Page 144 of Labyrinthine
Pain flaresdown my leg as I shift my weight. I clench my jaw, refusing to give it voice, but Mallen catches the twitch at the corner of my mouth and huffs a low, knowing laugh.
Glances scrape across my skin, knowing and unkind. Every look tells the same story: why I limp, why I wince, why my thighs remember what my mouth won’t say aloud.
“You can ride with me,” Mallen murmurs, adjusting the reins without looking at me. “But the men will see it as weakness.”
I flinch—not from the pain, but from the gentleness in his voice.
I shake my head. “Then they’ll see me ride.”
His silence folds back in on itself, the way it always does when kindness fails to serve its purpose. It was never a real offer. Not from the man who forged gentleness into grit and made me realize it was love.
He swings into the saddle with effortless grace. No sign that he barely slept. No indication of how many hours he spent inside me, coaxing moans and soft sobs until I fell asleep beneath him. He doesn’t glance back as I bite down on a scream and haul myself up. The saddle meets my bruised thighs like a blade.
“Gods,” I breathe.
He says nothing, his profile carved from dusk and stone as he stares down the road to Threnos. Intent coils in his posture. He’s already left the country house behind. He’s already riding to war.
“What happens now?” I ask as we pass the gates.
“The capital falls. Quickly, if we’re lucky. Let’s hope we’re fast enough to strike before the magic makes its way back to your father.”
Wind tugs at my cloak. The hills rise and fall around us, pale gold under the lowering sun. Mallen doesn’t speak again, but his conviction shows in the way he moves—like the earth itself has already told him which direction to ride. Forward, always forward.
An officer eases his horse beside mine. The same one from yesterday. He’s young. Still young enough to believe that war is glory and that right always wins.
“Azhara, meet Marcus,” Mallen says.
The officer nods. “We storm the city before nightfall. Seize the palace before your father can dig in. The gates won’t hold long, and he won’t have time to regroup if we’re swift.”
Marcus says it like a promise already carved into stone—like he can’t imagine the city resisting, can’t fathom a version of this war where we don’t win clean and fast.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “He’ll burn Starsfall to the ground before he lets it go. He’ll kill everyone if it buys him a day longer on the throne.”
Marcus falters. Not visibly—but in the pause between words, in the twitch of his fingers against the reins. The kind ofhesitation that can’t be scrubbed clean, no matter how fast you recover. Mallen watches him, his eyes lingering, faint humor brushing his mouth like an impish breeze.
“Leave the man alone,” Mallen mutters. “You’ll terrify him.”
I turn to Marcus. “Do I terrify you?”
“No, Princess. You worry me. A lot.” He laughs and I arch an eyebrow at him. “You’re unpredictable. I’ve seen you fight and seen you hold your own. But you’re as likely to charge as to retreat. We’re about to find out what you really are, and I’d rather know before I ride into battle with you.”
Mallen growls and Marcus shakes his head at him.
“He’s still trying to impress you,” Marcus sighs.
“Good,” I say.
His eyes flick to Mallen. “She always like this?”
“She’s worse when she hasn’t slept.”
I laugh, and Marcus rides off, shaking his head. Mallen’s smile fades as soon as we’re alone. He rides like a man with one purpose. One fight. The army follows in perfect silence, boots and hooves thudding against packed earth, the rhythm of war.
The Starsfall banners don’t fly above them. They haven’t in years.
Mallen trained these men, shaped them in his image. They’d follow him into fire—and I know he’d walk into it for them, too. He sculpted them into discipline, into death that marches. He tried to shape me too, but my body clings to softness. My thighs ache, my spine hums with each jolt, and the echo of last night pulses through me like a secret I can’t shake.
I was trained for war, but not for this.
