Page 40 of Labyrinthine
“I don’t think?—”
He slams his fist into the table. The sound is thunderous. I startle as the papers on his desk scatter like frightened birds. My pulse stumbles.
“Don’t try my patience!” he bellows. “Just do.”
Careful now. Measured steps across a tightrope that stretches over knives.
“What I meant,” I say softly, “is I don’t think Darian wants a meek bride.”
His eyes narrow. A twitch of his jaw. The weight of violence barely held back.
“He wants the girl who bloodied him in a duel,” I go on. “That’s why he noticed me. He wants a conquest.”
A slow, contemptuous laugh curls from my father’s throat.
“He’ll be disappointed,” he says. “When he sees what you are.”
I say nothing. I don’t look at him. If I let myself cry, he wins.
“Do whatever it takes to make him fall,” he says. “But don’t bed him before he’s bound to you. No man marries what he’s already taken. No king crowns what’s already claimed.”
This is a rule I have never heard from my father. The Reaping has always meant marriage, seal the bargain, let the rite decide. Now he wants a pursuit that stops at the cliff. Make him fall, stay untouched. It is contradiction dressed as strategy. A test and a leash at once. Keep me valuable. Keep him hungry. Keep every door half open. Either he knows more than he has taught me,or he is bending the truth to fit a snare. He rewrites the rite in whispers, and I cannot yet see the pattern.
This Reaping is different. The rules are changing. I just don’t understand how. Or why.
My father’s gaze flicks to the door. A dismissal. I rise, bow low, and begin to back away.
Then—tap. Tap. Tap.
The dagger again. My blood chills.
“You are still untouched, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good,” he says, and smiles like a knife. “Mallen will ensure it stays that way.”
Shame burns under my skin. He’s too good at making me doubt my own pulse. He stacks truth beside threat until I cannot tell them apart. Control becomes protection, and refusal ingratitude. If I stay, I drown. If I argue, he’ll drag me under. I get out before I mistake his plan for mine.
I make it only halfway down the corridor before the tears come hot and fast. I don’t want to cry—not here—but the ache is too sharp, too deep.
I throw open my door and?—
Arms catch me before I fall.
“What did Darian do?”
Mallen’s voice is quiet. Too quiet.
I don’t answer right away. I only fold into him, my arms around his neck, seeking refuge in the heat and the shape of him. He holds me tightly. No questions. Just presence. He lowers me onto his lap like I deserve all this and more.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, and this time his voice could flay flesh from bone.
He’s wrong. He thinks Darian hurt me.
And part of me wants to let him believe it—because the fury in his voice feels like protection, and I’ve never needed it more.
He’s already made up his mind about who to blame. He hasn’t realized that it wasn’t Darian who caused this—and though some part of me is soothed by the fury in his voice, I can’t let him wage war on the wrong enemy.
