XIII
Corin tried the first entrance with purpose.
He chose the narrow archway to his right, where the stone was much darker and the air smelled faintly of iron.
He stepped through without looking back, jaw set and blade gripped tightly.
The corridor beyond twisted sharply left, then right, then dipped into shadow.
Then he emerged into open air.
Light spilled down from the gaped ceiling. The stone floor curved gently beneath his boots. Ariadne stood near the edge of the space, exactly where she had been only minutes before, her posture loose and her expression unreadable.
Corin stopped short and grunted in frustration. “No,” he grumbled.
He eyed the entry to his left. It was brighter than the others, and he hoped that meant it would take him further on his journey. He turned on his heel and entered quickly.
This one was wider than the previous. Its edges threaded faintly with gold brighter than those he had seen earlier. He passed through this one at a jog, then a run, counting his steps, tracking each turn, refusing to let his focus slip.
Thirty steps. Turn. Twenty more. A downward slope. Hope had started to rise in him. A few more steps.
Ariadne’s chamber greeted him again like an unchanging truth. And she still hadn’t moved.
Corin released a sharp and humorless laugh. “You’ve got to be–”
He didn’t fully finish the thought before he was charging toward a third door. Then a fourth. Then one so small he had to duck his shoulders to fit through it.
Each time, the path felt different enough. They were longer or darker or colder than the one before. Each time, he swore he was consistently moving forward, away from Ariadne and her chamber. But each time, it ended the same way.
Open air.
Sky.
Her.
Clearly, the Labyrinth was trying to tell him something.
Ariadne had shifted away from just simply watching him. Instead, she sat on a particularly large stone, humming to herself. A few times, he noticed she was pulling on some thread from an old piece of cloth, bundling it up into a small blue ball of string.
By his tenth attempt, his patience had thinned to something brittle. Sweat dampened his hairline. His ribs ached and his feet screamed out in protest.
He nearly collapsed in the center of the chamber after another few attempts, after he had given into venturing through the same halls he had previously charged through, and turned to fully face Ariadne.
“Are you doing this?” he questioned loudly.
Ariadne met his gaze. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she shrugged—one shoulder lifting and falling slowly—and shook her head in time.
“No.”
Corin searched her face for any sense of deception and found none. Only watchfulness. Caution. A quiet kind of concern she did not seem ready to admit to. But her eyes had hardly left him between every attempt.
“Then why can’t I leave?” he demanded.
She glanced toward one of the archways he had already tried to run through, then back to him. “You keep trying to go away.”
Corin nodded slowly. “That is the point here.”
Her mouth twitched, though not quite a smile. “Is it?” Her hands shifted, gathering the end of the string and beginning to weave it together.
He huffed and turned away again, stalking toward another exit. He muttered to himself, nearly cursing her name as he passed through the arch without waiting, boots striking stone in quick, frustrated steps.
It didn’t take long for the corridor to shift beneath him. The light changed, nearly blinding him. And once again, her chamber unfolded around him like a held breath released.
Corin stopped dead.
For a heartbeat, something ugly flared in his chest—panic, sharp and sudden, clawing its way up his throat. He forced it down, planting his feet as though the stone itself might betray him if he didn’t.
“This isn’t funny,” he ground out.
Ariadne tilted her head. She had not gotten far in her weaving. “I did not say it was.”
He tried again. And again. Each attempt blurred into the next. Sometimes he ran. Sometimes he walked slowly and deliberately. He marked the cracks in the walls and tried to memorize the shape of the turns.
It didn’t seem to matter, though. The Labyrinth erased all of his efforts with indifferent precision.
Eventually, he stopped trying. He leaned his forearms against his knees and dragged in a breath, then another. And it seemed like the Labyrinth approved of this as he sensed the walls around him releasing a small pulse.
He cursed the maze another few times.
When he straightened, Ariadne was still there, still silent, still watching him as though he were something fragile and dangerous all at once.
“So,” he began, voice quieter now, “I guess it’s not letting me go.”
“No,” she agreed. “It does not appear so. Not yet.”
“It doesn’t want me to fulfill my trial.”
She didn’t respond to that. Only kept her steady gaze on him.
Corin looked at the many archways lining the chamber—each one a promise, every one a lie. He released another shaky breath and slid his back down a large pile of stones until he plopped to the ground.
“Then I suppose it wants something else.”
Corin sat with his back against one of the larger sun-warmed stones, legs stretched out in front of him with his new blade resting across his thighs.
It had been a long time since either of the entities in the room had spoken. The open air above them held the quiet without pressing, as if even the Labyrinth had decided to listen rather than intrude.
Ariadne’s eyes had remained on the blade in Corin’s lap. She stared at it with longing, perhaps remembrance, and the gaze made a chill run down Corin’s spine. Whatever it was, it distracted her enough to where she had needed to restart her weaving.
It was only once she shook her head to banish whatever thoughts plagued her that she broke the silence.
“Tell me about your life,” she requested.
He met her eyes, surprised. “My life?”
“Yes.” She folded herself down onto a stone a few paces away so they could face each other directly. She was careful to not be too close but not too distant either. “Not of the trial. Not of what awaits you outside this place. Just… you. I do not get the opportunity to learn about many down here.”
Corin exhaled slowly, considering his words. He couldn’t remember the last time someone asked him a question such as that without expectation layered beneath it.
“I live in Kno–” he paused, thinking over his words, as he didn’t want to anger the maze with another name.
He was sure a kingdom would be safe, but he could not even think about running away from more chaos then.
“Well, you know where I live. Or did live.” He winced slightly.
“It’s a kingdom built on old gold and even older stories.
Everyone walks like they’re carrying the weight of their ancestors on their shoulders. And I guess they may.”
“That sounds familiar.”
He thought of what she would want to hear about. “Whispers of your father’s time still echo in the halls.”
Ariadne huffed softly. “Of course. He would not have liked it any other way, I assure you.”
He smiled despite himself, but it quickly fell as he spoke of his kingdom. “Court life is… orderly, I suppose. Ritualized. Every meal, every conversation has a rule attached to it. Lords who smile while sharpening knives you’ll never see. Ladies who remember every slight and repay them with grace.”
She studied him for a moment. “And you?” she asked. “What do you do when you are not being watched?”
He thought of the early mornings in the training yards, of sneaking out of the ramparts just before dawn, of sitting in the archives with Mirelle while she read aloud and corrected scribes thrice their age.
“I learn,” he said finally. “And I listen. I’m expected to rule after this, so I’ve been taught since birth how to look like I already know what I’m doing.”
Her lips curved faintly at that, not quite the smile that Corin felt himself wishing for. “Do you enjoy it?”
His brows raised. Did he? “I suppose… it’s all I know.”
Ariadne let those words sink in before continuing. “And do you… have friends?”
Corin noticed the way her fingers pulled slightly in her lap. When she noticed his gaze, her fingers slipped away.
“A few,” he answered, a small blush rising to his cheeks. “Mirelle.” he halted and instinctively glanced towards the walls. He expected them to bristle at the name, to send a punishment down again.
But thankfully, somehow, nothing happened. No explosion or monster coming to attack him. The words were able to escape him without protest, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Despite his hesitation, he relaxed. “Mirelle is my closest friend. She’s clever, practical.” He released a sharp laugh. “A born queen, and she’d be a better ruler than most the kings I know.”
“Do you mean… is she your betrothed?” Something about the way her voice hitched when she asked had Corin’s gut coiling.
He glanced away. “She is.”
Ariadne studied him for another moment, then nodded, as if filing the answer away somewhere. Corin wondered how many conversations she had had like this before. How many heirs she had questioned their lives.
A selfish part of him wished it was none. He wanted to be the only one who spoke to her about his life. But the other side of him knew that was terrible to wish for. What a horrible existence that would be for her, living in this place and never having a calm conversation about the outside.
“And what do they say about me?” she asked lowly.
Corin stilled. He opened his mouth—and stopped. He cleared his throat. “The Threaded Daughter,” he started, barely remembering to not say her name. Heat crept into his cheeks. “Your part of the story is… not spoken of often.”
Ariadne’s expression softened at that. Not pleased. Just relieved.
“Threaded Daughter,” she echoed in thought.
“It’s… out of respect,” he tried to assure her.
“I suppose.”
“They say you were clever,” he continued, adding on quickly.
“That you helped Th-er… that you helped your hero and were betrayed. Left. Some believe you became a warning. Though none really imagined you were here. At least, not to my knowledge.” He ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Truthfully, our legends were not where I paid the most of my attention.”
For a long moment, she was quiet. Her head was tilted in thought. “And what do you think?”
He hesitated. “I think legends flatten people. They turn them into lessons instead of letting them be human.”
Something unreadable passed through her eyes. “You are careful with your words now.”
“I’m learning; it’s never been my strong suit,” he replied, glancing at the walls again. “But this place has some nasty opinions.”
A corner of her mouth lifted. “It always has.”
They were both quiet for a bit after that, Corin’s mind racing with all of the questions he could ask, but he wasn’t sure how to form any of them into words.
Finally, he sighed, and when he ran his fingers through his hair, Ariadne’s eyes tracked the movement carefully. “You managed to learn the maze. How?”
Ariadne’s shoulders dropped. “My thread… helped, I suppose, but I…” she stopped to take in a deep breath. “It started to go through me at some point.”
“Go through you?”
She shrugged and refused to meet his eyes. “I find it hard to explain truly. I cannot control the Labyrinth, nor can I always understand why it acts the way it does. I just… can understand where paths went.”
“Have you always been able to do that? With The—with your hero?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “It came over the many years.”
“And you never tried to leave with an heir? No one tried to save you?”
Ariadne scoffed, and Corin could have sworn he saw a tear form in her eyes. “No one ever asked.”
The answer wrecked Corin. He felt it through his body as the words rushed over him. His heart fell into his stomach. He clenched his fists on instinct, feeling his nails biting into his palms to relax him.
How could no one have thought to leave with her, he questioned.
He wanted to go back to each of the heirs, take them out of Tartarus and shake them. Yell at them until they apologize profusely. He simply could not understand why none of the future kings tried to help her at all.
Corin attempted to school the emotions running through him, releasing his fists to try to act as if he was unbothered. He did not want Ariadne to be scared of him for any reason, certainly not over his emotions.
They sat in companionable silence after that, the kind that didn’t demand to be filled. Corin forced his breathing to steady as he found himself watching the way the light caught in her hair, how she held herself as though she’d learned long ago not to take up too much space.
It occurred to him then—quietly, unexpectedly—that he wanted her to say his name one day. To say it without fear. To hear it from her mouth without the stone bringing down punishment on either of them.
The thought startled him.
Ariadne shifted, drawing her knees in closer, her gaze drifting upward toward the sky. “You do not look at me the way the others did.”
“Others?”
“The heirs,” she clarified lightly. “Those who noticed me at all.”
He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “How did they look at you?”
“Like a tool,” she said simply, though Corin could tell the memories hurt her. “Or a trap.”
He met her eyes. “I don’t think you’re either.”
The admission settled between them, fragile and unspoken but certainly as real as anything else in the maze.