Page 65 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

Across the chamber, Ariadne stood rooted to the floor. Her face was pale with shock. One hand stood clenching at her throat, the other wrapped around her ribs as if holding herself back. She looked as though she had forgotten how to breathe.

Corin turned to her fully, his chest tight and voice barely steady. “I’m sorry,” he admitted. “I can’t kill your brother. I won’t.”

He swallowed hard. “If hurting you is what the Labyrinth wants, then it will have to keep me.”

Silence pressed in around them, thick and absolute.

Then the stone groaned.

Corin thought perhaps the Labyrinth was going to fight back—this is what it had been gearing up to all along. He was prepared for a fight, to have to run again through halls leading to a tangled web of corridors.

He turned just as a section of the wall beside him began to shift. The golden veins flared, brilliant and blinding, and the stone peeled back with a slow, deliberate motion. Light spilled through the opening—clean, open, and unmistakably not the Labyrinth.

A passageway.

An exit.

Corin stared at it, heart hammering, disbelief crashing through him in waves.

The Labyrinth had opened.

He was free to leave.

XXIII

They stood there in silence for a moment, all three of them suspended in the aftermath of the maze opening.

Corin's chest still rose too fast, his pulse too loud in his ears. The open passage beside him glowed softly, patiently, as though it had all the time in the world.

There before him stood the Hall of Due. He could make out the light grey stone of his castle, the empty space that he knew held the two priestesses to welcome him back. He could see lingering decorative banners that had slowly started to dissipate from his absence.

It was his home. Right there only sitting a few steps away. It was his escape from the cursed maze that was set out to torture him.

He stared at it, then shook his head once sharply as if that might make sense of what happened.

“I don’t–” His voice came out hoarse, and not out of exhaustion. “I don’t understand.” His gaze shifted back to Ariadne, to the woman whose heart he nearly broke just moments ago. “I swear to you, I didn’t know this would happen.”

Ariadne didn’t respond immediately.

The Minotaur moved instead.

With a low, wounded sound, it limped across the chamber toward its sister. Its great head was lowered in a way that made it seem so young and innocent. Its horns were nicked and cracked, blood dark against pale stone.

Corin felt bad for the beast, more so than before. He felt bad for his actions and the discomfort it led to the monster.

When the Minotaur reached Ariadne, it pressed its massive weight close, almost clumsily. It nudged at her side like a hurt animal seeking comfort. And in that moment, it was.

Ariadne turned fully then to face her injured kin, hands immediately lifting to its face. She murmured softly—words Corin couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand from where he stood not far away—and touched the torn flesh with practiced care.

Something in Corin’s chest twisted painfully.

He looked back at the exit.

And suddenly, horribly, he understood.

His breath caught.

“No,” he whispered, more to himself than to the other beings in the room. His gaze flickered between the light spilling from the passage and Ariadne kneeling beside her brother. “No… that’s not–”