XVII
Voices rang out behind them, begging him to stop and come back, to save these illusions who were dead set on torturing them.
Despite the chaotic noise, Corin continued on. If not for him, for Ariadne.
He had to get her out of there. Immediately.
The chamber screamed as they crossed the threshold, different than they had first entered through.
As soon as his feet hit the stone outside of the chamber, the mist seemed to tear itself apart.
The figures reached out but were met with nothing.
Their voices shattered into distant echoes before silence slammed down like a solid door.
Bristle sprinted behind them, snarling at any voice that called out to demand something of them. It followed along swiftly, often having to slow down to make sure it didn’t get too far ahead of the pair.
The corridor before them was dark, narrow, and mercifully empty, but Corin didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. He continued to run through the hall until his lungs burned and his legs shook. Only then did his steps begin to falter. He slowed them gradually until he came to an exhausted halt.
He pressed himself to a wall and slowly lowered himself, still holding Ariadne tightly against his chest. She clung to him fiercely, face buried against his shoulder and waves of trembles rushing through her.
Bristle moved all around the two, scanning the corridor for any other figures set to haunt them. Seeing none, it collapsed at Corin’s feet and began to nibble on a spare stone in front of it, seemingly pleased with itself and completely forgotten the prior chaos.
“It’s over,” he assured softly once he caught enough of his breath to speak. His hand brushed along Ariadne’s back in slow, grounding motions. “You’re safe now. I won’t let them hurt you.”
Her breathing gradually steadied as he continued to whisper reassuring words into her hair. Still, she didn’t pull away from him.
For a long while, the only sounds were her labored breathing, Bristle’s slow nibbling, and Corin’s soft words or safety. The Labyrinth was eerily quiet around them, and Corin cursed it in his head.
Eventually, Bristle fell asleep, content with the stone set in its mouth.
It took some time, but Ariadne eventually lifted her head from Corin’s chest. Her eyes were bright red and laced with tears as they searched his face with a sense of something raw and vulnerable.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
He met her gaze without flinching. “Yes,” he corrected. “I should have.”
Corin felt something shift between them then, something unspoken and fragile. He knew the Labyrinth had brought the two of them together—he still wasn't sure why—but the haunted chamber made him realize that maybe she wasn’t there to save him.
Maybe he was here to save her.
They rested for
a while after that. They both needed it, and Bristle had been snoring away without a care in the world for what seemed like hours. Corin wished he could sleep like the beast, but there was something keeping him awake.
He was completely exhausted from the run and carrying Ariadne, but that cursed chamber had taken an emotional toll that wouldn’t dare let Corin rest peacefully.
Thankfully, the corridor where they rested was deathly quiet, almost as if the maze needed to rest too after that encounter.
Corin didn’t want to thank the Labyrinth for anything, especially after it brought on such a torturous mist, but he had to believe that it didn’t quite want to kill him yet.
He sat with his back against the cold stone, knees bent and head tipped back to stare into the darkness above. He missed the sky in Ariadne’s chamber and had half a wish to go back to see it again.
Ariadne had shuffled off of his lap after her tears had dried against her cheeks. She sat a short distance away from him. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, her gaze unfocused.
For her sake, Corin was glad she seemed a bit more cognizant of what was happening. She still appeared broken, but she was slowly mending.
He watched her, slowly and softly, admiring her beauty—the way her hair fell in a slight mess upon her shoulders, the way her cool eyes flittered around, the way the golden veins illuminated her light skin. She was beautiful, too beautiful to be trapped away in the maze.
After a long silence, Corin cleared his throat. “That mist,” he started slowly. “Or whatever it was.”
“The mist,” she confirmed. Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her. “I have called it that in the past.”
“Right. The mist… it wasn’t just illusions, was it?”
Ariadne shook her head and squeezed her legs closer to her chest. “Perhaps for you. I know some heirs have encountered it and saw… well, they saw the truth, I suppose. But others? I don’t always know what they saw. I avoid it if I can.”
“Have you encountered it a lot?”
She lifted her shoulders, pulling her legs in ever closer. “A few times. It is never welcome.”
Corin was quiet as she thought over her words.
“For me, it… it shows what would break you the fastest.”
She shifted closer, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her shoulder beside his arm. After a few moments, her head shifted to rest against his arm, her body heat soaking into his.
“The man you saw,” she explained. “The first one. He was my father.”
“I assumed so.”
She nodded against his arm. “The other one. That was… him.”
She didn’t need to give his name; Corin already knew who she meant. Theseus. He was too tired to test the hero’s name in the maze, but he knew. There was no need to speak the name aloud.
“He was the hero,” she continued, her voice breaking on hero. “Or so the world decided. So I decided then.” She released a shaky breath. “I was young and foolish and believed in stories and hope.”
Ariadne inhaled long, letting the air fill her up fully before exhaling slowly. “I would like to tell you about it, I think.”
Corin blinked a few times as understanding dawned on him. “You would?”
“If you would like?”
He could see the shine of her eyes through her lashes, and Corin knew that he would give anything to listen to her story, to hear the words come from her. He wanted to know everything about this woman who had been cursed to roam the halls and watch heirs. And he would give anything to hear it.
Yet here she was, offering it to him so gently. He was holding her trust in his hands, and he prayed to all the gods in Olympus that he would never break it.
He hoped she could see how willing he was to listen to her, hoped he portrayed the longing he felt for her. And for a brief moment, he thought maybe she knew. He thought maybe she understood his feelings for her because she felt the same way. He hoped that was true.
“Of course.”
A small smile graced her lips.
She told him then about how she had watched Theseus be sent into the Labyrinth—determined but desperate. How she had fallen for the certainty in him, the way he spoke of justice and escape. How she had taken the thread, wound it carefully, and gifted it to him like a promise.
“I stayed away all night,” she went on. “Listening for his footsteps. Praying he would survive.”
And he had. Of course he had.
She explained to Corin about how the two had fled together after that, how they had had to leave her father’s grasp.
She spoke of how she ran barefoot over stone and sand, laughing and joyous because she thought the worst was over.
She believed she had escaped her father and his kingdom.
She thought the sea felt endless and kind to her.
And Corin listened. His entire body seemed to respond to her words.
The words of a kind and beautiful woman who was baring her soul to him, explaining her whole tortured history.
She was exploring the betrayals she faced and the hurt that cursed her.
He couldn’t interrupt her any more than he could fly.
All he wanted to do was listen and protect her.
Her voice began to waver.
“When I woke one gloomy morning,” she said, staring straight ahead with broken eyes. “The ship was gone.”
Corin’s jaw tightened, but he still didn’t interrupt.
She had followed him. Theseus. Not out of love at first, she admitted, but out of disbelief and betrayal. Out of fury. Out of the need to understand how someone could look at her and decide she was expendable. Her path bent back toward the one place she knew he would never willingly return.
The Labyrinth.
“I found him at the center,” she explained. “Lost. Raving. He did not recognize me at first. He thought I was another trick, I suppose.” A bitter smile touched her lips. “Perhaps I was.”
She led him then. She steadied him. She gave him water, direction, purpose—thread, most importantly. A golden thread woven by herself to get them out.
“And when we reached the threshold,” she said gently, “he smiled. He thanked me.”
Her hands trembled.
“Then he pushed me back.”
Corin felt something cold settle in his chest, and he had to clench his fists tight to stop himself from acting.
Her eyes caught sight of Corin’s fist closest to her, and she offered him a small smile. “The Labyrinth closed around me. And it did not open again. Not for me.”
Corin realized that he was likely the first to hear her story. To hear about how she had gotten trapped by the one man who she had put all of her trust in. She had not spoken like this to any other heir, and he felt truly blessed to hear the words from her lips.
She exhaled slowly, as if the truth itself weighed something physical. “At first, I thought I would die. Then I thought I would go mad. But the Labyrinth… it changed. Or perhaps I did.”
Over time, she realized the truth none of the legends ever told Corin.
Without her, the Labyrinth would unravel. Its path would grow unstable. The monsters would wander with reckless abandon. And her brother, the Minotaur, would suffer the most of all.
She had waited for him to appear. She had hoped he would, but she wasn’t quite sure of the resurgence of monsters, especially in the Labyrinth. She waited a long time for him to come back to her. And when he did, she was so happy to have a friend with her.
“So I stayed,” she ended simply. “To anchor it. To soothe him. To keep my family where they belonged. To keep my father satisfied that the balance remained.”
Corin looked at her then—really looked. Not as a legend, not a guide, not a ghost bound to stone.
A woman who had been betrayed twice and still chose endurance over destruction.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. It wasn’t much that he could offer her, but in that moment, it was all he had.
Ariadne lifted her head off of his arm to look at him. Surprise ran over her face, as if she hadn’t expected the words to be offered so easily. Then she looked away again, toward the darkness ahead. “There is no need for you to be. This place takes what it needs. It always has.”
Corin wasn't sure he believed that anymore.
“That is how the heirs started, you know,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”
She released a sharp breath. “My father would send down new heroes to tell me to stay put. Soldiers, I assume, though I never asked after the first few. To tell me I was keeping this thing running. I would keep my brother alive, whenever he would return. Year after year they came. Until one year, many moons later, they did not. It was a while before the next hero entered the Labyrinth.”
Corin blinked. “And somehow it became a tradition?”
She nodded once. “The heroes that entered only escaped sometimes. Not enough. A few of them…” She shook her head as if to stop herself from revealing something.
“It does not matter. Eventually, it morphed into an event, I suppose. The rulers decided to change their offering, and the Labyrinth was happy to accept an heir’s sacrifice instead. ”
Corin didn’t know how to respond to that. He couldn’t recall the specifics of the story from his lessons, but he trusted each word that came from Ariadne’s lips. She hadn’t lied to him yet.
And he was discovering that Knossos was not entirely truthful or kind.