I shrug. “I can’t think of anything Thanosdidn’tknow. I suppose he came here. He’d been pretty much everywhere.”
“And yet he was your guard?” Griffin asks.
I nod. “He taught me more than all my tutors combined. I was in awe of him.” Thanos, with his broad cheekbones, deep-set eyes, hammer-like fists, and colossal build. “I was convinced I was going to marry him when I grew up.”
Griffin goes completely stiff, and I bite my tongue. I forgot. I still haven’t agreed to actually marry Griffin yet.
I reach for his hand beneath his cloak. “He didn’t take me seriously. I didn’t even reach his waist when I was thinking things like that.”
I stop there, not adding that at fifteen, when I left, my head just barely reached Thanos’s chest—or that I begged him to leave with me. I’d wanted us to stay together. Forever. Despite what I just told Griffin, I’d been half in love with Thanos for years, and if it had been up to me, it would have turned into more. But Thanos just set me on his gigantic knee like I was still a child and told me I’d be fine without him, and that once I was safely away from the castle, he had other things to do.
Other things to do!
I was devastated. He sent me on my way as if he hadn’t spent my entire life up to that point being my friend and protector.
“None of that matters now,” I say more easily than I feel, a time-dulled shard of hurt still alive inside of me. “We don’t see the path because it’s on the northern slope, which isn’t as steep. It only winds around to this side at the very top. Look—just below the cave. Do you see that darker line? It’s the end of the trail, coming around from the back.”
Griffin nods and squeezes my hand. He doesn’t let go as he angles his body into the wind and starts walking. There’s still a long way to go.
Dawn breaks over the Ice Plains, turning the icicles lining the mouth of the cave into a jagged row of fiery daggers. Around us, a landscape of white, gray, and glacial blue slowly emerges from the night like a cautious beast leaving the shadows—still, monumental, treacherous. In the silence of daybreak, Griffin takes steel to flint, lights one of our two torches, and then hands it to Kato.
I peer to my right. The glacial tunnel leading into the labyrinth is as dark as a Cyclops’s heart. Griffin hands me the second, unlit torch, and I slip it into a loosened dagger loop in my belt. Two blades are missing, both melted down by the Dragon’s Breath.
In return, I hand Griffin Ariadne’s Thread. He holds the silvery ball of twine while Carver ties the loose end around my wrist, tugging hard on the knot to make sure it’s secure.
Griffin rechecks it, twice, his expression grim. “Remember what the wizard said.”
“Only Kato and I go in. Beware Atalanta’s bow. Find the lyre before the three-headed beast. Heed the Goddess’s needs.”
His eyes bore into mine, dark and troubled. “I don’t like being separated.”
My chest aches. I lean into him. “I know.”
“Don’t you dare cut this thread. For any reason.” Griffin’s arms clamp around me, hard as rocks. “If you do, I swear to the Gods I’ll come in there, find you, and give you a spanking you’ll never forget.”
My shaky laugh is muffled by his cloak. “I find that a lot more tempting than I probably should.”
Griffin squeezes me. “Come back to me. Don’t do anything foolish.”
Me?“I’m never foolish.”
He grips me until my bones creak.
“I’ll be careful,” I promise, feeling my magic spark with the pledge.
Griffin eases his hold, pressing his lips to the top of my head and inhaling deeply. When he lets me go and offers his hand to Kato, the other man shakes it, absorbing Griffin’s long, hard look with a solemn nod. The silent communication has “protect her with your life and then some” written all over it. A few weeks ago, I would have dismissed it as a lot of overprotective male posturing. Now, I only wish I could convince them that dying for me isnotan option.
As Kato and I enter the labyrinth, I have to convince myself to put one foot in front of the other. About thirty feet in, just before the tunnel curves to the right, I stop and look back even though every instinct tells me not to.
My heart seizes, tumbling painfully at the sight of Griffin. Ariadne’s Thread trails from his tightly fisted hand. His big frame is taut and still with the kind of coiled tension that hovers on the brink of explosion, as if he’s barely restraining himself from coming in after me.
Our eyes collide across the frost-blanketed entrance of the cave. “I swear I’ll cut this thread, drop it, and leave it behind me if any one of you steps past this point in the tunnel before we’re back.” The vow jolts through me, sealing itself in my skin, my blood, and my bones.
Griffin’s face twists. He curses violently.
Fighting the burning rawness inside me, I say, “You can take shelter in the cave’s entrance, but if you come after us, I’ll be physically compelled to cut the rope and not pick it up again.” The magical chain reaction will hit me no matter where I am, not leaving me any choice.
“I release you from your vow,” Griffin says.
