Page 56 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

With him.

The realization hit him harder than the slap had. Ariadne wasn’t pale because of the monster. She wasn’t breathing fast because she’d nearly been caught. Those facts likely didn’t help, but she had probably faced every single monster in the Labyrinth over the years and lived.

She had been afraid for him.

Corin’s voice softened when he spoke again. “You thought I was going to die.”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze slid away, jaw tightening, as if she’d shared too much already by saying nothing at all.

“I have watched enough heirs,” she replied quietly, “to know how quickly confidence turns into a body the Labyrinth forgets.”

Something in her tone—old, tired, and sharp with memory—made his chest ache even more.

“I was not scared of the creature,” she admitted. “I was scared you would stand still long enough to let it decide for you.”

Corin swallowed. The argument drained out of him, leaving something much heavier behind. “I won’t do it again,” he said.

Not as a promise to survive, but as a promise to her.

Ariadne studied him for a long moment, as if weighing whether or not to believe him. Then she exhaled, slow and unsteady, and turned back down the new corridor.

He could have sworn he saw something in her eyes—something like pain or longing—but before he could focus too much on it, she had turned away from him.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Before the Labyrinth changes its mind.”

As he began to follow her, his thoughts sharpened with sudden clarity.

He knew what he needed to sacrifice.

But he also knew it would nearly kill him.

XX

Time in the Labyrinth had long since stopped behaving in ways Corin understood. It felt like they had been walking for no time at all after the monster’s close encounter, yet he knew it had likely been hours since the near attack.

He tried to count the halls as they passed, the time between monster groans. He wanted to get a feel for where they were or how long they had been walking. Corridors seemed to fold in on themselves, stretch, narrow, then widen again. Some passages felt older than others, their stone worn smooth as bone. Others looked newly born with sharp edges and dust settling as if they had just finished dreaming themselves into being.

It threw him off considerably.

Eventually, after losing count for the twentieth time, he gave up trying to keep track of everything.

It didn’t help that his thoughts were fixated on one thing: the Minotaur.

He didn’t say it aloud, slightly fearful for how Ariadne would react if she knew where his thoughts lay, but the image of the great horned beast lingered in his mind. If the Labyrinth demanded something of him, like all of the other heroes and heirs, then the creature at its heart had to matter.

Everything here felt like it revolved around the beast. Every path, every echo, every warning seemed to bend in its direction. From the legend of Theseus and Ariadne to the Labyrinth leading them directly to where it was first slain. The Minotaur seemed to be the heart of the Labyrinth.

Ariadne continued to walk slightly ahead of him, her steps more uncertain than before. She hesitated at some turns, more than he had earlier in their journey. She’d stop, glance down halls, and mumble to herself. Her hand brushed against the stone walls as if searching for reassurance, her fingers trailing along the stone. Then she’d make a decision.

But it was when he ran into her at the opening of a new chamber that he realized she was fully frozen.

Despite that, Corin was briefly pleased to enter a new chamber, even though that joy was stopped short when he realized where they were.

They stood at the threshold of a familiar chamber—open air above, scattered trinkets and lost sacrifices along the edges. The faint scene of old stone and something sweeter beneath it reached his nostrils.

It was the place she slept. Where she had tended to his wounds. Where he had woken to light that did not belong underground.

He didn’t want to trust his senses. If this was that very same chamber, then they had just walked in one large circle that took countless hours. And that thought was nearly a knife to the gut.