Labyrinth of Shadows

by Kyla Stone

  The scent is achingly familiar, like a precious thing I’ve allowed myself to forget, but suddenly recall with crystal clarity. I gasp as memories flood through me—in snatches, in pieces, images bright and spinning. Memories I’ve buried down deep in some locked, unspeakable place.

  Glimpses of a life I thought I’d lost flicker through my mind: lying side by side beneath the olive trees, weaving wreaths of white lilies to crown his misshapen head; long evenings singing my mother’s songs in my father’s terrace gardens as he sat back on his haunches, listening raptly; the way his mangled face would break into a clumsy, crooked smile when he brought me lilies; how he was always trampling the gardens, trying so hard to pick flowers yet inadvertently smashing them instead.

  I remember how one of our favorite pastimes was to sneak through the tunnels, bypassing the palace halls and chambers where he was forbidden, passing the practice fields where the guards sweated, drilling and fighting and clanging their practice swords, the merchant square, the olive groves tended by farmers, past the stables and royal fields grazed by the finest cattle and horses; even past the network of villages surrounding the palace.

  The furthest tunnel came out almost to the sea. We would race along the empty beach, the waves crashing all around us, the cliffs towering over us, protecting us, keeping us safe from all eyes but the gods. No one was there to care what he looked like or what he was.

  There we climbed the cliffs, discovered secret clefts in the rock and stony outcroppings to claim as our own. We whiled away the stifling afternoons, throwing stones and watching the billowing sails of ships in the distance, imagining wild, far-flung futures we would never have.

  It was only there, on the edge of the sea, the wind whipping our faces, the air heavy with salt and the cries of the seabirds, that we both felt free.

  The memories are peaceful, so beautiful they make my chest ache and my eyes sting. But mingled with the sweet memories are the ones I was desperate to forget—the children pelting us with rocks, the loathing and suspicion in the guards’ eyes as they glared at us both, Asterion’s out-of-control rages, the terrible tantrums, his unquenchable thirst for flesh.

  I remember them now, remember my mother waking me in the middle of the night, her voice strained. “Come now, hurry,” she said, pulling me from my cot, rushing me to Asterion’s quarters. Because of his incredible strength, his tantrums were deadly.

  Once, he broke a slave’s arm when he tried to grab a toy from the woman. Another time, he shoved a guard through a stone wall when the guard refused to let him pass into the throne room unguarded. He broke pottery, shattered doors, ripped gold-threaded tapestries to shreds. He escaped his guarded chambers and stalked the royal herds—slaughtering goats, sheep, and calves in the night, returning to his bed with wet, blood-matted fur and a lethal wildness gleaming in his eyes.

  Though he is six summers younger than I, Asterion grew from a human-sized babe into an immensely powerful, full-grown beast within three summers, towering over even our father. Even so, it was I who could soothe him, speaking calming words, crooning to him, stroking his head if he allowed me to get that close—whatever it took to bring him back from his violent rage, to talk him down from his ravenous thirst for blood.

  I did it then; I can do it again.

  I hum, soft and broken at first, and then I begin a song I haven’t sung since before the day of the attack, when Asterion was finally deemed too dangerous to live outside the four walls of a cage. The song our mother used to sing to us comes back to me as easily as the memories—the poet’s tale of Tauros, the holy bull born of the mother goddess, who descended from the moon and crossed the sea to carve the valleys of Crete with his horns and paw the White Mountains into being.

  I’m not a beautiful singer like my mother, but Asterion doesn’t seem to mind. He settles down, growing still and quiet as I sing the haunting ballad. When I finish, a hush falls but for his ragged breathing. I feel him move closer.

  My stomach is a tangle of knots, my heart in my throat. I’m torn, both wanting to reach for him and fearing him. The terror of my nightmares remains all too real. I still see those red eyes looming over me, glittering with malice and hatred, with death.

  My hands fall to my sides. Emotions surge inside me—sorrow for all we’ve lost, all that was taken from us. The only other person who ever loved Asterion was my mother. The day they took him away was the day I lost them both. The people wouldn’t allow their queen to grieve for a monster. My father wouldn’t allow it.

  As her tears dried up, so did her laughter. And her songs, her hugs, and finally, her warmth. Another memory flutters through me: “You must be hard,” she told me the only time I came to her in tears, missing my brother’s guttural chuckles, how he looked at me like every word I spoke spun gold in the air, the feel of his strong, gnarled hands wrapped around my own small fingers. “The people hate what they don’t understand. They hate you for loving him. Turn your love into hate. That’s the only way to be strong.”

  I’ll be strong now, but not with hate. For my mother, for Asterion. “I have a plan. I can free you. I can give you a human body, give you your crown back. I can return everything that was stolen from you.”

  There is dead silence. He’s listening. Does he understand? I think he does. I know he does. There’s a faint stirring, a memory of his voice—deep, guttural, hoarse. Though he was always trapped in the form of a beast, he spoke as a man, once—

  The thread in my pocket tugs faintly. Theseus is awake. If he follows the thread here, he’ll kill Asterion or die trying. A confrontation fate has ordained—inescapable, inexorable.

  But my plan isn’t ready. I’m helpless in the dark. And the tributes aren’t safe.

  I’m out of time.

  “You must go, Asterion.”

  He snorts, confused.

  “You must be patient a little longer. Trust me.”

  The thread tugs again. “Ariadne!” Leda calls from what feels like a great distance.

  Asterion rears back so swiftly, I feel the shift in the air against my skin.

  “Don’t hurt them! I’ll get you out. I’m going to save you! Just give me a little time. Don’t hurt them, please.”

  He gives a sharp, frustrated bellow.

  “Go!” I hiss. “Please! You must go!”

  Asterion whirls, the darkness swirling, the stench of him sweeping past me. A skitter of hooves, the harsh, grating sound of stone grinding against stone—a door closing at the other end of the chamber. Asterion knows the key, I think numbly.

  Then, nothing. A heavy silence falls around me. An empty silence. I hear nothing but my breathing, feel no other presence but my own. He’s gone. I huddle in the darkness, hands clenched into fists in my lap, nails digging into my palms, finding the familiar scars.

  He is a monster. He tried to kill me.

  He is my brother. He spared my life.

  My brother didn’t choose to be cursed, to be born monstrous.

  Didn’t he choose to kill you that day? my mind whispers. Was there humanity in him then, when he leered over me, fetid breath hot on my face, savage horns plunging deep into my flesh? I touch my scar, run my fingers along the ridged, brutalized scar tissue.

  I can’t reconcile the terror of my nightmares with the shy, uncertain creature who recognized me, who sought me out and led me here, who has left me unharmed. It is the contradiction of my life—that I both love and fear my brother. That the memory of him brings both a heart-plunging horror and an ache like the place where my heart should be has been hollowed out.

  Whatever he was, whatever he is—my brother is in there somewhere. Not the monster, not the murderer, but the one who threw rocks with me, who slept beside me, who loved to gather lilies for our mother and tuck them in my hair.

  That is the brother I lost. That is the brother I will save.

  I’m sworn to this, bound by the elixir that saved my friend’s life. More than that, my soul is bound by my oath to my mother, my pro
mise to slay one son of Poseidon and bring home another—not just a monster, not just a prince, but my mother’s son. My brother.

  I can regret the terrible cost, I can loathe myself and detest the action I must take—but I will take it.

  I’m nothing if not Ariadne, princess of Knossos, the grandest kingdom in all the land. Ariadne, daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, granddaughter of Helios, god of the sun.

  My lineage is pure. Honor runs in my blood.

  Though I’ve brought shame to my name, to my house, to my throne, I will redeem myself with this one act.

  My mother is right. I alone can save him. I alone can change the fates. With the goddess’s blessing, I can defy Poseidon, Earth-Shaker, god of sea and thunder. I have the power to transform my brother, to make him Asterion, to restore his throne and crown him ruler of the stars.

  All it will take is one life.

  In the dark, I close my eyes, Theseus’s bright image pressing against my eyelids—his shining face and proud shoulders, his regal bearing and princely crown of golden hair. I see his storm-blue eyes both sharp and soft as he looks at me—feel the responding surge in my chest, treacherous but there all the same.

  Guilt spears me. I dig my nails harder into my palms. It doesn’t matter if I feel affection for this infuriatingly arrogant prince. It doesn’t matter if I respect him, if I find myself wishing for a different fate, one where I am not Cretan and he is not Athenian, where we are not the royal progeny of bitterly antagonistic kings, where our fates do not mark us enemies.

  I know well the uselessness of wishes. For all my life, I’ve wished for my father’s approval and my mother’s love—winning neither. I’ve wished for the goddess’s blessing, for my older brother’s life returned, and my younger brother’s curse undone. Not even my wish to dance with the king-bull was fulfilled.

  Wishes bring naught but ash and dust and death.

  My fingers creep to the glass vial beneath my tunic. My heart beats hard against my palm. I can’t think like this if I’m going to save my brother, can’t allow my emotions to mar my judgment, my will.

  In my place, Theseus would serve his crown and his people. He wouldn’t battle with these traitorous feelings. He would turn on me and wouldn’t even consider it a betrayal.

  He would. I know he would.

  The realization strengthens my resolve.

  I take a breath and straighten my shoulders. “I’m here!” I call to the Athenians, to Theseus. “Here I am.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “What were you thinking?” Theseus growls. Using the thread, he moves through the darkness until he reaches my side. The others crowd in around him, arms and feet jostling against me. He jabs his finger into my chest. “You put us all in danger!”

  I’m not about to tell him the truth. I can’t tell him the Minotaur himself led me here, that I didn’t warn them while the monster prowled within a hands-span as they slept, weak and vulnerable. I take a step back. “I needed a few moments alone.”

  “Alone?” Zephyra’s disbelieving voice echoes from a few strides away. “You wanted to be alone in this place?”

  “More likely, she’s conspiring with her monstrous brother,” Gallus says from somewhere close to me.

  The hairs on the back of my neck lift. His words strike too near the truth.

  I open my mouth to argue, but before I can defend myself, Leda cuts in. “I think she’s done enough to prove herself, Gallus. I grow weary of your whining.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that! I am the king’s companion—”

  “Enough!” Theseus snaps. He fumbles in the dark, his hands feeling for me before he seizes my arm and drags me toward him. I can’t see him, but I imagine his jaw clenching, his gaze sharp and terrible. “If you ever do something so foolish again, I will cut the string. Do you understand?”

  A thread no man shall break. Theseus can’t sever the thread with a blade, though untying it would serve the same purpose. He’s willing to abandon me to the darkness. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does. The emotions tangling my heart are too confusing to try to understand.

  I jerk my arm out of his grasp. I should force myself to agree with him. He likes blind adoration. It feeds his enormous ego. But something deep inside won’t let me. I’m not wrong; I refuse to say I was. I lift my chin defiantly, though he can’t see me.

  “Have you nothing to say?” Theseus sputters.

  Acid burns the back of my throat. I feel small, a part of me wilting beneath his anger. But another part of me tenses. “I don’t require your permission for every breath I take. I’m not yours to command!”

  “Not yet,” Theseus growls, a possessiveness in his tone that both raises my hackles and sends a shiver down my spine.

  Gallus gives a sharp bark of laughter. “The Cretan wench thinks herself above you, King Theseus.”

  “What did you say?” Kalliope asks, suspicious. “What do you mean, not yet?”

  “It’s not your concern,” Theseus says dismissively.

  “Everything that happens here is our concern, don’t you think?” Kalliope argues. She isn’t a fool. She caught something in Theseus’s voice.

  If he isn’t careful, the secret of our marriage pact won’t remain secret much longer.

  Theseus shifts beside me. “Not unless I say it is.”

  “Surely you don’t think—” Kalliope starts.

  “Kalliope,” he says, a warning in his voice that shuts everyone up.

  For a moment, no one speaks, the air thick with tension.

  “We’re all tired,” Charis says. “Maybe we should keep going while we still can.”

  “Maybe we should,” Kalliope says in a hurt, clipped voice. I imagine her petulant expression, Gallus’s sullen face. Neither is used to Theseus’s displeasure. I feel their anger radiating off them in waves, but it isn’t directed at Theseus; it’s pointed at me.

  I tell myself I don’t care. Still, instinctively I shrink back, my hand falling to the dagger hidden on my thigh. Just in case.

  “Theseus,” Eryx says. “There’s something over there, against that wall.”

  “What is it?” Charis asks, a forced lightness in her voice. She’s eager to change the subject, to break the tension.

  “Light,” Eryx says simply.

  We all go still. I crane my neck, searching in all directions, straining my eyes in the blackness. I hold my hand in front of my face, wriggle my fingers, close my eyes, open them again.

  “I see nothing!” Gallus says. “Your eyes are playing tricks on you, philosopher. Maybe stick to what you know—”

  “Wait,” Leda says. “I see it too!”

  Eryx and Leda are right. This isn’t the same kind of darkness. It isn’t thick and oppressive, it isn’t alive. I wave my hand and glimpse movement. A vague outline, the faintest hint of pale color against black. Please be real, I plead to the goddess, to anyone or anything that might hear me.

  “Follow me,” Theseus orders, his anger at me forgotten, or at least pushed away for the moment.

  I make my way carefully forward, feeling with my feet, hands groping in front of me. After several heartbeats, my fingers fumble against an archway, more carvings etched along the sides, empty space beyond.

  I hesitate—is this the way Asterion fled? Has he set a trap for us? But no, I don’t believe that. I can’t believe it. I set my jaw and step through the archway.

  A thin, watery glow emanates off the walls of the passage, growing stronger the deeper it goes. Behind me, the others gasp. They see it, too.

  We hurry along the narrow passage, breaking into a run in our eagerness to reach the light. We’re desperate for it. No longer cautious, excitement thrumming through me, I dash around a corner, Theseus right at my side. My foot catches on a rock and I stumble, throwing out my arms wildly, nearly crashing into the wall.

  Theseus reaches out and catches my arm, pulling me back. “Careful.”

  I shoot him a grateful look. “Thank you.”


  “Are you all right?” he growls, sounding both angry and concerned at the same time.

  “Yes, I’m—”

  Theseus’s fingers tighten on my arm. I feel his closeness like a storm beneath my skin. “Look!”

  I gaze ahead, stunned. Several people stumble into me from behind, an elbow digging into my spine as the others crowd in around us. I barely feel it.

  I turn to Theseus to speak, but words fail me. He meets my gaze, his expression equally astonished.

  Before us is an enormous cave. A cave glowing with pale blue light.

  The size of the palace throne room, the cavern’s ceiling soars higher than the heads of seven men. The walls are ridged and fissured, veined with threads of whitish gray. Ivy snakes up sections of the wall, vines creeping into cracks and clinging to ledges, the leaves like small, grasping hands.

  Boulders and craggy outcroppings litter the rocky ground. Stalactites plunge from the ceiling, jagged as teeth while stalagmites jut from the ground, some shaped like fat, wide cones and others sharp as spikes.

  In the center of the cave, a small pool ripples, the span of ten paces in width, at least fifteen in length. The water reflects a thousand glimmering specks of light. Incredibly, the ceiling is veiled with stars—stars pulsing with bluish light, stars like veils dripping in spectacular, glittering strands.

  Eryx gasps.

  Charis steps around me, her face filled with awe. “It’s beautiful.”

  Even Leda’s eyes widen.“What is this place?”

  “The maze-maker added light in the darkest dark.” I didn’t know what he meant. Wonder fills me. In the midst of the horror, death, and darkness, we’ve stumbled upon the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen.

  “How can there be stars in a cave?” Gallus shoves past Eryx and Charis, scowling up at the glittering ceiling.

  “There can be if the gods will it,” Charis says.

  Leda grunts dismissively, but it’s unconvincing. Her eyes are wide, as taken by the miraculous beauty as the rest of us.