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

it
now
.”
    Phaidra glanced at Icarus, who smiled at her with his twisted, purple lips. She smiled back, then stood up on her toes and placed her palms and fingertips on the lock. The silver flowed immediately. It coursed over the metal and into the air around it; it shimmered when the lock sprang open. The low door opened too, with a muffled
clang
.
    â€œYes!” Ariadne tugged on it until it swung wide. She knelt, her hands out, seeking air, and the others crouched behind her.
    There was no air. No opening. The doorway was blocked by three slabs of stone that might have been placed deliberately, so neatly did they fit together. No space atop or around them; no spaces between—just seams to show they were separate pieces.
    â€œNo,” Icarus said. He put a hand on Phaidra’s back and pressed. She could feel it shaking. Its stubby feathers prickled her, reminded her that she was covered in cuts. She didn’t move.
    Ariadne lunged forward with a shriek. She pounded her fists against the stone, growling and panting.
    â€œStop,” Sotiria said again—loudly, this time. She hunched over, curling her fingers (even the broken-looking ones) into her palms, flinching every time Ariadne’s hands hit the stone.
She looks like she’s in pain
, Phaidra thought.
Ariadne’s pain?
    Ariadne kept hammering at the blocks. “I need him!” she cried, and the stone darkened with her spit. “Gods
blood
—let me in!
I need him!
”
    Who?
Phaidra wanted to ask—but instead she turned and took Icarus’s hand in both her own.
    â€œWe have to go,” he said.
    Phaidra nodded. “Where?”
    â€œThere are lava tubes near the top—pipes. I tried to reach them once, with Chara, and it didn’t work—but the earthquake may have loosened things, up there. It has to have
somewhere
.” He glanced back down at the orange stain in the sky. “Yes. We go up. And we leave your sister here—because if I have to have anything more to do with her, I’ll probably kill her.”
    He was still shaking—all of him—and despite the mountain and the fire that was coming, Phaidra wanted to laugh.
He doesn’t love her,
she thought;
he hates her.
    Sotiria was smiling at her—a lovely, sad, knowing smile.
    â€œLet’s go, then,” Phaidra said.

Book
Two

Polymnia
First Athenian Sacrifice

Chapter Six
    Polymnia remembered, as she fell. She didn’t want to, but she remembered, in images so quick that she could barely see them, and so bright that she saw nothing else behind her squeezed-shut eyes.
    The voyage from Athens: the storm that tossed the ship around on the first night; the Cretans lined up along the cliff, all of them cheering their triumph and our death; the boat their priestesses used to take us from our ship to the shore, its prow a living, snorting sea monster’s head on a scaly neck; the tiny flowers growing beside the cliff path I tried to throw myself off; Princess Ariadne making cow eyes at Kosmas; the procession to the Goddess’s mountain only yesterday: dust in my mouth, and the brown leather mask that stank of death and home; the girl Chara, who spoke to me; no clouds, when they opened the mountain’s door and pushed us in; that prince of theirs, shouting, on fire, turning into a bull; blue sky in the doorway as I fell, wind and screaming in my ears—
    She landed. She had no breath; then she did, and she wheezed, arching her back, twisting and bucking like a fish on a line. Her fingers clutched at something that felt like springy moss; her nails chipped on the stone beneath.
    The screams trailed off slowly. She heard someone sobbing, someone else gibbering about a broken ankle. She heard water dripping, and metal whining against metal.
    She whimpered and opened her eyes.
    A wall rose above her. It was studded with small golden lights that didn’t flicker, and lines of carving: blue waves and purple