XXII
Corin gulped.
The Minotaur emerged from the far passage like a living shadow given weight.
Its horns scraped the stone as it ducked through the archway, long and curved. The tips were dulled and cracked from centuries of battle. Its massive shoulders rolled as it stepped into the chamber, muscles shifting beneath hide. It was covered in scars caused by old wounds and fresh ones alike.
One dark eye fixed on Corin immediately; the other was clouded, the remnant of an ancient strike that had never fully healed despite its countless deaths and resurgences. Steam curled from its nostrils with every breath, each exhale carrying the scent of iron and earth.
It stopped when it saw Ariadne.
Just for a moment.
Something passed between them—recognition, concern… restraint. Then, the Minotaur’s gaze slid back to Corin, and its posture changed just as quickly. It lowered its head, hooves scraping against the stone, the ground trembling beneath its weight.
Corin’s pulse thundered in his ears. He shifted his grip on his blade.
This was it.
He took a second to glance back at Ariadne. She stood frozen near the edge of the chamber, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, tears tracking silently down her face. She didn’t plead. She didn’t move. She only watched him, eyes wide and shining with a grief so raw it hallowed him out.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured softly. He wasn’t sure if she heard his words, but he needed her to know.
He drew a slow breath, and when his eyes fell back to the Minotaur, it was already charging.
The impact of the beast came fast and brutal. Corin barely had time to throw himself aside as horns tore through the space where he’d just been standing.
Stone exploded beneath the force of the blow, shards skittering across the floor. Corin rolled quickly, came up on one knee, and slashed upward with the blade Ariadne had gifted him.
The Minotaur roared—deep and furious and mighty inpatient—as steel bit into its flank.
The beast wheeled on him instantly, a massive arm swinging swiftly through the air.
Corin raised his blade just in time, but the brute force of the strike sent him skidding backward across the uneven stone.
His arm jolted painfully from the impact, radiating through his body sharply as the air released from his chest.
He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could only to see the Minotaur come at him again, hooves pounding and horns lowered. He dodged again, just narrowly avoiding impact once again.
They circled each other then, breath ragged. His sword was raised between them, but his hands shook slightly as he tried to catch his breath.
For a moment, and not for the first time, Corin wondered how many heirs had fought the Minotaur. And out of those, how many had managed to kill it.
Corin darted in, struck low, then retreated as a horn narrowly missed his ribs.
The Minotaur adapted quickly, its movements surprisingly precise and agile despite its size.
A heavy fist caught Corin across the shoulder, spinning him and driving the air from his lungs.
He staggered, vision blurring slightly, but managed to stay upright.
Blood ran warm down his arm, and he cursed loudly.
The Minotaur had managed to strike the same arm from their previous battle. While Ariadne’s ambrosia had fully healed the limb, it still stung greatly from the memory of an old injury, the new one pushing forward to ache greatly.
He didn’t have time to think about it, though. He needed to welcome the pain, embrace it.
Use it.
The Minotaur lunged again, and Corin met it head on. He ducked beneath the horns, rolled between its legs, and slashed upward, drawing a bellow of pain from the beast. The creature stumbled, more surprised than hurt, and Corin realized his opportunity.
He didn’t hesitate. He leapt, catching hold of coarse fur and muscle, hauling himself up its back as the Minotaur reared and thrashed.
The world became noise and motion—roaring breath, shaking stone, the violent rise and fall of the Minotaur’s body beneath him. Corin clung on, every muscle screaming as he clenched them and dragged himself higher.
He gripped the one horn in his free hand to pull himself into a better position. A position he had been in once before.
He found the place.
The soft hollow at the base of the skull. The place the stories spoke of. The place that ended legends. The place he had stared at once and almost struck.
He could do it. Right now. He could finish this. He could return to Knossos.
Corin raised his blade.
Time slowed.
He caught sight of Ariadne across the chamber as the Minotaur turned in his thrashing. She stood perfectly still, tears streaming freely now. Her mouth was open in a silent cry, her hands pressed to her chest as if trying to hold her heart together.
She did not beg him, not like last time he was in this position. She did not make a sound. But she refused to look away.
She simply watched him.
He wished that she would turn around. That she would leave. That she wouldn’t watch him kill her brother. He wished that she could understand, and perhaps she did, but that didn’t make the feeling any better.
She just continued to watch him. Waiting for the moment he fully broke her heart.
But it was Corin’s heart that shattered.
This wasn’t victory. This wasn’t escape. This was becoming the same man who had trapped her here. This was choosing himself over her—over everything she loved, everything she had endured.
His arm trembled.
The blade hovered inches from its mark.
But Corin was frozen.
His arm twitched, muscles burning, as the blade poised exactly where it would end everything for his trial. But his heart hurt. More than he had thought possible.
If escape required becoming the man who hurt her first, then escape was not freedom.
He closed his eyes.
He couldn’t do it.
Not for a crown. Not for daylight. Not for the promise of a life that required him to become the thing she feared most. He couldn’t be the man who took her brother from her again and called it duty. He couldn’t break her like that and still call himself whole.
Even if it meant he never left.
Even if the Labyrinth swallowed him the way it had swallowed so many others.
“I can’t,” he whispered, more to himself than anything else.
The words felt like a release and a ruin all at once.
Corin flung the blade from his hand. It clattered across the stone, the sound sharp and final in the silence that followed. It landed directly in front of Ariadne.
The Minotaur froze.
Its massive body stilled beneath him, breath coming in slow, bewildered breaths.
Corin was sure the beast was prepared for the death it had experienced numerous times before, and the blade disappearing would come as a shock to it.
He half expected the Minotaur to react swiftly, tear him off his back and strike harshly.
But it didn’t.
Corin loosened his grip on its horn and carefully lowered himself down its side, boots touching the stone with a soft scrape. He stepped back, hands raised slightly—not in challenge but in surrender.
Nothing moved.
The Minotaur stared at him, one dark eye wide, chest heaving. It did not attack. It did not flee. It didn’t seem to know what to do.
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.