I’m in the Labyrinth.
Nine years waiting for this moment. Nine years of sacrifice and tears, of cunning and patience, all my focus fixed on a single goal—get inside this cursed game.
The first leg of my path to vengeance is complete.
Now I just have to find the Beast, and kill him.
But I’m not the only one here.
There are over a dozen stone biers in a circle around the vast circular chamber. High above me, a hole in the ceiling reveals a scattering of stars and a full, foreboding moon tinged red. Around the room open arches lead to… safety? Escape?
Unlikely.
“Come on,” I whisper to myself, shaking my hands and arms to bring the blood back into them. There’d been an analgesic in the wine. I’d expected that.
None of the women I’ve spoken to knew how they arrived in this world, only that the knights had given them drugged wine before they awoke here.
“Shake it off.”
I glance around, meeting the gaze of a heavily tattooed woman across the chamber floor. Her hair is blue and her eyes are wide as our gazes meet—a shared look of resignation.
She knows.
Beside me, a curvaceous redhead blinks and moans, turning her head sleepily. She’s gowned in silvery white, little gold stars hanging from her earrings. Freckles dust the top of her rounded shoulders and kiss her plump cheeks. Clearly from a world of abundance, and possibly from a wealthy family too, judging by the softness of her skin and her ink-stained fingertips.
A golden tattoo gleams on her upper arm, an owl with its wings spread.
“Are you awake?” I whisper, as other women stir all around the chamber.
The redhead pushes up, sudden panic highlighting her features.
I press a finger to my lips in a shushing motion. From what I’ve been able to glean from the stories of those who’ve escaped this place, the danger is real.
And danger is coming.
“Where am I?” the girl gasps in fright.
Laughter rings through the chamber in response, an eerie sound that reminds me of a jackal. I spin, heart ratcheting into gear but I find nothing that might have made the noise. Only a soft silvery light that seems to come from the stones themselves.
Pushing to my feet, I settle into a defensive position.
“My lovely brides,” calls a voice so soft with menace it feels like a fingernail trails down my spine. “All gathered for the choosing.”
A creature spins into being, seemingly from nowhere. A mocking laugh is etched into the mask that he wears, one side a smooth, unblemished ivory, the other forged from melted, dripping gold. As he turns I see the hideous rictus of pained laughter on the mask. A moment later it’s gone, the mask blank, a rivulet of melted gold dripping from one eye in the semblance of a tear. A black cloak sweeps around him, created from thevery fabric of night itself and he vanishes as it sweeps over him, reappearing to my far left.
“He will come with laughter,” one of the escapees had told me, face and voice scarred by the thought of what had happened here in the Labyrinth. “He will promise many things. He lies. His tongue is honeyed poison.”
“Who?” I’d asked.
“Kasaros,” Mariam had said bitterly, finally lifting her gaze to meet mine. “The Laughing God. The Trickster. The Monster.”
“Please,” a female trader whispers. “I have a family who need me?—”
“Had a family,” Kasaros corrects, his mask mocking her. “Had a life. Had a world.” He glides toward her, cloaked with menace. “Now you have only what you can win for yourselves in my Labyrinth.”
The silver light that infuses the stones grows brighter. Some unnatural force jerks my body straight, and the brides still on the ground are hauled jerkily to their feet as if they feel it too.
I can’t move. I can’t even reach for the dagger sheathed in my corset.
