Page 86 of Labyrinthine
He hurls me into the corridor.
My knees buckle. I slide against the wall, cheek pressed to cool stone. The door slams shut behind me.
I don’t cry. I can’t.
But I breathe.
Light glints on the door handle. I stare at it. My heart’s still racing, my body wrecked, but a single thought roots itself in the center of my mind, cold, absolute, and inescapable.
He’s afraid of me.
He wouldn’t do this if he weren’t. Wouldn’t bind me tighter unless I’d started to slip the leash. Wouldn’t strike unless he feared I could strike back. He thinks he’s won—but he just showed me where to aim.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I wantedto believe my father was lying. That he’d twisted the truth in the horror of his stifling study and what happened beyond it—twisted it because he knew it would cut deepest. But when I asked Mallen—when I pressed him about the idea of keeping me here in Starsfall, even after the Reaping ends—he didn’t deny it.
He looked me straight in the eye and said yes.
He told me it was necessary. That it would protect me. That he couldn’t let me go.
The days since then have been quieter. Measured. Distant. But underneath that stillness is a slow, suffocating burn. I keep turning his words over in my head, trying to parse what was strategy and what was truth. Wondering if the man I’ve begun to trust has been playing a longer, darker game all along. Wondering if I should be afraid of the answer.
Mallen doesn’t push. He lingers like a shadow, always near, always watching. He touches nothing, says little. Just tracks my movements with eyes that give away too much. He’s controlled. But it’s the kind of control that feels like a dam in spring—cracked at the edges, holding back a flood that’s already begun to rise.
And it makes me wonder—who is he holding back for? Me? Or himself?
I don’t trust myself to ask. Not yet.
I’ve barely left my rooms in days, attending the formalities demanded by the Reaping—the ritual blessings and carefully choreographed appearances meant to signal strength. At first, it was easier to hide inside them. To retreat behind protocol. And Mallen agreed. After what my father did, he insisted I stay close—where he could protect me. But now the walls feel tighter. The ceremonies louder. I need air. I need quiet that doesn’t feel like confinement.
So, I ask for the one thing that might help. “May I visit the library?”
He pauses.
That’s all—one beat too long.
“No.”
A simple word, but final.
His gaze lingers on my face, the emerald of his eyes scanning me like a threat he hadn’t decided how to neutralize yet. He doesn’t shout. Doesn’t touch me. Just refuses.
It’s the first time he ever has.
I could press him. Maybe I should. But I catch a flicker before he turns away—a raw twist of jealousy, taut and ugly, like an old wound rubbed open. That’s what gives him away. He’s not afraid of what I’ll find in the library. He’s afraid of what it might confirm.
I let him go. I let the moment pass. But I won’t forget.
Now, I’m left unraveling everything on my own—half-truths knotted through with careful silence. My father spins stories in broad daylight and smiles as he does it. But Mallen’s lies are quieter. He lies by omission and hides falsehood in truth. He carefully constructs timing. He never quite answers what I haven’t fully asked.
The festivities of the Reaping drag on.
No one expected seven men to survive the second trial—least of all my father. The court grows tense under the weight of too much celebration, and too little certainty. The men are paraded, applauded, posed for effect. Even Darian looks wearied by it. The cracks in his perfect composure are small but real—his hair always pushed back, his smile a little too quick. He hides it well. But I see it. I think he knows I do.
We find each other in those brief, carefully guarded moments during events. A few breaths snatched behind rose-draped walls or between spiraling stairs. He doesn’t touch me—he can’t—but when our fingers almost graze, my pulse trips like it’s leaping from a cliff.
It’s stupid. Dangerous. I shouldn’t want it. Not with Mallen watching.
