Page 57 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

“Isn’t this…” Corin muttered.

“No.” Her voice was sharp, almost panicked. She stepped forward, then back again, eyes darting across the space. “No, this should not be here.”

Corin tried to slow his pulse, inhaling a few deep breaths. “We probably took a wrong turn somewhere.”

She crossed the threshold like someone approaching a body, cautious and disbelieving. Her breathing had gone shallow. “It does not move like this. I followed the path. I knew where we were going.”

He followed, unease curling in his chest despite his best efforts of keeping it out. “You said it changes. You said it listens.”

“Yes, but not like this!” She turned on him, and he noticed her bright eyes flashing with something dangerously close to fear. “This chamber stays where it is. It is anchored in place! It is one of the few chambers that is!”

“Anchored to what?”

She shook her head. “That’s not–” She stopped herself short. Her head moved quickly to look over the chamber as if there was some answer hidden among the gathered objects littering the walls.

For a brief moment, their eyes caught. There was something in her eyes, cold and dark and solid, that shot down Corin’s spine, but he wasn’t able to understand it.

She turned away.

Then, she stormed over to her pallet, wrecking everything in her path. Trinkets were kicked across the room, cloths were torn from the walls; she was leaving a dangerous and messy path in her wake.

He watched as she destroyed her home. As she tore at the stone and left a catastrophe in her trail.

“You’re scared,” he revealed quietly as she threw a small round object across the room. It hit close to his head and rolled to land in front of him.

The words seemed to still her. She looked away, arms wrapping around herself as if she were cold. “I do not want you trapped here,” she admitted after a long moment of silence.

The words hung around them in a fragile and heavy haze.

Corin blinked. “What?”

“I want you to leave,” she said again, more firmly this time. “I want you to get out.”

He took a step closer without realizing he’d moved. He had assumed what she meant, but hearing the words from her hit a cord inside him that he didn’t fully understand. Maybe it was a sense of fear that she was only helping him because the Labyrinth seemed to want them to be together.

“You’ve watched heirs for centuries. You told me yourself that you don’t help them.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. His voice was getting lower and lower as he inched closer to her. “I guess, I never understood why you were helping me.”

She shrugged.

When he realized that was her only reply, he went on, “I guess maybe I thought you were just obeying the maze.”

“I know.” Her voice softened, and that tugged at something deep in his chest. “And I do not know when that changed. Or why it was you.”

She met his gaze, and something unspoken passed between them—an understanding neither of them had named, but both had felt tightening with every step they took together.

“I do not want this place to take you,” she explained in a low tone. “Not your courage. Not your kindness. Not whatever it is that makes you question when others have not.” She released a shaky breath. “You are too kind to be broken by the Labyrinth.”

Corin’s throat went even tighter. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know enough.”

“I could be as bad as Kronos in real life.”

That got a small chuckle out of Ariadne, the sound lightening the room. “I know enough about you to know that is not true.”

Silence settled again, deeper this time. The chamber felt too small for the choked quiet, despite the open sky above. It seemed to press down on them rather than offer a tease of escape.

“I don’t plan on giving up,” he told her quietly but with conviction laced in his tone. “Not on leaving.”