Page 58 of Labyrinthine
He sees a man gripping a woman who’s screaming.
He sees darkness in a place where light died long ago.
He doesn’t see the panic in my lungs. The terror threatening to tear me apart.
The fury on his face is cold, calculated, and devastating.
“Let her go,” Darian growls, “or I will end you.”
“Darian—”
Too late. He’s already in motion.
Mallen spins, releasing me just in time to meet Darian’s charge head-on. The crack of a fist meeting a jaw echoes in the room. Mallen staggers. Recovers. Responds with a brutal punch that sends Darian reeling into the wall.
They collide like gods in a ruin.
I scream, scrambling backward into a corner, my heart still racing from the panic attack, now layered with a fresh wave of horror.
They don’t stop. Darian’s fists fly, precision and fury blended into each strike. Mallen counters with brute force and frightening speed. He’s not holding back. Neither is Darian. Every hit lands like thunder.
Darian is protecting me. Mallen is fighting for me. And neither of them is listening to the person they’re trying to save.
I scream again, louder this time. My voice is raw and ragged. “Stop it!”
No one hears.
They crash into the dresser. Wood splinters. They tear through my chamber like beasts with no logic. A chair flies. A vase shatters. My room is wreckage and war.
“GUARDS!” I scream, shrill and commanding.
The door slams open and palace guards flood in, weapons drawn, confusion on their faces as they try to untangle the fight. They charge, far too late. Mallen has Darian by the throat, and Darian’s driving an elbow into Mallen’s ribs.
I’m done screaming.
I grab the nearest thing I can—a porcelain vase—and hurl it. It shatters against the head of a guard trying to restrain Mallen.
Everything halts.
Eyes whip to me. Shocked. Silent.
“Now that I have your attention…” I snarl. “You can all just stop.”
The guard clutches his bleeding head, too stunned to speak. Mallen and Darian breathe like creatures dragged from opposite ends of the same storm, sides heaving, bruises already blooming across their skin.
The silence between them isn’t peace—it’s a powder keg.
Every breath is a fuse waiting to be lit.
“Take him to the dungeons,” Mallen snarls, pointing at Darian.
“He attacked the princess,” Darian snaps, teeth bared.
Two guards close in on him anyway.
One grabs Darian’s arm. The other reaches for his sword.
It’s all happening too fast, and no one’s thinking. They’re still fighting, still ignoring me.
