by Kyla Stone
A shadow fell across me, blocking out the sun. It was Asterion, leaning down. He gripped my shoulders with his crooked fists and shook me. “Ariadne!” he grunted in his ruined voice. “Ariadne!”
I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t speak.
Blood dripped from Asterion’s horns and splattered on my chest, my arms, my cheeks. The fur around his muzzle was matted with it. His eyes blazed red with fury—and fear.
“Ariadne!” he bellowed.
The sounds of shouting reached me. I turned my head. Through the long grass, a dozen guards raced toward us, swords drawn. Behind them trailed several servants, my mother, and King Minos. People were yelling, screaming things I couldn’t make out.
One of the guards hurled a spear at us. The bronze tip lodged in the dirt, a hand’s span from my face. Asterion roared and swung his head. At the same time, I lunged up, panicking.
Asterion’s horns snagged my flesh, slashing my upper chest and shoulder. Pain cut through me. I clutched at the wound, gasping, blood gushing through my fingers.
Asterion reared back, shock and remorse crossing his broad, misshapen features. But it didn’t matter. It was too late.
I remember the green of the grass; the glint of the bronze swords in the soldiers’ hands as they surrounded Asterion, still hunched over me; the piercing shriek of my mother as she ran across the grounds, tearing at her skirts with pale hands; the blade-sharp fury of my father, unwavering, unforgiving, his face black with wrath.
The guards jabbed at my brother with their spears and swords. My father snatched me up in his arms, and I twisted, peering back to see Jadikira, to see my brother. I caught a glimpse of grass drenched in blood, the gored body, the splintered skull and gaping mouth of my nightmares.
“What happened?” my mother cried. “Ariadne, tell me what happened!”
“Is it not obvious, Pasiphae?” My father’s voice, filled with fury and loathing. “Your son is a monster!”
My mother wrung her skirts in her fists, her beautiful face a rictus of horror. “No. It cannot be—”
“You would not believe when he killed the goats and the calves!” the king roared. “You would not believe when he broke the slave girl’s arm! Now would you believe? He smashed a wooden door and wounded two guards to escape his chambers. He murdered a boy and nearly killed your own daughter!”
“It must be a mistake,” my mother said desperately. “Ariadne can tell us—”
“She can tell us nothing we do not already know!” King Minos spat.
For a terrible moment, everyone turned to me. Darkness wavered at the edges of my vision. The wound in my shoulder leaked blood onto my father’s gold embroidered cloak. I stared at the blooming stain in dread, convinced my father’s wrath was because of this indiscretion, sure in my dazed, childish mind that all that fury was aimed at me.
“He saved me,” I rasped. I meant to scream it, but it came out a gnarled whisper, as if my voice was crushed. I still felt the imprint of Jadikira’s hands, the bruising pressure of his fingers around my throat. “It was an accident.”
My father’s face darkened.
“What did she say?” my mother asked.
“That your spawn is a bloodthirsty murderer!” my father snarled. “Remove the beast from my sight!”
I tried to speak again, to defend my brother, but the king’s huge, thundering voice plowed over my own weak one. He didn’t like the truth that I told, so he twisted it to his own ends. He shouted loud enough for every person within earshot to hear him clear as a bell. “For savaging an innocent child and nearly slaying the queen’s daughter, his own sister, this grotesque abomination shall be imprisoned within the newly finished Labyrinth for the rest of his days. I swear upon all the gods, this monster shall never see daylight again!”
I remember his words, the rumbling sound of them as I pressed my ear against my father’s blood-stained chest. He wrapped me in his cloak and carried me to the royal physician himself.
For three days, my father hovered over me, barely leaving my side. “That monster will never touch you or anyone else again,” he muttered over and over. “I won’t allow him to destroy what I’ve worked so hard to build. I will not.”
My small, lonely chamber filled with physicians, nurses, servants, and nobles and counselors paying their respects, all attentive, my father the king a glorious, regal presence shining down on me. In my drugged, pain-filled haze, I knew only that my beloved father lavished attention upon me. I must have done something right. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, he saw me.
Every day that I grew stronger, every day that the physician bled my wound and wrapped a fresh bandage around my chest and shoulder, the truth receded a little more. I was so young, hurting and terrified. I only wanted to please my father, to make the pain and the anger go away.
When I tried to speak the truth to Tarina, she shushed me, her fingers warm over my lips. “The king has been building that Labyrinth for several summers,” she said softly, her eyes full of pity. “Who do you think it was for?”
“But—”
“The time for tale-telling has passed.”
She knew the same thing I did, that to refute the king’s words would bring his wrath upon me like a great, shuddering earthquake.
I had tried to speak once; it hadn’t been enough. I wasn’t believed. I was only a child; I wasn’t strong enough to try again.
The truth remained a black and gnarled wound in my heart, a slowly leaking poison, an ugly shame taking root and growing within me. I was the shadow princess, cursed sister of the monster. But I wasn’t cursed simply for being his sister. I was cursed for my fear, for my silence.
King Minos only needed an excuse to throw Asterion into the Labyrinth. I understood that. But I couldn’t erase the truth that my father used me to seal my brother’s fate, that my brother’s last memory of me was of my betrayal.
“I didn’t speak for a full cycle of the moon,” I say now, quietly, my throat clotted with grief. “All that time, the truth burned inside me. But by the time my wound healed, the story was already more real than my memory. It’d been told a hundred, a thousand times, spreading throughout Knossos, through all of Crete. Gradually, I let them convince me that I was the one mistaken, that my own memory was wrong. And I—forgive me, brother, but I let myself forget. I made myself forget.”
Asterion stares at me, his great shoulders hunched and shuddering. “I do not…remember when the—the fury comes upon me…they told me I slaughtered an innocent boy. That I tried to…to murder my sister.”
“Not an innocent boy.” I finger the ridged scar along my collarbone. “I shouldn’t have let Father do this. I should’ve screamed and screamed until someone listened. I should never have let him put you in here.”
“The king was only waiting…for his chance.”
He is right. Of course, he’s right. And yet, the gnawing shame remains. I wipe my eyes with the back of my arm and rip the leather cord from around my neck. I hold out the vial. “Here is your chance.”
“The lifeblood,” he rasps. “You—you mean it to be yours.”
“In truth, my plan was to use him.” I gesture back at Theseus. “But in the end, I couldn’t do it.”
“Is he a good man?”
I nod heavily. “He is arrogant and stubborn, and he craves glory, but he is brave. There is kindness in him.”
“Then he should not die.”
I slowly unsheathe the dagger tucked against my thigh. I grasp the bronze and ivory handle and hold the blade against my chest. The point pricks my skin beneath my linen wrap. A single drop of blood blooms red.
My hands tremble. All my life, people have demanded pieces of me. My father, my mother, the high priestess, the mother goddess. Other than Tarina, Asterion is the only one who never took, who never demanded.
Now I can offer myself freely. I can give him what he needs. “Let me make this right. Let me trade my life for yours.”
Asterion growls as he
lunges forward and snatches the blade from me. “Never.” He grips my hands in his huge fists and guides the knife to his own blood-matted chest. “If you truly wish to help me, you will kill me.”
“No!” I try to yank my hands back, but he’s far stronger than I am.
He glances at my chest, at the droplets of fresh blood staining the linen. The red mist flares briefly behind his eyes, then dims. He turns his head with a grunt, nostrils flaring. “I crave blood—mortal blood. Human blood…I will never not crave blood.”
“We can feed you lamb and goat and horse and—”
“No! Even as a child, I was sick and weakly, dying slowly without—human flesh. It was how I was made. Now I will die even faster, no matter the body I am in. You should go. I can only resist—so long—”
He won’t look at me. Even in his beastly form, I can read the ugly shame shuddering through him. “How could I ever—allow myself to hurt you—again?”
The tears spill down my cheeks, my heart hollowed out.
His grip tightens. His furred hands are warm and rough over my own. “Do not weep for me, dear sister.”
I choke back a sob. “This was all for nothing.”
“No!” he rasps. “Don’t say that. Can’t you see? You have—freed me.”
“I don’t see! I came here for you. I came here to break your curse, to save you!”
He tilts his head, his fierce gaze gentling. “I believed myself wholly a monster, unloved and unable to love. You’ve shown me the truth. I have done—terrible, horrible things. But I did not wish to kill my own sister.”
He bares his teeth in a broken, misshapen smile. “I loved her. I love her still. And she loves me—this is more…than I could ever ask for.”
“You can ask for more—”
He shakes his head wearily. “I’ve longed for death. I cannot live with the horrors within my own head…no matter what body I inhabit. Please, Ariadne. I am ready.”
This is not what I wanted. It isn’t what I came for. My mother sent me on a deadly, impossible quest to rescue Asterion. Against all odds, I succeeded. I found him. I brought him back to himself. I can give him the lifeblood to transform him into the prince that he is, to give him his life back.
My mother wants him returned to her as a human prince. She wants to save him. So do I.
But that is not what Asterion wants.
My gaze moves from the blade pressed to Asterion’s chest to his brown, mournful eyes. I can still snatch the dagger back, plunge it into my own heart, and give him my lifeblood. He’d have to take it then. Because he loves me, he’d have no choice.
But if I love him, can I force my will upon him? If I truly love him, can I take his choice away?
My mother bartered my love for Tarina—my desperation to save her life—to get me into the Labyrinth, putting her will for her son over the life of her daughter. Over my life.
I see it now, staring at Asterion, the ruined palace all around us, the remnants of a lost and fallen age.
Cold, exhausted, nearly dead—I finally see everything clearly. My mother offered her withheld love as the prize for my success, forcing me to risk my own life to earn it. Like Kalliope, whose father loved one child best, and the other, not at all. Who sacrificed the unloved, unwanted one to save the other.
That is my father’s love, I realize suddenly. That is my mother’s love. And it’s not love at all.
Love cannot be a trap. It’s not a way for others to ensnare and control you.
Love is a thing freely given.
Tarina gave me her love. Leda and Charis proved love can survive even in darkness. And Kalliope, who offered herself to save the life of Theseus. My brother, too, gave up his own freedom when he killed Jadikira to save me.
Love is the fragile thread tying two people together, the thing that keeps a heart beating when despair closes in. Love is the thing you fight for, strive for, give yourself for.
But you must choose it. You must want to give it.
Choice is everything. Without choice, love is tainted. It isn’t real. It isn’t true.
“Ariadne,” my brother pleads.
To my cold, demanding mother, to do this thing is to fail her. I’ll forever be unworthy of her approval, her affection. She’ll never forgive me. My fingers tighten on the ivory handle. But maybe I can forgive myself. Maybe there is more than one way to save someone.
I love my brother, beast or no, monster or no. As much as I hate it, I understand his decision. I would give my life to save his, but that isn’t what he wants.
I nod through my tears. “I will do whatever you ask.”
“Send me to the underworld, sister…let me die, not in rage and violence, but in peace.”
The dead walk the gloomy caverns of the underworld. They’ll be familiar to Asterion—maybe even comforting. He’s already survived the Labyrinth. Maybe the underworld will be a relief after the dark loneliness of endless stone and shadow. One day, I will meet him there, and he will tell me.
“This gift you can give me, with your love.” He squeezes my hand. “Do it now, before I lose myself again.”
With tears dripping off my chin, I do.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
I don’t know how long I sit in silent grief, hunched over the body of my dead brother. I don’t know anything but the sorrow wrenching through me.
I know I’ve done the right thing. I know it in my head, but my heart is a broken thing. I lost my brother just when I found him. It’s unfair and I hate it, even though I would do it the same way again.
Tears trickle down my cheeks and drop into Asterion’s matted fur. I lift his great head into my lap and stroke the soft velvet of his muzzle with one hand, gripping my bloodied dagger with the other. The vial lies on the cold marble floor, useless and forgotten.
After a time, Theseus moans, bringing me abruptly back to myself, back to the Labyrinth. I glance over to see him already sitting up, one hand pressed to the cut over his forehead, watching me.
I return my gaze to my brother.
Theseus rises with difficulty. His shadow falls over me. “You saved my life.”
“I did.”
“You killed him.”
“I did.”
He hesitates. “I heard you talking to him.”
“How much did you hear?”
He shifts uncomfortably and coughs, as if embarrassed, like he’s been caught at something. “Enough.”
“Enough to know the truth.”
He doesn’t answer. All around us lie the ruins of the ancient palace. Far above our heads, the glow-worms pulse like stars. The air is thick between us, heavy with everything that has happened, with our pasts, our choices, and the weight of the future. What happens now will determine everything.
I look up at him, my face streaked with tears. I hold out the dagger, the blade still dripping with my brother’s blood. “Here is your glory. Here is your kingdom.”
He stares at me, his face contorting. His shoulders tremble. “Ariadne—”
“I’ll give this to you. I’ll give it all to you. When we get back, I’ll tell everyone it was you. I will spin the tale to everyone I meet, until it spreads across the known world. The poets will write about you—the hero who slew the monster and lived.”
Despite his haggard expression, the blood caking the side of his head, his whole face brightens. He’s imagining it—all of Athens falling at his feet in gratitude and adoration. The parades, the feasts, the honor and glory. And his father, finally bestowing his hard-earned approval—his love.
I cannot tell him that love is hollow—that in the end, it will mean much less than he thought it would. Only he can learn that truth for himself.
Theseus nods stiffly. “What is your price?”
“All I want in return is safe passage on your ship. Take me off this cursed island to somewhere, anywhere else.”
“You no longer wish to be my queen?” he asks, his voice ragged.
He still hasn’t taken the
dagger. A flame of hope flares within me. The words are stones in my throat, but I force them out. “Would you tell the truth about what happened here?”
“Ariadne, I—”
“Would you tell the world how the monster’s death was a mercy killing? How he didn’t try to murder his sister, that instead he protected me? That King Minos threw him into the Labyrinth anyway, forcing him to kill or starve. He was a monster, but he was also a man. There was good in him. Tell the truth about my brother, and I will joyfully consent to be your bride.”
He hesitates, a shadow crossing his face.
My hope withers. He yearns for greatness and grandeur over all else. Over me, over us. Over the truth. Resigned, I say, “You want the glory of slaying the monster.”
Theseus takes the knife from my hand. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice choked and raw.
Theseus made his own choice. And so did I.
I lift Asterion’s limp head from my lap and lay it gently on the ground. Silently I rise, sore and weary and limping, but alive. I fold my brother’s great arms across his chest, close his dull, staring eyes with my thumb, and place a shard of lapis tile beneath his tongue in place of a coin.
I wish I could bury him properly, as a prince of Crete deserves, to smooth the journey to the underworld. As it did for so many others, the Labyrinth will have to serve as his burial chambers. It is fitting.
And it is finished. Asterion found his peace in the end. That, at least, gives me comfort.
“We can still be together.” Anguish contorts his features. “I still want you as my queen.”
The fantasy flits through my mind again, a glittering future as queen of Athens. Theseus’s queen, Theseus’s wife.
And then another future—a sea stretching out endlessly before me, bursting with unexplored lands, jagged mountains and lush valleys and city upon glorious city, a life filled with opportunity and adventure and the unknown.
The life I wished for Asterion. A life of choosing my own path, carving my own way. A life of freedom.