Page 6 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

They raised up their hands in unison, palms outward to reveal ancient marks etched deep into their skin. Corin only caught a sharp glimpse, but he could have sworn it looked like that missing piece of stone he saw the night prior. His eyes searched to find the missing area of stone again, but one of the priests was standing in the way.

“The heir to Minos stands unbound,” the High Priest proclaimed, turning to stare Corin down. “Not king. Not child. Not shielded by crown or name.”

True silence rang out in the hall. Not even the shifting of silks reached Corin’s ears.

The priestesses stiffly stepped away from the arch. Each step looked more painful than the last, as if the motion itself was an unnatural burden. The one to the left reached out and pressed her palm to the stone, just above where Corin thought the missing stone was. The cracks in all of the stone at that point flared faintly, veins of gold catching the light and pulsing softly.

The Labyrinth had begun to open.

A sound like grinding teeth rolled through the hall, and Corin had to stop himself from covering his ears at the horrid tone. At the twitch of his hands upward, he shifted them down to settle on the weapons held at his hips.

The dark stone dragged against itself. Knossos’s ancient mechanisms groaning as the darkness beyond stretched and deepened until no torchlight from the hall was seen. Cold air spilled outward, rushing over the crowd and releasing a soft hiss as it lifted the silks in the room.

Corin’s hands tightened on his weapons.

“You enter willing, Heir,” the priestess who opened the entrance whispered with her dark gaze locked onto him.

“And leave once you accept what was owed,” the other finished.

Three days. Three nights. He could do this.

The opening yawned wide, patient and waiting, and for a breathless moment, the entire court seemed to lean forward, eager to see what the stone would demand: if the Labyrinth would keep him inside for all of eternity or if he would be free.

Corin drew one steady breath, then another, and pushed his body forward.

The cold reached him before the dark did. It slid across his bare wrists and throat, seeping beneath the linen and raising goosebumps along his arms. The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the sound of the hall vanished behind him. He hadn’t even heard the stone move once more to close behind him, but when he turned his head to look to the hall, there was nothing there.

It was just… gone.

If he hadn’t just walked through the threshold, he would never have known that the stone was once open. It appeared the same as everything else: old and cold.

The darkness closed in around him, nearly choking him. For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, he ran his hand along the dark stone beside him. It was warmer here, strangely enough, and alive. He could feel a faint beat through the stone, so close to the echoing of his own heart.

He wished he had grabbed a torch to carry, to light his path through this horrid trial. If he had known he would be walking in complete darkness, he would have.

He took another step, though. Then another. And his eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness around him. It wasn’t pitch black, he realized. The stones around him glowed faintly as through there were magical veins running across them, and perhaps there were. The veins flared golden every few seconds, directing him forward along his path.

Through the faint light, he could make out a slight slope of the passage. The patch was narrow at first, forcing his shoulders close to the walls. The sound of his footsteps came back to him altered—too soft, too distant, as though the sound belonged to someone else behind him.

Corin once again glanced back at what was once the opening he had entered through and grimaced. Still closed.

And as the silence surrounded him, he knew one thing with certainty.

He was completely alone.

III

Corin had only made it a few additional steps before feeling utterly lost.

He knew he likely would not exit through the same way he entered, his uncle had warned him of that, but he was not expecting the walls where he had started his journey to completely shift from in front of him. Where once had been a hall leading him forward now stood a solid wall pushing him in another direction.

He glanced down both ways—left and right—and decided to go with his dominant direction.

“Right it is,” he grumbled to himself.

As he moved forward, the darkness seemed to thin more and more. That or his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. The faint golden veins in the stone pulsed softly as he moved past, brightening and dimming seemingly without any pattern. The walls curved in on themselves, corridors bending just out of sight. His hand remained on the stone, tracing some of the veins as he continued walking, the stone cool to his touch.

He walked for what felt like hours through endless emptiness, though his body strangely had not begun to ache. He paused after a while, taking in how his body felt. Each limb felt fine, as if no time at all had passed. Even his feet did not ache from the constant walking on stone. He wanted to thank his boots for the ease of travel but knew there had to have been some other reason for the lack of pain. Some reason he didn’t want to analyze.