Read Online The Flame in the Maze by Caitlin Sweet - Free Book Online

box. Phaidra had opened it; she’d seen it first.
    She was nearly running as she crested the rise that she knew would bring her within sight of the great lock.
    Icarus was standing in front of the doors. Icarus: the lines of his body blurred and sharpened by feathers. She stumbled to a halt and saw that there was someone with him. The someone had short, dark hair and was wearing a woman’s skirt and jacket. Phaidra looked at her, at him, at the big door and the small one and the lock that lurked above everything. The edges of both doors were warped, and strips of metal had been sheared into coils that hung down—but the lock was intact.
    â€œGodsblood,” Ariadne whispered from right behind her.
    Phaidra walked. She felt her sister drawing up beside her; she saw her at the edges of her vision, smudged by the shadows that were more dusk, now, than storm. They arrived at the door together, both of them skirting the saw-toothed rocks that had been stripped from the mountainside by the quake.
    â€œYou,” Ariadne said. If she’d lifted her hand she could have clawed at Icarus’s downy cheek. He wasn’t looking at her, though: he was gazing at Phaidra. His eyes were so bright that she wanted to close her own—but she didn’t. She looked back at him, as the lock sang of silver and promise.
    Ariadne rounded on Phaidra, her eyes alight with rage. “And
you
! You let them out after all!”
    Icarus stepped forward with a hissing of feathers. “She didn’t. We got out ourselves. We planned it for years.” He squawked a laugh and tipped his head up at the mountain’s peak. The smoke was white against the darkening blue of the sky. “We thought we’d fly together to the island, then away.”
    â€œAnd you still may,” the girl said. Phaidra’s chest ached when she saw the girl’s gentle gaze on his face, and her soft hand on his shoulder. Scars crisscrossed this hand, and her arm. Her other hand, Phaidra noticed, was swollen and lumpy, its knuckles a raw, bloodied pink.
    â€œAnd who are
you
?” Ariadne snapped.
    The girl’s large eyes rose to Ariadne’s. “Sotiria.”
    The princess frowned. “I remember . . .” She sucked in her breath. “You’re an
Athenian
—Chara and I visited your cell the night before the third procession! Your hair was long and tangled then.” She laughed almost as Icarus had. “She switched places with you. She went to you to plan it, even as I went to him.”
    â€œTo him?” Icarus repeated. The second word cracked. Phaidra thought,
Ah—so he’s not in love with this Sotiria girl; it’s still Ariadne he wants. You should have known. Do
not
be a weakling about it.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
    Ariadne reached up and touched the edge of the lock. “And why did you come here, bird-
man
?”
    His lips and shoulder twitched. “The earth moved. I thought . . . I hoped the lock would have broken. I hoped the door would be hanging open; that we’d be able to go inside and find them.”
    â€œAnd it isn’t,” Ariadne said, waving her free hand. “It isn’t hanging open. So we need to
get
it open, and see whether Zeus’s earth-shaking has made a way for us, inside.”
    â€œWhy so desperate, Princess?” Icarus said.
    And Phaidra said, as steadily as she could, “Yes—why, Sister? I’m not sure you really answered, when I first asked you this.”
    â€œHow
dare
you?” Ariadne said. Her hand clenched on the lock. “How dare you ask me to explain myself? You—”
    â€œStop.” Sotiria spoke quietly, but they all turned to her. She was looking back down the path, and they followed her gaze. The sky behind them was throbbing with orange.
    â€œThe procession,” Ariadne said. “The king. Already?” She gripped Phaidra’s wrist and dragged it up to the lock. “Open