Page 106 of Labyrinthine
Mallen watches the tributes with the same calm detachment I once mistook for strength. “Are you going to tell me what the two of you said?”
“He asked how I was after the fall,” I say, keeping my gaze forward. “I wished him luck. He didn’t ask me for help, and I haven’t offered him any.”
He nods slowly. His jaw tightens, but his posture stays rigid and cold. The only movement comes from his hands, which clench and unclench at his sides. “I hope your parting gave you what you need, Azhara.”
“He might survive.”
“No one survives the labyrinth,” he says.
Darian and the tributes move as one, stepping through the gates and descending into the yawning tunnel beneath the arena. Their footsteps echo like drumbeats in a funeral march.
I watch the rusting iron gate swing shut behind them, and listen to the long, aching groan of metal meeting metal—an old sound, and a final one.
“That’s not quite true, is it, Mallen?” I turn to him. His face darkens with each breath. “You’ve survived.”
He freezes.
Whatever he expected me to say, it wasn’t that.
He hides it well—the flash of surprise, the sudden wariness—but I see it. And more than that, Ifeelit. The truth he’s buried doesn’t sleep easy. It pulses beneath the surface now, waiting. Seen. Tangible.
We pass beneath stone archways carved with forgotten runes, as the scent of cold iron and caged magic lingers in Threnos. Torches flicker with blue flame, casting long shadows that stretch like specters across the streets. The passages narrow with every step, pressing inward, as if the city itself means to overhear us.
“How do you navigate the labyrinth?” I ask, keeping my tone light, almost careless.
His eyes narrow. He walks beside me as we wind our way back to the palace, toward the private wings, where the noise of the arena gives way to silence and stone quiet as a shadow. “Planning on joining him?”
I laugh—too fast, too breathless. “Hardly. Just making conversation.”
Mallen doesn’t respond. Not until we reach my rooms and he steps inside with me, crossing his arms as he leans against the far wall.
“You’re not making small talk,” he says. “You make moves.”
I don’t answer him. I don’t know how.
Instead, I slip down beside a cabinet, keeping space between us. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to think clearly.
“What game are you playing now?” he asks, voice uncertain. Soft, almost.
“I’m not the one playing games.”
He smiles and it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “You think you’ve been surviving a game someone else built—but it’s been yours all along. You’re not the pawn, Azhara. You never have been. You’re becoming the player who’ll teach the board how to move.”
“I want things to be different.”
He nods slowly, staring at the pattern in the carpet as if it holds the answer to a question he doesn’t know how to ask. He thinks for a long time. So long I stop counting the seconds. So long the ache in my chest becomes familiar.
And then he moves.
He rises and walks to me, takes my wrists in his hands, and presses his lips to my forehead with aching tenderness. My breath catches. I don’t let it show.
“I have one final thing to take care of,” he whispers, “but I promise—things will be different when I return. No more secrets. No more lies.”
His forehead rests against mine for a heartbeat too long. And it hurts.
Ithurts.
Because I do care.
