by Kyla Stone
Charis scoots closer to Leda and looks at me, patting the stone floor beside her. I sink down gratefully. Shadows creep in around me. I feel exposed with the whispering darkness at my back.
My stomach knots with hunger. I search my satchel for a jar of spiced wine and a bundle of leaf-wrapped goat cheese. On my other side, Nikolaos sits unmoving. His eyes are downcast, his narrow shoulders trembling.
Charis reaches over me and uncorks his jar of spiced wine for him. He doesn’t speak, but he lifts the jar to his lips, the wine sloshing in his shaking hands.
Charis tilts her own jar and spills a few drops in libation.
On the other side of Charis, Leda sucks in her breath. “You would waste such precious drink?”
Charis frowns at her. “You would dare to offend the gods now, when we need them most?”
“Those few sips could give you another day of life.”
“Offering the gods what belongs to them will keep us alive.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already abandoned us,” Leda says bitterly.
“It only seems that way.” Theseus tips his jar and spills a few drops onto the floor. He gives Charis a reassuring nod. She smiles back at him. “Poseidon has blessed me all my life. I will not turn my back now.”
Gallus quickly follows his lead. Then Kalliope, Eryx, and Nikolaos. Even Selene sighs and pours her libation. Only Leda stubbornly grips her jar, her knuckles white, her eyes hard as flint.
“Oh, Leda,” Charis says in a way that makes me think they’ve had this conversation a hundred times before—exasperated, but with an undercurrent of deep affection. “I will pray to Artemis and Athena for you.”
Leda smirks as she tears into a chunk of barley bread. “Don’t count on it doing us any good.”
Has Leda lost her faith, like Daedalus? It feels like the gods are cold and distant, sharp-edged stars looking down on us in casual indifference. Even the goddess abandoned me in the arena. When they did interfere, was it only out of boredom? Do they jostle our fate like carved cow-bone dice?
No. I must believe there is a purpose for me. Through Tarina, the mother goddess spared me for a reason. Like my mother, she has given me a second chance. I cannot falter in my faith now. Or my goal.
I pour my own small libation. Then I rip off a chunk of cheese and offer it to the girl across from me. “Would you like some?”
Her wiry black hair has slipped from its ornate design, a few coiled tendrils brushing her dusky, honey-colored cheeks. She wears a solemn, serious expression. “Thank you.”
Charis watches us, her pale brows slightly raised. Leda’s face is carefully blank, but her gaze never leaves my face. Kalliope frowns. The girl doesn’t seem to notice.
She smiles, and there is kindness in her expression. “I’m Zephyra. Like the wind.”
Kalliope narrows her eyes. “You’re straying from where you belong—and who you belong with.”
Zephyra meets her gaze and doesn’t flinch. “Would you rather I starve?”
Kalliope smiles hard, revealing her white teeth. But it’s me she’s glaring at now, not Zephyra. “I might.”
I keep my eyes on Kalliope for a long moment. I will not show weakness. But I don’t intend to challenge her, either. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and Theseus listens to her. She has power. And that makes her dangerous.
I lower my gaze slowly to the ground.
The wine stains the stone red. Like a sacrifice.
Chapter Seventeen
Leda chews loudly. “Don’t take offense. Kalliope forgets herself. Without you, we might already be dead.”
“Thank you.” My stomach cramps at the smell of food. I don’t care how dry or cold it is. I stuff my hunk of goat cheese and bread into my mouth, chewing ravenously, a few crumbs spilling down my chin.
Zephyra nibbles primly on a dried fig, eyeing me sideways. “Do they not teach you manners in that huge palace?”
Leda grunts, smirking. “And you call us the barbarians.”
“Of course, we have manners.” My cheeks redden. I only eat like this with Tarina after hours of exhausting training in the arena. “Knossos is the greatest city in the world. We are the farthest thing from barbarians as you Athenians can imagine.”
“We don’t sacrifice children!” Kalliope hisses.
I open my mouth to protest, but an argument will help nothing. I clench my fists in my lap and hold my tongue.
Kalliope makes a disdainful noise. “As I expected.”
For several long breaths, no one speaks.
“Tell her who you are,” Kalliope says suddenly. She shoves the rest of her food into her satchel and glares at me.
“What do you mean?” Charis asks.
Kalliope bares her teeth. “What is the life that has been stolen from you? Who did you leave behind? What were you going to be? Tell her so she knows exactly what she’s taken from us.”
I go rigid, my hand freezing half-way to my mouth.
“All right.” Charis wraps her thin arms around herself. “I worry about my sisters. They are nine and twelve summers. My mother died when I was young, and my father was too brokenhearted to remarry. He loves them, but I’m the one who takes care of them. We have servants, but they need a mother. I’m the one who teaches them to weave and bake and dance for their future husbands and makes sure Celia brushes the tangles from her hair and Helene doesn’t climb too high in the cedar tree and break her arm again...”
Her voice trails off, tears choking her throat. She is too thin and frail, but her frailty only adds to her beauty, a small-boned bird that might break if you didn’t treat it with great care. She gazes at me with deep-set, haunted eyes. “I had a brother, too. He’s dead.”
Guilt coils in my gut. There is nothing I can say.
“Now Leda,” Kalliope says. “You go.”
I glance at Theseus. He is watching us, standing stiffly at the edge of the circle, deep in shadow, his dagger at his side. His face is a rigid mask in the torchlight.
“As you wish.” Leda leans back against the stone wall, a tense smile on her face, her red curls a lush, wild tangle around her head. She speaks lightly, but a raw anger scrapes her voice. “My father is a shipbuilder. He’s the best in Attica. It isn’t really done, teaching girls how to build, how to sail, how to buy and sell supplies, but he taught me everything he knows, said my brothers would drink our profits away.” She smiles wryly. “He says I just need to marry a boy who will let me push him around as long as he lives in wealth and luxury, and I can run the business.”
As she talks, her face brightens. She holds out her hands to reveal the thick callouses on her palms and fingers. “From the saw.” Just as suddenly, the light goes out of her eyes. Her mouth tightens. “I could’ve run the business, I mean. Now it will go to one of my good-for-nothing brothers.”
Eryx wipes his hands carefully on his tunic. “I would have apprenticed with Daedalus, the best philosopher and inventor in all of Attica and Crete—if King Minos hadn’t imprisoned him. Instead, I apprentice with Master Tyre. We study geometry and science and the great philosophers. I will be an inventor and adviser to the king of Athens.”
“You would have been,” Kalliope says, her voice scathing. “Now you’ll end up a pile of skinny bones.”
“Not if Theseus saves us,” Eryx says mildly. “And Ariadne.”
Gallus frowns at that.
Kalliope ignores him and turns to Selene. “Your turn.”
Selene smiles dreamily. “There is—was—a boy. A wealthy merchant’s son, but not one of the noble families. My father forbade it, but Philon said he would complete twelve tasks to win me if he must, just like Heracles. He’s a musician; he can play a tune to charm every lady in the room.”
“Nikolaos is a musician,” Kalliope says, jabbing her finger like a spear. “He has the voice of an angel. He could have traveled to every court in the land, to Crete even, and sang for kings. Instead, your father doomed him to serve as fodder for you
r monster.”
“I—he’s not my monster,” I choke out. With every word they speak, my heart shrivels. I cannot bear it. I want to beg them to stop, but my words are like jagged glass in my mouth.
Something dark and unpleasant shifts inside me when I look at them. They do not belong here. They have every right to hate me. In this moment, I despise myself.
I force myself to meet Kalliope’s burning gaze, waiting for her to tell her story. I will listen, bear witness. It is the least I can do. But she does not speak. Her mouth presses into a thin red slash.
“That’s enough,” Leda says with a wave of her hand. “This conversation depresses me. I’m going to lose my appetite.”
“When have you ever been in danger of that?” Charis asks with a tremulous smile. Leda narrows her eyes, but there is no anger behind her expression.
Kalliope’s frown deepens. She glances at Theseus, possibly for approval, but whatever she sees in his face, it keeps her silent.
“You going to eat that?” Gallus hunches forward, leaning past Eryx to stare at one of the tributes.
Little blond Nikolaos stares dully at the stone wall, a lump of goat cheese lying uneaten in one hand. He looks like his spirit has already fled and his body is just waiting to die.
Gallus leans over Eryx and plucks the chunk of cheese from the boy’s hand. “No reason to let good food go to waste. Not in here.”
The boy does not protest. In some sort of shocked stupor, he barely blinks. Perhaps he’s already given up. With his blank, unfocused eyes, he looks like a shade, a wraith of the underworld. I suppress a shudder.
Kalliope slaps Gallus’s hand lightly, playfully, but there’s a sharpness in her gaze. “Not from Nikolaos, Gallus. Bully someone else if you wish, but he needs his strength.”
Gallus’s entire body goes tense. He answers only to Theseus, and he clearly doesn’t care for Kalliope telling him what to do. They may be friends, but it’s a friendship that only goes so far.
“We all must eat to keep our strength,” Theseus says mildly. He spins his blade and practices a thrust and jab at invisible enemies. He’s not looking at Gallus, but he doesn’t need to. Gallus hears the rebuke and slumps back against the wall with a scowl.
Kalliope slips a bite of her own bread into Nikolaos’s mouth, nudging his small shoulder to encourage him to eat it. She lifts his jar to his lips and gets him to swallow.
Guilt pricks me. I look away.
“Once Theseus and I slay the Minotaur, we shall all eat like kings and queens,” Gallus says boldly as he shoves the whole chunk of cheese in his mouth. “Well, Theseus shall be king.”
Theseus smiles grimly. “My father is yet hale and young. The crown will come, but not for many summers.”
“Your time may come sooner than you think, Theseus,” Gallus says. “Didn’t your father swear to leap off the cliffs at the Temple of Poseidon if you didn’t return to him with the white sails of Seafarer flapping in triumph? Sounds like a mad king to me.”
Theseus grunts, practices another lunge and stab. “Mad with grief, maybe.”
I catch a meaningful glance between Selene and Zephyra. Do they support Theseus’ claim to the throne? Or is he simply their best bet at surviving the Labyrinth? When the time comes, will they remain loyal to him, or will they be willing to betray him for the promise of their own lives?
In the arena, you must know your adversary intimately if you wish to survive. You must know how the bull lowers his head before a charge, how he snorts when he’s winded, the look in his eye when he’s exhausted but determined to strike one last time. In here, my adversary is also my ally. I cannot let my guard down for a moment.
A roar filters through the thick stone walls. Zephyra gasps. Charis covers her face with her hands and cries out. Gallus and Kalliope flinch.
Selene presses her fingers against her lips, her eyes wide with terror. “It’s going to kill us all!”
“Not if I can help it.” Theseus strides into the center of the circle with liquid grace. He grips the dagger in both hands. His arms bulge, every muscle flexed and corded, the blade glinting. “Take courage! Remember who is with you, who protects you, who fights for you!”
He turns slowly, pointing the blade at each tribute in turn, his voice deep and rich, his eyes blazing. “I slew the mighty killers Periphetes and Procrustes the Stretcher on the perilous Isthmus road to Athens, didn’t I?” He pauses at Charis, who gazes up at him, her face rapt.
Theseus turns to Eryx, who watches quietly, eyes bright, observing everything in thoughtful silence. “Did I not destroy the great Crommyonian Sow and the Marathon Bull?” he crows louder.
He pivots and faces Kalliope. Her smile is wide, wholehearted. He flashes her a returning grin, confident, charming. “This beast is just another bull. A mortal creature that can—that will be slain by my hand!”
“Theseus will save you,” Gallus says, his eyes dark and cunning. “He’s the greatest hero Athens has ever known.”
“I will be. After I slay this monster and set us all free.” He looks at each of the tributes until they nod, his face beaming with fiery determination. If they lack faith, he will believe enough for all of them. They are all nodding, hollow faces upturned, the fear retreating, hope daring to rise for a glimmering moment.
They may doubt the gods, but they believe in Theseus.
“Gather your things,” Theseus says. “It’s time to go.”
I pull myself to my feet, stifling a groan. Moments later, we are walking again. Endless corridor after endless corridor stretches out ahead of us, dark and terrifying and unknown. The walls are no longer perfectly-formed stone blocks but rough and porous, full of fissures, cracks and crannies. Here and there, liquid trickles from a crevice.
The gloom sinks into my skin, chills my bones. It feels as though I’ve never known warmth, sunlight, the brightness of the sky. How could my brother have lived down here for so long, while I danced in the sun above him, oblivious to his pain and suffering? How can any creature survive such darkness?
Something scratches at the walls, like nails dragging across stone. I whip around, heart leaping into my throat, but see nothing beyond the pale gleam of the tributes’ faces.
Theseus stiffens. He raises the dagger.
“You heard it, too,” I say.
A soft hiss echoes around us.
My neck prickles. Something is waiting to lunge at us from the darkest corners, the deepest shadows, something savage, ravenous, insatiable. What horrible things wriggle and writhe in that sooty blackness? Down here, any number of monsters prowl, creeping up from the depths of the earth to prey on human flesh.
Zephyra moans. “What is that?”
“Is it the Minotaur?” Charis asks.
“No,” I choke out, hardly able to breathe. “It’s something else.”
A scrape. A whisper. A sound like an expelled breath.
“Keep moving.” Theseus strides ahead, his expression set in stone. “Stay quiet. And hurry.”
It comes from everywhere. Behind us. To either side. Above us.
I crane my neck and look up. That’s when I see it.
My heart turns to ice in my chest.
Chapter Eighteen
“There!” I cry, pointing.
Something pale and fleshy squirms between a crack in the ceiling above us. It plops to the ground in front of me. I expel a breath and leap back.
“What is that?” Gallus asks, coming up beside me.
It is white and pale, nearly translucent, with a long, muscular body the length of my forearm, without arms or legs. It has an arrow-shaped head with blind eyes, slits for nostrils, and a curved, flickering tongue.
It’s a worm, but one that has lived its life in complete darkness.
“That is nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of,” Theseus says.
It lifts its head, scenting us with its tongue as it slithers toward us.
The tributes crowd back.
“It’s disgusting,” L
eda says.
“It’s fascinating.” Eryx pushes between Gallus and me and squats down before it. “It learned to adapt to darkness. It uses its tongue—see how it turns its head toward the person who’s speaking? It uses scent and sound rather than sight.”
Theseus leans over it, lowering the torch so we can see it clearly. The thing recoils, hissing.
Eryx grins wide. “See? It has never seen light before. Even the dim torchlight hurts it.”
“Great,” Kalliope says. “Someone kill it so we can move along.”
“We can leave it be,” Eryx says meekly. “It isn’t hurting anything.”
“It hurts to look at it,” Kalliope says, her voice dripping with disgust.
Theseus lifts his dagger. With one swift plunge of his blade, he leans down and lops the worm’s head off. It flops wildly, twisting its body until its tail is facing us.
But it’s not a tail. It’s another head. The red slit of a mouth opens wide, slick white fangs bared, needle-sharp and ready to strike.
Charis stifles a small shriek.
Before anyone can react, the worm lunges forward with its second head and sinks its fangs into Selene’s ankle. She screams and staggers back, stumbling against Leda and Charis, who struggle to keep her on her feet.
The worm strikes at Zephyra. She cries out, but Theseus is there, chopping at the creature, slicing deep into its fleshy neck. It hisses in agony, making a piercing, high-pitched sound like the cry of a phoenix.
The worm writhes, curls into a ball, and dies.
Gallus nudges it with his toe. It seems larger now, more the length and thickness of my calf, flesh white and rubbery and veined purple. From both butchered ends leaks a sickly, plum-purple blood.
“Selene, are you all right?” Charis asks.
Selene moans. Four puncture marks mar her ankle. “It hurts. It hurts so much.”
My mother would have poultices to dull the pain and draw out any venom—for these creatures are venomous. I can already see a dark sludge spidering up Selene’s veins. The edges of her skin around the punctures are shriveling, turning black.
