Page 51 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

He didn’t like that answer, but he had grown accustomed to receiving vague answers at this point.

Still, he shook his head, trying to keep away the confusion bursting through him. He cleared his throat. “You said killing your brother wasn’t how everyone gets out,” he stated after a few silent moments. “So, what do they do instead?”

Ariadne was quiet for a beat, as if sorting through centuries of memory, which he supposed she was.

“They bargain,” she answered finally. “They endure. They break.” She tilted her head slightly. “Some try to outwit it—mapping paths, counting turns, tracking echoes.”

“Like I did when I tried to leave your chamber,” he cut in.

She grinned—a smile larger than he had seen from her before, and it lit up the entire hall in mere moments. “Yes, like you tried to do.”

She shook her head as the smile faded, and Corin wished he could see it once more, for only a second if that was all he was allotted. He just wanted to see the beauty in her smile again, to take advantage of it as he could now be prepared to take it in.

“Others offer things they think the Labyrinth wants. Blood. Vows. Names,” she went on, her mouth tightening as she did. “That does not always end well.”

Corin hesitated. “Has anyone ever succeeded without losing something?”

She shrugged. “That is it. You have to sacrifice something to leave. Otherwise…” she shook her head. “Otherwise, you end up as the psyche you met.”

Taleon. Corin in no way wanted to end up like his long passed kin. The thought terrified him as it sank into his bones.

“What about my uncle?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Ther–” Corin stopped himself. It would be of no use to use his name now, not with what the Labyrinth would cause afterwards. Besides, it was unlikely that Ariadne even knew his uncle’s name. “The man before me. It would have been about twenty years prior. He told me he killed the Minotaur.”

Ariadne thought for a moment, and then her posture shifted. Her shoulder stiffened, and her gaze slid away from him.

Corin noticed immediately, and a wave of heat rushed over him. “What?” he pressed. “Did he–did he hurt you?” Corin wasn’t sure what he would do if that were the case, but the rage that immediately filled him would surely make certain his uncle was dealt with properly.

Slowly.

Painfully.

She looked back at him sharply. “No.”

The speed of her answer only confused him more, but his shoulder softened in relief. “Then can you tell me what happened with his trial?”

“I–I…” she trailed off.

“Why won’t you tell me?”

Ariadne exhaled, slow and measured. “Because, to some, what he did is worse. In its own way.”

Corin waited.

“He hid,” she muttered at last.

“Hid?”

She bobbed her head. “From the beginning. He found a place where the walls folded inward, where the Labyrinth did not want to bother him too much, and he stayed there.”

Corin stared at her. “That’s… that’s not possible. He came back. He passed.”

“Yes,” she replied. “He passed.”

“How?” Corin demanded, frustration creeping into his voice against his wishes. “How could he if he never moved?!”