Page 136 of Labyrinthine
He nods. “Did he say more about the labyrinth?”
“No.”
Mallen stills. His spine aligns like a pulled thread, and the quiet around us sharpens to glass.
“Then he doesn’t know,” he says.
I blink. “Know what?”
He doesn’t look me in the eye. His voice turns brittle.
“Azhara…the labyrinth isn’t where I draw power from. It’s where I go. To cage it. Myself too. When I’m losing control.”
He pauses. His breath is barely a whisper.
“The darkness isn’t mine.”
I freeze.
Steam curls off the surface of the water, but my skin goes cold.
Mallen stares at the water like it might answer for him. “It started the night you came of age and the Reaping began. It burned through me. Like a brand. Your darkness, your magic—it needed somewhere to go. You didn’t know how to contain it. So it found me.”
I look down. Hazel eyes in the water’s reflection. Innocent, almost. A girl with a soft mouth and unlined skin. She doesn’t look like she could devour worlds.
But she could.
She has.
And she wears that ruin like a ribbon—threaded through her, binding the girl she was to the woman she’s becoming.
Mallen’s voice is hoarse. “You were never meant to carry it alone. But the gods…they didn’t give you a choice. They didn’t give me one either.”
He’s been doing this for years. Letting it fill him. Letting it burn. Alone.
“You never told me.”
He nods, solemn. “Do you see why? I didn’t want to shackle you, or your heart. I wanted you to have a choice I never had. To run. To love. And to be able to say yes with joy, not guilt.”
And now I see the impossibility of it. The line he walked alone. He let me hate him. Let me think he was keeping secrets to control me—because the truth would’ve chained me more than any lie ever could.
“I couldn’t tell you. You’d have broken yourself trying to fix it. Or worse—you’d have stayed with me out of obligation.”
“What is the truth, Mallen?”
“The truth is simpler than the stories men tell,” he says. “The gods asked for one thing only. Your choice. Quiet. Free. Your father refused it. He broke faith and built the Reaping to drown your choice in blood. He ordered trials that could not be won, paid for traps that did not spare, sent word to Larksbind that only the condemned should come so their hope would wither. He meant to starve you of hope until you reached twenty-five and the bargain returned the power to him. He never expected them to send Darian, and when they did, he hunted for leverage. Every death has served his theater. None of it served you.”
“He chose me as the pretty answer from Starsfall. A contingency. He thought I could be held. For a while, he thought I was like him. I swear I didn’t know at first. I learned the truthof it years ago and moved what I could. I built walls around your choice and taught you to stand. Not to steer you to me, but to guard. Because your choice is all that’s ever mattered.”
The room tilts. I see the shape of it at last. The gods wanted a single act of will. My father made a spectacle to steal it. All the banners and bells and trials were theft. Only one thing was ever meant to matter. My yes. My no. My choice.
His fingers brush mine, tentative. “I’d rather die than have your heart bound to me in chains.”
My throat closes. “What did it cost you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze drops to our joined hands like he’s reading a memory.
“Everything,” he says finally. “My gift…whatever it once was—it’s gone. Burned hollow to make room for yours. There’s nothing left in me but the shape of you.”
