VIII
Corin lay there gasping, staring at the endlessly dark ceiling, and wondering what in Hades had just happened. His head was ringing, his body ached, and he felt like he couldn’t quite catch his breath.
Ariadne was at his side before the echoes of the Minotaur’s retreat had fully faded.
She dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering for half a breath as if afraid to touch him.
Then, they settled—firm and practiced—against his shoulder and ribs.
Her fingers were cool and calming, quieting the pain for a moment.
“Don’t move,” she commanded, sharper than he could have imagined her voice going. “You landed badly.”
Corin sucked in a breath that felt like knives. He surely broke a rib or two. “I can feel that,” he ground out.
“You should not talk.”
“I got that,” he grumbled, wincing as she placed a particularly solid hand on his rib.
She sent him a sharp look. “Quiet, I said.”
“You told me to stop,” he rasped. “You were… crying.”
Her jaw tightened. She didn’t look at his face directly, still searching his body for injuries, and her hand reached out to his bloody arm. “You are bleeding.”
But he didn’t pay it any mind. “That thing–” he winced as she shifted him slightly to look over his injuries. “That thing was my way out. You ruined that.”
Ariadne’s hands stilled. “No. It was not.”
Corin laughed once, bitter and breathless. “Everyone knows killing the Minotaur is one of the ways you escape. I could have gotten out of here right then. And you ruined it.”
“Everyone is wrong,” she spat.
That snapped his attention fully onto her, his body curving inward despite her hands holding him steady. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes were cold as iron. “People do not understand the Labyrinth like they believe they do.”
He was quiet for a beat as he waited for her to say something else, anything else, that would help him to understand what was happening here.
“Then explain,” he demanded. “Because nothing in here makes any sense. The Labyrinth spoke. You knew it would. That corridor shouldn’t have existed yet, as you said.
And you–” he broke off, chest heaving. “You begged me like I was about to kill someone.”
Her eyes clicked to his face then, and something in them shuttered. But she didn’t respond, just remained frozen with her hands on his chest.
“Are you going to say something?” he practically begged.
Her eyes closed for a moment. “If you allow me to help you,” she said slowly, “I will tell you what I can.”
His brow furrowed. “What you can?”
“I won’t lie to you,” she explained. “But I cannot tell you everything. It will not let me.”
“It?” Corin echoed. “The Labyrinth?”
She nodded her head once.
Corin stared at her, considering her words. The pain was pulsing through his arm in time with his rapid heartbeat. With this pain and injuries, he wasn’t sure how agile he would be navigating through the maze, and sitting here, he’d be a sitting duck.
He thought of the daylight he missed. Of gold and ceremony from home. Of how easily his certainty had shattered under the weight of her grief.
“What choice do I have?” he grumbled, more to himself than the woman in front of him.
Ariadne exhaled, relief flickering across her face before she masked it once again. She rose and offered him her hand. “Then come with me, heir. We need not stay here any longer.”
“Because it will come back?” Corin spat.
She cringed. “Please.”
“Is that even safe?”
She was quiet another long moment. “Please.”
Corin stared at her outstretched hand for a moment longer before taking it with his uninjured arm and let her pull him to his feet. The world swayed and his side ached something fierce, but she steadied him without comment, adjusting her pace to match his injured stride.
Feeling her body supporting him did something to him that he didn’t want to explore just yet.
They took a different path than they had traveled before—a narrow passage sloping gently downward, the walls etched with carvings worn so smooth they looked more like shadows than stone. The Labyrinth felt…quieter here as they moved. Calmer. It was watchful, but no longer pressing.
The pair walked in silence for several moments, Corin’s thoughts tangling tighter with every step.
The Minotaur hadn’t chased him. It hadn’t tried to finish him. It had fought him, yes, but he had a feeling that the beast wasn’t quite putting its full force behind the attack. Not really.
And Ariadne—whatever she was—had mourned its anticipated death.
Perhaps she had seen many others fall to their fate by the Minotaur.
Many heirs hadn’t made it out of the Labyrinth, and he was sure not all had gotten lost like Taleon.
Though her reaction to their fight didn’t seem to be in regards to Corin’s fate but rather the monster he was protecting her from.
Had he been protecting her?
“How long have you been doing this?” Corin croaked as they passed another cross in the path. “Walking heirs through half-truths and silence?”
The only sign that the words struck a cord with Ariadne was that her fingers tangled themselves in front of her, pulling at her nails slowly. “It has been a long time since I really… engaged with an heir.”
“But you have?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“And how many of them did you stop from doing the one thing that can let them out?” He pressed. “How many did you beg like you begged me?”
“You are incorrect, heir. Fighting the Minotaur is not the only way out. You should know that.” She shook her head as her fingers curled against his side. “But to answer your previous question, not many.”
That answer sat heavier than any lie.
Corin glanced at the branching corridors ahead. All of them looked identical, yet all of them felt wrong. His arm throbbed. His certainty was gone.
They kept walking, deeper into stone and shadow, with Corin limping alongside her—not because he trusted her, not yet, but because nothing else in the Labyrinth felt moderately safer than being with her.
“I came in here knowing what I was supposed to do. And now I don’t know anything,” he admitted softly.
Ariadne sighed, her expression unreadable. “Then you are truly seeing the Labyrinth as it is.”
His escape had been inches away.
And he had let it go.