Page 16 of Labyrinthine
“Like a perfect princess.”
“Ready to be bled dry.”
The taste of copper crawls up the back of my throat. For a moment, I imagine myself in the arena—barefoot, bloodied, free to die on my own terms. The sand drinks me and lets me go. No vows. No throne. No hands shaping me into a myth I did not choose.
“They’re going to die,” I add, and my voice is dull, detached. Not mournful. Just true.
No one survives the Reaping. Not one man in its ten years.
I remember some making it past the first trial, but no one’s ever made it to the third—the labyrinth. The maze beneath Threnos is a crypt. An ancient tomb woven with magic older than its walls, steeped in death. It isn’t my father’s design, but he added to it, made it impossible to survive. A fail-safe. No noble from Larksbind, no trader’s son or wide-eyed soldier, will live long enough to claim me.
Mallen does not speak, but his jaw tightens. I know him well enough to read it. He will not let me be claimed by a man I do not want. He promised me that. Now that he has spoken his own wanting, he will not leave the choice to chance alone. If I say no, he will hold the doors. If I say yes, he will see every other claim fall away.
I stare at my reflection, fingers brushing the beads stitched into the silk. My magic simmers, uninvited, under my skin. Itcomes without invitation, cold under my ribs, like a room that waits on the night. It answers fear and anger and grief, but also wakes for no reason at all, a pressure behind my teeth that melts copper onto my tongue.
My magic is not a gift I can wield. It’s not a gift at all. A blasphemy the gods sealed at my birth. They knotted it inside my bones, inside their bindings. I cannot cast or call it; only feel it pace the walls of me as it tests for a seam. It presses harder in the Reaping, as if the drums of Threnos thin the seal. It has taught me to live small and still, to swallow want before it wakes.
I was born cursed. Chosen. A vessel of death, a child of the dark.
My father would gild me in silk and gems, parade me through these halls like a prize horse, while the truth of me screams beneath the surface.
“I don’t share, Azhara,” Mallen says, voice low. “You shouldn’t pity them.”
I turn to him slowly and lie. “I don’t.”
Resentment coils tight—at all of it. The theater. The blood-soaked games. This torment masquerading as courtship.
The Reaping could have ended if I’d said yes. One word from me, and the drums would have stilled. Magic would be returned to Starsfall, and men from Larksbind wouldn’t be forced into trials that my father ensures they cannot win. But I did not choose Mallen. I let silence answer for me. Time turned into a noose, and now men will die because I didn’t speak.
Because possibility has a price.
Ten lives will be offered like coins—some foolish, some hopeful—and none are meant to survive. Larksbind stopped sending their best when it was clear that my father would not let them live. Perhaps this year, they’ll find some men with hope left in that. That would be the harsher cruelty.
Mallen’s armor looks ceremonial, but it isn’t. Every piece is functional. Deadly. And he wears it like a second skin, like he’s waiting for war.
“I know it’s ugly,” he says after a breath. “This thing in me that snarls at the thought of you with anyone else. But I’ve never pretended to be better than I am.”
He raises his eyes to the heavens. There’s no relief. For either of us.
“No other suitors,” he says. “If one of them touches you?—”
“I know,” I interrupt, exhaling. “You’ll kill them.”
He’s not being dramatic. Some of them forget themselves. They think being chosen means access, and they grab me. Hands at my elbow. Fingers at my waist.
“Mallen, they get excited?—”
“They know the rules,” he says, coldly. “My job is to keep you safe.”
He steps back, heading for the door.
“Mallen.”
My voice is sharper than I meant it to be, but it stops him. Instantly.
He glances over his shoulder.
“Allow them one mistake,” I say, walking toward him. “Just one. You don’t have to gut them for breathing near me.”
