Page 3 of Labyrinthine
I keep walking. Head low. Hood up. Heart pounding. I weave through the brightly colored cloaks, pretending to dance and sing along with travelers, drifting toward the bread ovens’ gate, the workmen’s entrance the city forgets.
Let them think I’m just another reveler come to watch the gods play with lives.
Let them believe I’m free.
The guards at the gatehouse are distracted by the women clinging to them, each trying to secure a husband by sunrise. The girls ply their charms and flutter their lashes—and I seize my chance, slipping past them, and finally stepping outside the capital of Starsfall.
My body begs to celebrate.
To run and laugh.
To breathe in the wild air of freedom.
I do not give in. Instead, I make myself walk steadily toward the trees that border Threnos. Their trunks are only meters away. All that is left is for me to hold my nerve and slip past them.
The wood swallows me whole and I sink into shadow. The glimmer from Threnos fades behind me, and the night presses close. Branches creak. Leaves whisper. The quiet should comfort me. It doesn’t. It wraps too tight, too still, like smoke around a dying flame. The shadows shift.
My boots sink into moss. I take one more step?—
A hand wraps around my throat and pain explodes through my side as I slam into a tree, hard enough to rattle bone. The guard doesn’t let go, not even when I kick out. His weight pins me against the bark like I belong there, and I take a moment to collect myself.
There’s no screaming. Or begging.
Just a girl saving her strength. Assessing his weaknesses.
The air reeks of sweat and sour wine. He leans in, breathing hot and heavy against my cheek. I turn my head, but he laughs as his hands drift downwards, brushing my cloak aside. His fingers reach for my hips, where my coin bag should be.
“What’ve we got here?”
He rocks back on his heels.
He acts like I’m cornered. Like I’m prey.
The fool hasn’t recognized me. Hasn’t found the blade strapped to my other thigh. He doesn’t know I trained beneath Mallen, Commander of the Royal Guard, whose drills carved steel into my bones.Be swift. Be silent. Use your weight. Strike before mercy becomes a mistake.
He’s too drunk to notice me move.
Too slow to stop what’s coming.
I twist. Drop. Strike.
His body hits the bracken, and blood spills onto ground that has soaked up worse. The earth drinks it down, unconcerned.
There’s no time to waste breath on guilt.
But the noise will draw attention. It always does.
And my father ensures Starsfall is full of men in borrowed armor who like the taste of fear. Thugs turned into legal knives with no leash. Men who are paid too little to feed their children, so find other ways to earn gold.
I bolt deeper into the night, ducking under branches, racing into the darkness to widen the distance between us. The ground is slick, the underbrush dense. Twigs catch at my cloak and roots try to snag my ankles, but I’m small and quick. I dart around trunks and duck under limbs. Any guards who the commotion might attract will be larger—slower through the tight growth—but their strides are longer and they’ll plow through everything in their way.
In a straight chase, they’d win. But Mallen taught me not to play fair.
His training reverberates through every movement, through every turn and breath. He was ruthless. He taught me to fight, to endure, to survive. I’d have been caught already without him. He made me strong enough to escape.
Strong enough to survive my father’s moods.
And this, this is nothing compared to that.
