Page 64 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

The soft hollow at the base of the skull. The place the stories spoke of. The place that ended legends. The place he had stared at once and almost struck.

He could do it. Right now. He could finish this. He could return to Knossos.

Corin raised his blade.

Time slowed.

He caught sight of Ariadne across the chamber as the Minotaur turned in his thrashing. She stood perfectly still, tears streaming freely now. Her mouth was open in a silent cry, her hands pressed to her chest as if trying to hold her heart together.

She did not beg him, not like last time he was in this position. She did not make a sound. But she refused to look away.

She simply watched him.

He wished that she would turn around. That she would leave. That she wouldn’t watch him kill her brother. He wished that she could understand, and perhaps she did, but that didn’t make the feeling any better.

She just continued to watch him. Waiting for the moment he fully broke her heart.

But it was Corin’s heart that shattered.

This wasn’t victory. This wasn’t escape. This was becoming the same man who had trapped her here. This was choosing himself over her—over everything she loved, everything she had endured.

His arm trembled.

The blade hovered inches from its mark.

But Corin was frozen.

His arm twitched, muscles burning, as the blade poised exactly where it would end everything for his trial. But his heart hurt. More than he had thought possible.

If escape required becoming the man who hurt her first, then escape was not freedom.

He closed his eyes.

He couldn’t do it.

Not for a crown. Not for daylight. Not for the promise of a life that required him to become the thing she feared most. He couldn’t be the man who took her brother from her again and called it duty. He couldn’t break her like that and still call himself whole.

Even if it meant he never left.

Even if the Labyrinth swallowed him the way it had swallowed so many others.

“I can’t,” he whispered, more to himself than anything else.

The words felt like a release and a ruin all at once.

Corin flung the blade from his hand. It clattered across the stone, the sound sharp and final in the silence that followed. It landed directly in front of Ariadne.

The Minotaur froze.

Its massive body stilled beneath him, breath coming in slow, bewildered breaths. Corin was sure the beast was prepared for the death it had experienced numerous times before, and the blade disappearing would come as a shock to it. He half expected the Minotaur to react swiftly, tear him off his back and strike harshly.

But it didn’t.

Corin loosened his grip on its horn and carefully lowered himself down its side, boots touching the stone with a soft scrape. He stepped back, hands raised slightly—not in challenge but in surrender.

Nothing moved.

The Minotaur stared at him, one dark eye wide, chest heaving. It did not attack. It did not flee. It didn’t seem to know what to do.