Free The Flame in the Maze by Caitlin Sweet Page B

eyes to Polymnia’s; they were all white and black. Kosmas crouched, his arms wrapped tightly around Zenais. Her shattered leg stuck out in a way that reminded Polymnia of the slaughterhouse, and the animals who’d fallen, broken their bones, screamed and bellowed until she sang them to silver sleep.
    â€œReady?” Kosmas didn’t wait for an answer. He leapt and landed on the other platform. Zenais screamed as she fell from his arms and sprawled in front of Polymnia. Blood spattered.
Just like home
, Polymnia thought again. When Zenais lifted her head and saw Asterion she went very still.
    â€œPolymnia.” Kosmas’s voice was both deep and sharp. “Pull again, when I say so.”
    She did, because he spoke with a voice that wasn’t her father’s; because he spoke with strength, not impatience or anger. She wound her torn-up palms around the metal and tugged, when he told her to. Their stone platform dipped again. It thrust its way down into the heat-bent, light-speckled darkness; when it finally hit something solid, its cables screamed. It shuddered and stilled.
    Polymnia turned to Asterion. Wreaths of smoke hid his face, but his horns swept back and forth, making clear trails that filled in as she blinked. “I can’t,” she thought she heard him whisper, and then he stumbled off the ledge. She followed, sucking in her breath as her bare feet touched the ground. It was hot stone, a straight path carved with tiny spirals. The path was painted bright blue; she could see this, in the light of the lamps that lined it, flickering moonlit-silver through the smoke. The tiny spirals were gold. She coughed; the air here felt thick and smelled of fire.
    Kosmas set Zenais gently upright and she leaned heavily on a painted urn. It was waist-high, covered in designs of looping green seaweed and bronze-scaled fish. There were others, set along the path at regular intervals, each with different patterns: octopus, jellyfish, swirling lines that made Polymnia dizzy.
    Zenais clutched the urn’s lip, her back hunched. She was staring at Asterion, who was staring at the ground. One of his feet had pale, digging toes; the other, a circle of hoof, yellow-hard and fringed with dark brown fur.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” she said, only a little shakily.
How is she so bold?
Polymnia thought, with a surge of envy and shame that made her feel, briefly, as if everything were just as usual.
    He blinked at Zenais. “Asterion,” he said. “Son of Queen Pasiphae.”
    â€œSo you’re a prince.” Her eyes were wide but she didn’t sound afraid.
    â€œNot anymore,” he said, and started blindly off along the corridor. They straggled after him, Zenais leaning on Kosmas, but they’d only gone a few paces when a scream stopped them all. A human scream, this time, not a metal one—though Polymnia couldn’t tell if it were a male or female voice. It was shrill and far away, at first; a moment later, it sounded much closer.
    â€œWhat?” she heard someone say, in the quiet after the scream. Again the voice was close—right beside her ear—but none of them had spoken. “Arkadios: where are you? Stay; say something else so I can find you.” A whimper, which wound like an eel through the air between Polymnia and Zenais, and away.
    A wolf howled.
    â€œThat’s Ligeia,” Zenais whispered, and Polymnia thought,
Gods forgive me—why her?
    â€œWho
is
that?” Ligeia called, from wherever she was. The words were rough, as they always were after she used her godmarked howl. “Is that Zenais?”
    â€œYes,” Zenais whispered. “What’s going on?”
    Asterion’s gaze skimmed up and back down, past all of them, into the steam-wreathed corridor. “I’ve been in caves before. They twist sounds. There’s no way to know where anyone is unless they’re right in front of you. Two other people are