CHAPTER FOUR
IDO NOT brING A weapon.
I consider it, at length. But I am doing this to save my brother as much as the Athenians.
For nine years I’ve gone over every single possibility of freeing him, but even as a child the most obvious endpoint of every scenario I could conceive was a blade slicing through his neck as some hero clamoured to become the man who slayed the Minotaur.
This is what happens, time and again. Only last year the servants whispered tales of Medusa, a monster who could turn men to stone with a single glance.
She’d taken herself to an isolated island to avoid such murder, and still the men came, desperate to be the one who ended her tale – and to cement their own. Eventually one had succeeded.
Cruel as it is, the labyrinth is protection. No one can get to Asterion there.
Until now.
If the drugs didn’t work, Asterion could kill every Athenian. A blade might keep him at bay until I could free them. But still. But still …
And then it is morning and the palace is in disarray and evidently the servants no longer fear my inauspicious birth because this birthday I’m under their constant watch as they ready me for the evening’s procession and my sister is glowering every few seconds as though expecting me to apologize – for what?
– and decidedly not letting me out of her sight either.
The ceremony that evening begins with music – so often barred from these halls where the slightest irritating noise can set my father off on a rampage.
But now drums smash every step, a lyre screeches high, an aulos cuts a discordant noise that hits far too deep and a salpinx thunders a triumphant beat.
My dress is plum, that grape wreath back on my head, and I think of those fruits with their fragile skins, of teeth sinking in and tearing apart, of juice bleeding from cracked lips, and I look at the Athenians before me and might be sick.
I toy with my sister’s aulos, slipped into my pocket. She might never have played it again – but she kept it on display in her room, front and centre. Maybe she noticed it was gone. Maybe that’s why she’s been pinning me with narrowed eyes all day.
But I need something to signal the merchants with later, if I’m to get the Athenians on to their ship.
Father rises from his throne and surveys the scene below.
‘Nineteen years ago my son was slaughtered,’ he shouts, voice ragged.
‘His crime? Success. Achievement. Victory. The very things that make us Cretan. Well, if the Athenians wished to condemn us for our strength, we would show them what true might means. If it is the children of our land they would take from us, let us show them what real power can do.’
The crowd cheers – I cheer. Loud, excited. I’m smiling – I’ve been smiling this whole time.
But my gaze falls, as it has repeatedly, to the group of tributes.
To the boy at their centre.
His lip curls and he catches my eye, which only etches that sneer further, his disgust evident. His hatred burns.
He does not know I am the priestess who visited, after all. And if I wish to remain alive then he never can.
I swallow hard and face the arch set over the steps to the labyrinth’s entrance. My father walks through, the Athenians following. One of them stumbles and a guard wrenches him to his feet, pressing his blade so sharply against his back a prick of red appears.
‘There, that ought to give the beast your scent.’
My stomach roils. But I press forward as though too excited to stop, even as others do. They form a ring around the door but I stumble to the topmost step and peer down.
My father raises his hand high. In the dark, I catch a flash of silver.
‘You wished to spill my family’s blood, did you not?’ Father says, chuckling even as he slashes a blade down his palm. Blood sprays across the tiles, quickly smothered as he presses his hand to the door.
A second, and then the gears turn.
Daedalus’s words come back to me: The door is as hungry for blood as the labyrinth itself. But let us assume, in this exercise, that you are both capable of feeding it.
Our family’s blood …
The cruelty is smothering – that Asterion himself could open his own prison if only he were on its other side. And now I risk not only being caught in the act but afterwards. If anyone finds out the Athenians escaped, it leaves a very narrow pool of suspects.
One I imagine I would be right at the top of.
I try to reassure myself that, perhaps, I might get away with it.
If someone discovers the Athenians have fled, I am already at risk.
Someone might remember that priestess. Daedalus might recall our conversation.
My mother might think of every small rebellion she has inspired in me and wonder what it could have ignited.
But I am not risking anything more than I already have – which is, of course, everything. Worst case … worst case I die. No, worst case I’m tortured and then I die. Worst case my siblings are brutalized too, as our father tries to discover which of us betrayed him …
I could leave it and let the Athenians die and some cowardly part of me does truly consider it.
This is not my problem to fix. But something about that door with its bloodlust pushes me on – by crafting it like this, Father truly has, inadvertently, placed the weight of doing something about it on to me.
So, as the party rages on in the central courtyard, I creep down to the empty throne room.
That arch looms, then swallows me as I hurl myself down into the darkness.
Two torches flicker either side of the door, slowly burning out.
I take out a knife – and think of that boy telling me I should have brought them a weapon. Maybe I should. If they’re dead, it’s my fault.
So before I can doubt myself a second longer, I slash my palm and I cannot help the shriek that flies from my mouth.
Gods, that hurts so much more than I thought it would.
Why did I cut my palm? Why not somewhere more inconspicuous?
If they notice the Athenians are gone, I will quite literally be caught red-handed.
I smash my bleeding flesh on to the door – gasping at the sensation, a clamping suction. Like I’m being drained.
Then, all at once it releases me, and already I feel the itch of a scab forming as though the door has clotted the wound too.
The gears grind and the door opens and I expect the Athenians to spill out but instead …
there is nothing. Only the dark path beyond.
I hesitate. What if they’re dead? What if my brother is about to come charging out to taste my blood too?
I could close the door again. I could say that I tried but it wasn’t enough and –
Ahead, there is a shriek.
I snatch a torch from a sconce and race inwards.
The walls tower over me as a path branches, spiralling in or spiralling out, and I choose one without thinking. The ceiling is so far above as to be imperceptible while on either side the walls press in, narrow and tight. I hit against rough stone as the path snakes inwards beneath the palace.
Ahead there is shouting, dull pounding and then I round the corner and there …
The Athenians crowd around the broken body of my brother – flesh red and ragged and torn.
A man’s body, bruised and limp – but it’s the bull’s head that marks the true scale of desolation: scarred black nose, one horn cracked, the other blunted, the eyes open and staring to the ceiling above.
The blood is fresh … but those scars are old.
Like he has run into the wall in frustration. Like he has torn at himself in madness. Like his rage had nowhere else to go for eighteen long years but on to himself.
Now his eyes are fixed, unseeing, on the storeroom above – on the place where I danced.
No … no, he can’t be dead. I did this to save him.
I look up to find the Athenians watching me.
The boy from yesterday seems to notice me last – his gaze as locked on my brother as my own was. When he sees me, it’s with a quick, relieved exhale. ‘Our priestess, I take it.’
‘Theseus,’ Zosime says – Theseus? – and she reaches for him as he steps forward, like she means to pull him back. He hardly seems to notice.
The torchlight hits him, rendering his every detail clear: tiredness etched in his limbs, torn edges of his cloak – and surprise sparking in his eyes as he sees me clearly in turn.
Theseus? Oh gods …
There is a brief moment of uncertainty but as he takes that final step, he is the confident and assured man I remember. ‘Princess Ariadne. How very brave and stupid indeed.’
‘Theseus,’ I breathe – partly because I am desperate for it, shock stilling my lungs, and partly because the idea seems so absurd. ‘The prince of Athens.’
Slowly – as though we have all the time in the world, as though my brother’s corpse weren’t lying there and guards might not come to finish the job at any moment – he smiles.
‘This isn’t the way I’d anticipated making your acquaintance.
’ He takes my hand, that slight, intimate smile dashing across his lips. ‘But it’s a pleasure nonetheless.’
‘I …’ The prince of Athens. The very man I myself once proposed I marry.
A man who will certainly not slip away into obscurity.
My thumb skims over roughened skin – and I glance at his hand in mine. His knuckles are bruised and bloody, the skin cracked.
I flinch back. ‘You killed him. Why? Did he wake?’
‘I don’t think it ever slept,’ he says gently. ‘Whatever herbs you used were ineffective; the beast charged right at us.’
Zosime starts. ‘That’s not –’
She cuts herself off at a look from Theseus – no, at a look from her prince.
She swallows and turns back to me. ‘Theseus saved us all. He vanquished the beast with his bare hands.’
Theseus is watching me carefully – and I suddenly realize my sympathy might put me in danger. The Athenians might not take kindly to a girl who sides with the beast …
‘If there had been another way,’ he says instead – as though he means to soothe me, ‘I would have taken it.’
I can’t think of this right now – and I certainly can’t bear the apologies of the people my father meant to die down here.
‘We need to go,’ I interrupt, turning desperately and racing back down the path. I relax only when their footsteps echo after me. ‘I have boats prepared.’
‘We have boats,’ Theseus says. ‘The Cretan forces who sailed to collect us were swiftly replaced with my own men.’
Ah. Yes. He had never expected his death in that labyrinth, had always anticipated a way out …
‘Alright,’ I agree. ‘I can get you out of the palace to your ships instead –’
And then …
The prince of Athens will return and brag about what happened here.
Or the guards or the servants or the king himself will notice Asterion is dead.
That there are no fresh Athenian bones within the labyrinth.
There is no escaping this, no quietly slipping away with my father unaware of the escape.
He will know Asterion is dead, that the Athenians killed him …
and that someone of his blood let them out.
I will be the first place he looks for his vengeance.
I burst through the door as the realization hits. Theseus is beside me and I whirl on him.
‘I need to come with you. I need to … We need to …’
He reaches for me, placing a firm, reassuring hand upon my shoulder.
‘You’re not the only one who’s been planning for this, Ariadne.
’ His voice is a low rumble, meant for me alone even with the other Athenians spilling into this stairway.
‘Isn’t it high time we work together? We have naval ships in the docks – far swifter than any merchant vessels. ’
I nod – good, that’s good. He lets go and I feel the absence of that weight.
‘I can get us through the palace,’ I say, pieces falling into place. ‘There might be guards –’
‘I can get us past those,’ he says – that confidence again, that slick assurance.
‘The city will be trickier. I don’t know it well.’
‘We’ve survived one labyrinth; we can manage another.’
‘And the docks will be guarded.’
‘Again,’ he smiles, ‘I can handle that.’
‘Then let’s go.’ I step to move away but he catches at my hand.
‘There is, of course, only one problem. Your father will bring his fleet if he believes I’ve not only killed his monster but kidnapped his daughter –’
I meet his gaze. There is a clear solution to that – one he knows just as well as I do. ‘Marry me, then.’
He quirks a brow, as though his surprise is not at the suggestion itself but that I would be so brazen. ‘Marry you?’
My heart pounds – we are wasting so much time. And I do not know this boy, do not know any of them. There is no time to calculate worst-case scenarios or to weigh up the odds, only a desperate gamble based on what I do know: my father. I cannot stay here.
‘My father won’t tolerate this,’ I say. ‘Your escape will ignite another war. But if we marry, we can form an alliance and put all this to rest.’
I doubt that, of course. But Theseus doesn’t know that. Besides, if I stay and somehow evade suspicion then my father will soon arrange my marriage anyway. So why not this one?
If one king is after my blood, what better protection than the royal family of another kingdom?
There is even a slim chance my father might cling to the shreds of his dignity and claim he agreed to this union. This could solve everything.
Theseus hums, tilting his head as he considers, and the candlelight catches on the harsh line of his jaw. ‘And say I have no interest in putting this to rest?’
‘Your people would,’ I push. ‘Eighteen years of tyranny and you’d be the hero who ended it.’
‘The hero?’ He brings the hand he holds closer, breathing into it as he speaks – warm and hot and a brush away from his lips.
‘That’s how the tales end, is it not? The lovestruck princess, betraying her family for the prince.
He slays the monster and whisks the princess away to happiness.
You wish us to become the stuff of legends. ’
I wish for us to go. I don’t care how they tell this tale – only that we survive to share it.
‘Spin whichever story you wish. Just get me away from here.’
With none of the haste I am pleading for, he smiles.
‘Very well, Princess Ariadne. Let’s get you home to Athens. It appears we have a wedding to plan.’