stale, heavy with the scent of old incense and something older still, just as it always had been. Sound behaved strangely in the chamber, footsteps swallowed almost as soon as they were made, voices flattening and losing their edges as if the room itself refused to carry them far.

At the center stood the entrance—an archaic arch of raw stone, rough-hewn and immense. Its surface was etched with the large three spirals of Knossos and fractures that appeared like veins worn thin by centuries of reverent hands and fearful glances.

The stone there was darker than the rest of the room, as if it drank the light rather than reflected it, and what would be the opening beneath the arch yawned wide and dark, offering no hint of depth.

Flanking the entrance stood the priestess guards, unmoving and eternal. They had always terrified Corin as a child, and they still sent shivers down his spine. They were women in shape only, their bodies wrapped in layered ceremonial robes stiff with age and ritual, hems of gold thread brushing the stone. Their faces were pale and still, eyes open yet unfocused, as though fixed on something far beyond the chamber.

No breath stirred their chests. No flicker of awareness passed through their gaze. Whether they were dead, preserved, or bound to something in between, no one living could say. They did not eat. They did not sleep. They only stood. Kept watch.

They had stood their watch longer than most bloodlines had endured, guardians not of the Labyrinth itself, but of the threshold that led to it.

Corin took a tentative step closer to the entrance, not knowing how close he was allowed without their interference. As it turned out, he could stand immediately in front of it before their eyes even cast his way.

The air was darker there, more haunting. He could feel something like a pulse beating through the air, echoing his own heart.

“So this is it,” Corin muttered. He glanced at both of the priestesses. No response. “Of course.”

Shaking his head, he turned when his eyes caught on something. A circle, no larger than his palm, engraved in the stone beside the entrance. It was as if a disc of stone was missing from the cold rock. Corin could have excused it as if the stones were formed in that way except that it was a perfect circle.

And inside the missing disc were lines, clearly carved into the stone. It couldn’t have been by hand; they were too perfect. Too clean. There was something…inhuman about it.

Corin spent far too long looking over this missing piece before feeling his eyes start to droop. He glanced over at the priestesses and wondered how they felt being stuck in place all day every day, but he didn’t focus too much on it. He had a trial to prepare for.

II

Corin was up and washed well before dawn. The rest he knew he needed before starting his trial never came to him despite the vast hours he spent with closed eyes. He still tried, remaining in bed and pretending to sleep until the servants woke him in the early hours.

They spoke little to him as they worked to prepare him for his trial, their hands steady and eyes averted. The bath he took was more ceremonious than normal as warm water sliced over his skin. It was scented with myrrh and crushed laurel, and he ruffled his nose at the new scents. When they were finished, he felt scrubbed raw—nearly emptied out.

The servants whispered some well wishes and prayers to Olympus while they washed him, as if their scents and words could grant him any luck.

While he understood that cleaning him before he was forced to trudge through the underground Labyrinth was likely a moot point, he had to respect the Knossos traditions. If his people needed him to bathe before he spent three days and nights in the dark, he would comply. If they believed their words and actions would bring him success in his trial, he would follow along dutifully. Like a good heir.

His regular servant Horal dressed him in simple white linen, bound at the waist with a bright gold cord and the three spirals at the nape of his neck. Corin had to deny the new boots Horal offered him, instead favoring the boots he regularly used to train.

While his uncle would be clothed in the finest royal purple garments and adorned with gold nearly dripping off of him, Corin was forced into the simple garbs to honor their ancestors.

Horal offered him a look of judgement at the denial of the new boots, but Corin paid it little mind. He wanted to be comfortable at least when he was risking his life.

When he was fully dressed, he took some time to study himself in the mirror. There were no clear signs of nerves on his features, despite the rumblings in his gut—though he could just barely make out the slight shake of his hands resting by his side that he covered with a clench of fists.

This is no time for nerves, he told himself, forcing himself to swallow down any thoughts of fear that crept into his senses.

Before long, he was being whisked away to select his weapon of choice for the trial. He had a great spread—daggers, shields, axes, bows, everything. His eyes roamed over all the practiced weapons, but he was pulled to his trusted blades: a simple dagger of his father’s and a sword smithed just for him.

Corin hadn’t touched the dagger since his father passed, but he knew it had been used during his father’s trial. If it could get his father through the Labyrinth, it could surely do the same for Corin.

Someone behind him muttered words of questioning when he avoided the shields, but he had always felt it restricted his agility too much. He wanted to be able to attack, not defend.

Besides, his uncle had advised that there would be more weapons and plenty to duck behind throughout the Labyrinth.

Corin walked beside trusted servants as they moved swiftly through the castle. His footsteps felt heavy as they expertly navigated the halls, but no one beside him seemed to pay him any mind.