Page 147 of Labyrinthine
Not one sword dulled.
It should feel like triumph. Instead, it feels like stepping into a house that remembers its last fire.
“Mallen,” I murmur.
He’s already looking at me, his expression unreadable, as though his face forgot how to wear anything but silence. “I know.”
Behind us, the rest of the army pours in—lines shifting, boots striking cobblestones as they fan into the city’s narrow streets. Some civilians watch from windows, mouths open. Others flee and vanish into the alleyways. No one speaks. Threnos has always been a city of masks, of secrets and whispers. But tonight, it holds its breath.
Mallen dismounts. His cloak billows as he strides toward the nearest officer. “Sweep the lower districts. Check the markets, the outer garrison, and the tunnels beneath the merchant’s quarter. No one moves without my order.”
He’s already laying snares behind his teeth, spinning plans faster than breath. I should feel safer. Instead, it feels like the calm before a curse that can’t be undone is spoken.
I dismount, slow and stiff. My hands tremble as I strip off the reins—skin tingling as if the leather remembered another rider. My boots hit the ground, and pain flashes through my legs, but I stand straight. I will not show weakness. Not now.
Mallen returns. His eyes flick down to my hands and then back up. “You feel it?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
The magic is here.
It coils through the streets like breath that can’t be released—thick, ancient, tasting of rust and ruin. It’s been waiting, sealed in stone and buried deep by gods who feared my father’s hunger. But now it’s broken loose. The city exhales it now, primeval and unbound, curling up from the cracks like smoke from a long-dead fire.
My skin crawls.
I strain to hear anything—movement, breath, the scrape of metal—but the silence holds.
I thought I knew these streets. I played in them. Hid in the basements, dared the tombs beneath the chapel steps. But Starsfall has changed. Its stones have shifted. Its stones no longer remember me, and the shadows have learned new names for fear.
The palace waits above us, stark against the bruised sky. Its towers rise like spears, windows dark, spires silent. No guards are visible. No lights. Just the massive metal gates and the stretch of the empty courtyard before them, slick with the sheen of old rain and older blood. I stare at the doors—tall as giants, etched with sigils long-since worn down by time and flame.
The silence presses in—dense, waiting, thick with the kind of stillness that comes before the world breaks.
Mallen steps beside me, his jaw rigid.
“You don’t have to be the one to face him.”
“I’m the one with magic,” I say.
He frowns.
“I’m not as skilled as I should be,” I admit. “But I felt it last night. It knows me. That’s enough.”
His expression twists—just for a breath. Regret flickers through him, as brief as candlelight catching on wet glass.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t have to.
I see it in the way his shoulders lower, in the breath he doesn’t take.
He’s bracing for the version of me that might not return. For the hollowed shape of the girl he followed here.
He swallows. “You’re not alone.”
Before I can speak, a sound splits the night.
A single, sharp bell. Then another. Then dozens, echoing through the air like funeral chimes.
