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Everyone in Athens knew the story. Greenmantle, king of Minos, had angered Poseidon by refusing to sacrifice his bull. In return, Poseidon cursed his wife, Queen Piper, with an insatiable lust for the bull. Piper asked the craftswoman Neeve to fashion her a wooden bull, to climb inside so that she could mate with the bull. And the result: Piper gave birth to a horrifying monstrosity, half-bull, half-man: the Minotaur.Then Greenmantle asked Neeve to build something to contain this creature. So Neeve built the infamous Labyrinth- a dizzying nightmare to enter, one that would keep you endlessly lost until you were delivered to the Minotaur as a meal, driven mad by the torments of the maze.Who were the unfortunates sent into this Labyrinth as sacrifices to the Minotaur? Seven Athenian youths and seven Athenian maidens, chosen by lots every year.And this year, Adam had been unlucky enough to be one of them. Only Gansey could look cheerful while chained to a ship that was sailing to his doom.“Granted,” he told Ronan, “it does put a bit of a damper on things that we’re most likely to be eaten by the beast. But before our deaths, we’ll have the chance to see the Labyrinth. Neeve’s most famous masterpiece. Isn’t that exciting?”Ronan didn’t dignify that with a response.It was some sort of cruel luck that led him, Gansey, and Adam all to be chosen for sacrifices. Well, it wasn’t luck, he knew that. Whelk had something to do with this choice; he’d always hated the three of them.But that knowledge didn’t do him much good now, chains around his wrists, the sea churning around them, as they approached the Cretan shores.Across from them, the seven chosen maidens were mostly weeping. One of them had her head held high, looking absolutely furious. She was short and her hair was dark and messy. Ronan didn’t remember her name, but that didn’t really matter at this point.He’d resigned himself to being a sacrifice as soon as he’d been chosen. He’d known it would come to this at some point- death at the hands of a monster.Demigods didn’t get happy endings. Even the sons of Hypnos, god of sleep and dreams.Adam, on the other hand, was not resigned to his death.“Gansey,” he said, thoughtfully. “The fact that it’s a labyrinth suggests that there’s a solution. There must be a reason it was built as a maze, not simply a pit. There has to be a way out. If we keep our minds, we can solve it.”Gansey laughed, a little darkly.“But that’s the problem,” he said. “If we keep our minds. The maze drives you mad.”“Mmm,” Adam said.Ronan could tell he was going to try and solve it anyway.That was what made him angry. He didn’t mind being a sacrifice. He did mind that his two best friends were going to be sacrificed, too.And of all people, Adam. Who had so many ambitions to become one of the greatest philosophers in Athens. He didn’t deserve this.Something horrific eating up and destroying something beautiful. That was the world, wasn’t it. Greenmantle was not as ugly as Adam had been led to believe.He had a well-sculpted face, the kind of hair only kings had, looming tall over the entrance to the Labyrinth, and enunciated every word perfectly as he declared, “Another round of sacrifices, another year safe from the fury of the Minotaur.”Ronan glared up at him. There was no look in the world with that much hatred in it.That was the last thing Adam saw in the sunlight: Ronan’s hateful glare, outlined sharp in sun and shadow- before they were thrown into the darkness of the maze.A few members of the group dissolved into screams at the darkness before Gansey’s voice rang out over them.“Everyone,” he said loudly. “Calm down. Let’s try and stave off the madness as long as possible. If we stick together and try to think, we may yet find a way out of here.”“I’ll create some light,” Adam said in Gansey’s ear.“Good thinking,” Gansey said.On the ship, Adam had anticipated that there would be darkness in the Labyrinth. He’d found twigs on the ground and grabbed them quickly, stuffing them into his shirt. Now he pulled them out and worked rapidly to strike a fire. It wouldn’t last long, but it would last long enough to find other sources of kindling, or somewhere else where they could see.The room filled with light. It was evident that they were in a rather small room, with two doors leading down long hallways out of it. Adam could see everyone surrounding them- Gansey, Ronan, the four other male sacrifices, and the seven maidens, including Blue, the girl he knew was the daughter of the oracle.“All right,” Gansey said. “Let me start by saying that I’ve studied the work of Neeve extensively, and may know a bit about how this labyrinth works. I think it would be best if-”And then the floor began shaking. The group erupted into shrieks. Adam’s torch dropped out of his hands.“Fuck,” Adam hissed, trying to grab onto something.“This is to be expected!” Gansey called out. “Many of the rooms are designed to push you further into the Labyrinth! If we merely don’t panic-”“Shut the fuck up!” shouted Blue.The room tilted horribly onto its side, shifting the members vertically down the floor, catapulting them down one doorway or another.In one great tumble, they all slid down into the darkness. When they landed, it was in a room with a small light in the middle. And no obvious exits. Fantastic.Ronan looked up. He’d landed uncomfortably in a tangle of his own limbs. Surrounding him were Gansey, spread out on the floor; Adam, who looked more annoyed than anything; and the angry-looking girl from the ship. The others must have been shunted down into the other doorway.“Zeus almighty,” the girl snapped. “Maybe if we’d chosen a doorway before giving a speech, the maze wouldn’t have tried to choose a door for us.”Gansey sat up, smoothing out his rumpled clothes.“Yes,” he said. “I admit- choosing a door right away perhaps would have been the best decision-”“Listen, if we don’t keep moving forward, the maze moves us forward instead,” the girl said. “I’d rather choose where we go, than have the maze choose for us.”“Fascinating,” Gansey said, oblivious as always to anyone else’s bad mood. “Where did you learn that?”The girl narrowed her eyes at him, irritated.“My mother’s an oracle,” she said. “Back in Athens. She knew Neeve when they were children. You’re not the only expert just because you’re a man.”“Calm down, let’s not fight,” Gansey said. “Let’s start with introductions. I’m Gansey. What’s your name?”The girl stood up and glared down at him.“Blue,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind, we need to get going before the maze makes a choice for us again.”“Wait, hold on,” Adam said. He had gotten up and was now circling the room they’d landed in, looking at the carvings on the wall. “There’s got to be a logical way to decide how to get out of here.”In the dim light of the room, he looked every bit the scholar he wanted to become. He had been an assistant in the market, back in Athens, and Gansey had become friends with him. It was Gansey’s belief that the political leaders of the city needed to interact with every citizen. Ronan hadn’t really cared about that until he’d met Adam.Adam, whose mind worked mechanically, like any of Neeve’s creations.If anyone could find their way out of the Labyrinth, it would be him.“Adam,” Blue said. “I hate to say this-”“Wait,” Ronan said. “You two know each other?”“Yeah,” Blue said, fixing her glare on Ronan. “I also work in the market. I assume you wouldn’t know that, since you’re one of the upper class.”Ronan stood up, so that he was the taller one.“You’re an angry one, aren’t you?” he said.“I’ll say it again,” Gansey said. “Let’s not fight.”Blue sighed exasperatedly. “It doesn’t really matter whether we fight. We need to work on instinct, not logic. If we tap into-”“Won’t our instinct drive us mad?” Ronan asked. “That’s how the maze works, isn’t it?”“How about we listen to the one person who’s met Neeve?”“You’ve met Neeve?” Gansey said, turning to Blue with an incredulous look on his face.“Don’t look so starry-eyed. She’s a witch and she built this hellscape-”“Hey,” Adam said, quietly. The three of them turned to him.He was looking at a carving on the wall. Ronan looked closer at it- it looked like a bird. A phoenix. Underneath it was writing.“It’s a riddle,” Adam said. “I’ve figured it out. We haven’t got much time, if what Blue says is correct, so don’t ask me how I got the answer, but the way out of this room is-”He pointed to a circle in the center of the floor, where the light was standing.“Do you really trust the carving on the wall?” Gansey asked. “It could be a trick.”“Do we have another option?” Adam asked. “Come on. We all have to sit around the light. The pressure should set off a mechanism that propels us out of here.”Looking warily at each other, the four youths sat down in the center of the room.“How did you figure out that riddle?” Blue asked.“I’ve been studying logic,” Adam said. “It was a matter of logic. I thought that Neeve would have made a logical answer to the way out of the Labyrinth, and I was right.”Ronan hated the way he sounded when he said he was right. He was always right. Everything about him was a correct answer.“Nothing’s happening,” Gansey said, just before the floor twisted and in one fluid motion, shot them up into the air. Gansey and Blue let out involuntary yelps.A trapdoor over them opened just in time to pull them, as though by magnetic force, into a great stone hall flooded with light. Adam didn’t think the sensation he’d have in the Labyrinth would be pleased with himself, but as it turned out, he was.So far, they’d been sent through a series of strange rooms, each of which had a different nightmarish problem. In one of them, there had been a vat of poisonous snakes awaiting them; in another, the walls were slowly closing in. It shouldn’t have been enjoyable, but it was. Each room was a puzzle to solve, and he was solving it.Just like he’d thought he could.Now, he was staring down the Spyhnx whose riddle he’d just correctly solved. Behind him, Gansey and Blue looked impressed. Ronan didn’t look surprised.He liked that, oddly enough- the idea that it wasn’t a surprise, his skill with logic.“You may pass,” the Sphynx said, gazing down at Adam. “But I must warn you, as a fellow prisoner of the Labyrinth, that pride will be your downfall in here. You look far too comfortable, Adam Parrish. The maze has given you exactly what you expected.”Her lioness eyes burned bright yellow.“You are entering the realm of the unexpected.”She stepped out of their path and let them pass.“Well, that’s fucking vague,” Ronan grumbled, walking forward. The others followed.The path opened into another stone room. Blue let out a gasp when they entered it.“I can’t believe it,” she said. “This is- I’ve heard about this place.”Ronan looked around. Vines were crawling up every wall. Mirrors, shattered, were balanced against ruins around the room. In the center was a great statue of Hecate.“The witch’s lair,” Blue continued. “My mother told me about this- we have to be careful.”“Why?” Gansey asked.“Because it will confuse us. If we look into the mirrors, it’ll show us our greatest fears- or worse, transport us to our greatest fears.”“Got it,” Adam said. “Don’t look into the mirrors. All right. Let’s work out this room.”Blue let out a sigh.“No,” she said. “That’s- that’s not going to help. You heard what the Sphynx said. The maze is doing exactly what you expected- giving you a series of riddles. I think that was a warning.”“What do you mean?” Adam asked.He saw nothing wrong with a series of riddles.“I mean,” Blue said, “that maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. This is too easy. The maze is giving us what we want. It’s just luring us further and further in. We need to find the way out, not just keep solving these rooms.”She sounded desperate. Adam knew, when he thought about it, that she was right.Damn it. Of course he had led them astray with his vanity, his pride at being correct.“Fine,” Ronan said, sounding irritated. “Then what the hell do you suggest we do, oracle girl?”“First of all,” Blue said, fixing Ronan with a furious look, “I’m not an oracle, and you don’t need to refer to me as a girl, as if that is all that matters about me. Second of all, I suggest we think outside the box. What do we not want to do? Let’s not work within the maze’s rules. Let’s create our own.”This intrigued Ronan. His eyebrows raised, giving him that look he got when he would intentionally create chaos back in Athens. Adam hated that look, because he was intrigued and attracted by it.“Create our own rules,” he said. “So- for example- break the rule about not looking into the mirrors.”“What?” Blue said. “No, I definitely didn’t mean-”It was too late. Ronan had grabbed a shard of mirror off the ground. Before he could look into it, Blue slapped it out of his hands- but not before her eyes had caught the reflection.“Blue!” Gansey shouted, rushing forward.But nothing had happened. Blue looked back up at them, then back down at the mirror.“I don’t get it,” she said. “It’s- it’s harmless.”Ronan grinned.“Told you,” he said. “Break the rules.”When he said that, all the glass shards in the room swarmed together, as if by magic, and slammed into one giant mirror in front of them.It was clear within about five minutes that the mirrors were not actually harmless.Everything turned to black. “Where the fuck are we?”It was Adam. Praise every god in Olympus. It was Adam and he was safe.“I don’t know,” Ronan said. “Where are the others?”“They’re gone,” Adam said. “I don’t know where they are. This is- I think this is- a dungeon.”There was very faint light in the room. Ronan could see Adam curled up against the brick wall. He sounded defeated.“Fuck,” Ronan said. “Fuck, shit, damn it to Hades. I had to pick up that fucking mirror. That’s how we got here.”“It’s not your fault,” Adam muttered, in a tone that suggested that it very much was Ronan’s fault.“No, it is. Your riddle thing was working and then I had to go and shake it up-”“I don’t want to hear your guilt trip, OK?” Adam said. “And my ‘riddle thing’ wasn’t working, actually. Blue was right. It was only leading us further in. The maze is going to win, damn it, it is.”He had his arms around his knees, his head down. Ronan ached to put his arm around him and tell him that it was going to be OK, but any of that would have been a lie.Ronan had been fine with dying inside the Labyrinth. He wasn’t fine with this.“Come on, logic guy,” he said finally. “There’s got to be a way out of this.”“I can’t fucking think,” Adam snapped. “Or reason. Or anything. We haven’t eaten or drunk anything in hours. And we were knocked out when we were sent here- who knows how long it’s been? Soon we’ll lose all ability to reason.”“OK,” Ronan said. “Then… we’ll do what Blue said. Work from instinct.”“What instinct? I don’t have instinct. I’m just…”He sounded so tired, and for the first time since they’d entered the maze, Ronan appreciated that he’d been the one working for them the entire time.“I’m just a machine,” Adam said, finally.The room was quiet.Adam buried his head in his knees.“No, you’re not,” Ronan said quietly. “You’re a human being. You’re a thinker. You care so much about everything you do. Do you really think you’re just a machine?”“I don’t know,” Adam said. “All I’m worth is what I can do. Otherwise I’m just dirt. Not like you or Gansey, who have all that wealth behind you-”“Wealth?” Ronan said. “That’s not what makes a person worthy. And neither is it their achievements. What makes a person worthy is their choices. I always thought that. You’re the one who started making choices, the second we got in here. You’ve made the right choices all throughout your life.”“Don’t do this now,” Adam spat, sounding hateful.Are you fucking kidding me, Ronan thought. I bare my heart for him and he’s pissed off.“Don’t do what now, exactly?” he responded.“Pity me. Don’t give me the pity speech, not when we’re about to die in the fucking Labyrinth-”“You think this is pity?” Ronan said. “I pity you, so I’m telling you that you’re a better person than me or Gansey or any citizen in Athens or all of Greece? This isn’t pity, Adam. You know damn well I don’t lie. It’s just the truth.”Adam looked up. Ronan startled to see the bare light in the room reflect shining tears in his eyes.“I think the madness is starting to get to both of us,” he said, and cracked a small smile.Ronan would have fought a thousand Minotaurs to see that smile.He smiled back.“At least,” Adam said, “if we die, I know that you don’t really hate me like you’ve always been pretending.”“Yeah, well,” Ronan said. “I have to keep up my hateful reputation back in Athens, but I guess in here the truth can come out. I’m actually a kind and loving companion.”Adam laughed. Ronan felt like there was a warm, crackling flame ignited in him.The moment was broken by an overwhelming scratching sound. They both jumped.“It’s coming from the floor,” Adam said. “Look. Look.”As if an invisible hand was writing, carved letters appeared on the floor. They said, when they were done, tap the bottom right corner brick of that wall.Ronan’s first instinct was to get up and follow the instruction.And because he had plenty of experience with following instinct, and because they were desperate, he got up and tapped the bottom right corner brick of the wall they were leaning against.The wall crumbled. Light poured in. Adam scrambled to get up. Both of them covered their eyes in shock. When their eyes had adjusted to the light, they saw that they were in a circular chamber. In the center was a throne of what appeared to be bones.Sitting on the throne was a raven.It spoke with a man’s voice.“Another truth,” it said. “For another instruction.”“What?” Adam said instantly. “What does that mean?”“It means,” the raven said, “that you’ve entered the room of truths. Give me a truth and I’ll give you another instruction.”“And how do we know to trust you?” Ronan said.“How do you know to trust anything here?” the raven asked. “The maze runs on magic. Truth is a type of magic. You feed me truths, I help you find your way closer to the exit. Or perhaps to the Minotaur, who would be your exit in quite another way. But I can promise you will be closer to one exit or another, which is far preferable to starving to death in here, which is the only other option.”Ronan and Adam looked at each other. A silent decision passed between them.“Fine,” Adam said. “A truth for an instruction? I assume mere facts don’t count as truths.”“No, they do not,” the raven said. “Another word for truth is secret. Tell secrets. Secrets have magic.”Adam eyed the raven. He wasn’t sure whether or not to trust it, still, but it felt entirely different than everything else in the labyrinth.It felt, oddly, like the truth.“Fine,” he said. “Lynch, get ready to hear all my terrible secrets.”“Like I care,” Ronan said.He said it harshly, but Adam knew it was meant to be something of a comfort- he knew that Ronan wasn’t going to judge him, think badly of him, no matter what.It was odd, because they’d hated each other when they’d first met all those months ago. But some time in between competing for Gansey’s attention, and racing pointlessly in the fields outside the city, and Ronan annoying Adam at the carpenter’s stall in the market, and Adam trying to decipher what made such a strange creature as Ronan work…Some time in between all that, they had gotten to the point where Adam wouldn’t have wanted to be next to anyone else in a room where the truth could lead him to either death or freedom.He spoke first.“I was in love with Blue,” he said. “She was attracted to me, too. But then I lost my temper at her. I threw something in front of her because I was angry with her, and she told me she wasn’t willing to take a husband or lover who was violent.”A scroll of parchment unrolled from beneath the raven’s claws. On it was written, now, lift the trapdoor behind the raven’s perch and climb into it.Ronan moved to go there, but Adam stopped him.“We need more instructions,” he said.“More truths,” the raven demanded.Ronan let out an irritated breath and took his place next to Adam again.Adam’s shoulders tensed. The truth about Blue hadn’t been too bad, but his other secrets were not quite so simple.“Maybe you wanna tell a secret, Lynch?” he said.“Haven’t got any secrets,” Ronan said. “I’m an open book.”“Well, that’s a lie if I ever heard one.”“You’re trying to get out of telling your own secrets. I told you, Parrish. I don’t give a shit what your secrets are.”His voice was falsely cruel, again. His eyes gave away his kindness.Adam took a deep breath. Ronan knew the surface of this particular secret, but not the depth of it.He closed his eyes.“My father,” he said, “beat me. When I was seventeen, I left my parents’ home and moved in with the master carpenter as his apprentice. It was the only way out. But the truth is that the beatings were not the worst thing that happened to me in that home. It was being told…” He had to take another breath, steel himself. “It was being told that I was worthless. That I didn’t matter. That I was a regret. An embarrassment.”Adam didn’t realize how tightly his eyes were shut until he felt an incredibly gentle hand on his arm.He opened his eyes. Ronan was staring ahead, not saying anything, just being there.On the scroll were more instructions.“Another truth,” the raven said. “You’re almost all the way to the exit. Which exit, of course, I will not tell.”“Fine, I’ll tell something,” Ronan said. He didn’t sound happy about it.Adam looked over at him. His hand had left Adam’s arm, and now his arms were crossed over his chest.“I’m a demigod,” he said. “I’m the son of Hypnos.”This had been the last thing Adam had expected.Unbelievably, lines of instructions pooled out onto the parchment. He’d been telling the truth.“Why didn’t you-” Adam began.“I didn’t tell you,” Ronan said, “because it’s not my secret to tell. It’s my mother’s. She is the one who gave birth to the son of Hypnos. I didn’t want people to talk. And I also didn’t want people to think of me that way- just a dreamer, just something magical. I didn’t want to be reduced to my powers.”A rush of kinship came over Adam.It made sense. Ronan, made of mystery, made of secrets, made of magic. Already people treated him like a terrifying enigma, when all he wanted to be was human.“I understand,” Adam said. “You had every right to the secret.”“Almost at the exit,” the raven said. “One more truth should do it.”Ronan and Adam looked at each other, and there was an odd electricity under Adam’s skin. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about this before. He had. The way Ronan always looked at him, full of longing and admiration. Those little gifts that Ronan thought Adam wouldn’t know were from him.The feelings between them that were certainly not one-sided, but were also unspoken.Was this going to be the place where they spoke them?Adam opened his mouth to speak, and then Ronan said, “I can pull things out of my dreams.” Adam was staring down at the scroll of parchment while they walked down a dark and dirty corridor. He’d been sure to memorize the instructions a few times in case there wasn’t enough light to read by. Here, the only light was that at the end of the hall- enough for Ronan to tell that Adam was not looking at him.Ronan wasn’t going to be the first one to speak.“Listen,” Adam said, after a while. “I’m not mad at you, if that’s what you think.”“Why would you be mad?” Ronan said, emotionlessly.“Because you can pull things out of your dreams and maybe you could have gone to sleep and pulled out something to save our asses?”“It’s not that fucking easy, Parrish.”“I figured it wasn’t, if you hadn’t done it already. I told you, you have every right to your secrets.”“Then why do you sound pissed off at me?”Adam stopped short.“You know,” Adam said, “that I’m not… cruel. I’m not inhuman. I’m not prejudiced.”“Yeah. I know that.” What was he getting at?“I get why you didn’t tell Gansey, but did you think… did you think I would have cared?”“Gods,” Ronan said. “Do you think I didn’t tell you because I was worried what you would think? I wanted to tell you, Parrish.”He thought of all the times he’d come close to telling Adam that he could pull things out of his dreams. That need to open part of himself to him. And then holding himself back.“My father came to me when I was young,” he said finally. “He made me promise not to tell anyone. It was only my loyalty to him that made me keep it secret. Nothing else. I swear, Adam, if you think that I think you untrustworthy…”“OK,” Adam said. “I believe you. I think…”He let out a long sigh.“I think the maze is starting to get to me. Let’s just follow the instructions out of here. It’s just to the end of this corridor, turn right-”And then a horrible roar broke through the darkness. It was coming from their right.They both knew what it was. The Minotaur.“Son of a fuck,” Ronan hissed. “I knew that fucking raven was leading us to our deaths.”“Shit,” Adam said. “Where do we go now?”The roaring was overwhelming. The place was shaking.When Ronan’s name had been picked out of the lots, he’d thought he would be fine walking to his death.He was not fine walking to his death. And he was not fine walking Adam to his.“We turn left,” he said. “We choose to take more of the maze, the chance to go free, or at least to die on our own terms.”Adam’s voice was determined when he answered.“You’re right. Our choices are what make us. We choose where we go.”They walked, deeper into the labyrinth, together. A flower garden was not where Adam had expected to end up after turning in the opposite direction from the Minotaur.“I don’t trust this at all,” Ronan said. “A flower garden? The flowers are probably snakes in disguise.”“Good, Lynch, we’re among your kind,” Adam said. Ronan cursed him out. Adam grinned.Being hungry and exhausted and doomed was not, Adam imagined, usually any sort of enjoyable, but there was a strange echo of joy in him. He sat down tentatively on one of the marble benches in the garden.“Well, logic didn’t work,” Adam said. “Instinct didn’t work. Listening to a raven definitely didn’t work. What are our other options?”“Giving in to death, I suppose,” Ronan said, sitting down next to him.“Well, we clearly aren’t going to do that.”“No, we aren’t.”They sat there for a bit, too tired to think. In the garden, some sort of magic made it look like dusk. Ronan looked exhausted and Adam was near overwhelmed by that sensation he got around him, like power was radiating off of him.He thought for a moment that it was because of his being a demigod, but he knew it wasn’t that. It was just…“Maybe,” Ronan said, “I can try what you said. You know. Pulling something out of my dreams to help us.”“You said it wasn’t that easy.”“Yeah, well. Do we have another option?”“What would you even pull out?”“I don’t fucking know, Parrish. I’ll go into my dreams and try to dream of something that’s the opposite of this maze. Counteract it. It’s dream logic, I can’t fucking explain it.”“I suppose I understand that,” Adam said.Ronan let out a long breath. “All right. Well, it’ll take me a minute to get to sleep- I can do it pretty fast if I’m trying to dream, usually- you stand guard. Wake me up if you have to.”“No problem,” Adam said.He was glad to not have to move. The maze was exhausting him.Ronan spread out, legs hanging over the edge of the bench, and moved to lie down. His head hovered tentatively over Adam’s lap, like he wasn’t sure whether it would be OK to rest it there.Adam placed a hand on Ronan’s head and moved him gently to rest on his lap.Ronan visibly relaxed.Adam’s shoulders also relaxed.If they were going to die- at least- at least they would be here, together.Ronan was asleep quite quickly. Adam looked at him for a bit, breaths rising and falling rhythmically, face unwinding. Without his usual sneer, Ronan was even more beautiful. And Adam knew it was not half a god within him that made that; it was nothing more than who he was.He thought for a moment that when Ronan looked at him, sometimes, his eyes suggested that he was seeing the same thing in Adam.Adam’s mind wandered while Ronan slept. He wondered where Blue and Gansey were- if they were safe, if they had already been eaten. He hadn’t had a moment to think about them since they’d been separated.If they found a way out, they would have to find a way to save Blue and Gansey, too. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them behind.Right now, they had to focus on just finding a way at all.It had maybe been an hour, and Adam was beginning to droop, when a shimmering light appeared in the garden. He snapped up.“Who are you?” he said instinctively, at the sight of a beautiful woman. He didn’t dare to trust her, although something in him pulled at the edges of his trust, wanting him to trust her, to love her, to believe every word she said.The woman walked forward. She was, possibly, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.“I am the opposite of the Labyrinth,” she said. “The opposite of the Minotaur.”“Another riddle,” Adam said.“Yes. Another riddle. You love riddles, so here, I’ve given you one.”He looked up at her. Ronan was still sleeping peacefully. Adam had no idea how he could sleep through this overpowering radiance. There was almost music in the air, if he listened.“The opposite of the Labyrinth,” he said, “would be clarity, truth, maybe. The opposite of the Minotaur- the Minotaur is a beast, so perhaps a god.”“Close enough,” the woman said. “I am a god. I bring clarity.”“Who are you, then?” Adam said, impatient.“Think, Adam. What is the origin of this place?”“The origin of this place?”“What brought the Labyrinth to life?”Adam thought for a moment.“Fear,” he said. “And the opposite of fear is… bravery? No. Trust. No. Love.”He looked up at the woman, who was smiling. It was nearly blinding to look at.“You’re Aphrodite,” he said.“I am.”Adam bowed his head in reverence.“If I may ask,” Adam said, head still bowed, because it was difficult to look the goddess straight on, “what brings a goddess into the depths of the Labyrinth?”Aphrodite’s hands were clasped.“This place,” she said, “is made of hatred and destruction. It’s everything I despise. The gods are angry with Greenmantle and the throne of Crete for making sacrifices to a beast. I think you, Adam, are the one who will save the sacrifices this year, and slay the Minotaur.”“Me?” Adam said, a little incredulous.“Are you questioning my authority?”“Uh… no. Of course not.”He stared down at Ronan, still peaceful in his lap. The combined effect of his presence and the waves of love and beauty coming off of Aphrodite were possibly too much for him.“Is it all right,” he said, “if I ask… how exactly am I going to save everyone?”“That’s all right,” Aphrodite said. “You’re going to save everyone with a ball of string.”“A ball of string?”“Yes, a ball of string. Ronan is going to pull it from his dreams. You are going to discover how it works. It will lead you to the others, to the key to the Minotaur’s destruction, to the true exit.”“Oh,” Adam said. “Well. So then I just have to wait for Ronan to pull out the string.”“If that were the case,” Aphrodite said, “I wouldn’t have come down here to see you. There’s one piece missing.”“What is it?”Adam wasn’t looking at her, but he could tell from the increase of light that she had smiled.“The antithesis to this place of hatred,” she said, “cannot be made without love. He can’t pull the string out of his dreams unless…”“Unless we both tell the truth,” Adam said, near a whisper.Aphrodite nodded.He looked away from the both of them. The feeling was beginning to turn into nausea. It was too much.“Good luck,” Aphrodite said, before vanishing.Ronan woke up.“Adam?” he said quietly.His eyes blinked a few times. Adam stared down at him, not bothering to mask his affection this time.“Fuck,” Ronan muttered. “I didn’t pull anything out, did I?”“You’ll have to try again,” Adam said.Ronan glared at him. “Oh, that’s a real fucking help.”“Ronan,” Adam said, and his voice made it clear that he hadn’t drunk any water in hours and that he hadn’t slept or eaten and that he was tired, and desperate, and in love with the boy lying on top of him.Ronan’s eyes grew soft.“What is it?” he asked.“Don’t ask me how I know this,” Adam said. Their eyes were locked on each other’s. “But you can’t pull out what we need until we tell the truth.”“The truth?” Ronan asked.“The truth we didn’t say before. You know what I mean.”Ronan turned a little red.“Fucking fuck,” he said. “Do I have to be sitting like this?”“I’m not sure it matters how you sit.”Ronan’s face, still red, stretched into a grin. Adam was smiling down at him. Ronan sat up, his face incredibly close to Adam’s.“Fine,” he said. “Here’s the truth, asshole. I…” He bit his lip nervously. “I love you.”Adam’s smile grew wider.“I love you, too,” he said, and then, because it was too embarrassing to look Ronan in the eye any longer, he closed his eyes and leaned forward and kissed him.Adam was half-convinced that the flower garden was filled with Aphrodite’s light again, only it didn’t make him nauseous this time. It was exactly what he needed.“Adam,” Ronan said, in a low breath, when they broke apart. “If we don’t make it out of here-”“We will.”“Let me finish for once in your life, you fucking interrupting shit.”Adam smiled.“If we don’t make it out of here, I’m glad we’re here together, at least. And I want you to know that you deserve more than to die in the Labyrinth.”“So do you,” Adam said. “But we’re not gonna die here. You’re going to pull the key out of here from your dreams, I know you will.”He put a hand on Ronan’s waist and behind his head, and pushed him until he was lying on his back against the bench, Adam on top of him.“You think,” Ronan said, “that I’m going to go to sleep like this?”“Yeah,” Adam said. “You said you can go to sleep really fast when you need to dream.”“Not if someone is distracting me, you asshole.”Adam shook his head in exasperation. Then he leaned in and kissed Ronan, who made an effort to say against him, “This isn’t distracting?” before he gave in and kissed him back.A few minutes later, Adam noticed that Ronan had fallen asleep in the middle of kissing him, which might have been more insulting if he didn’t know that it was necessary to save both their lives.He looked down at Ronan beneath him. He was, again, almost overwhelmed with a rush of affection.“I love you,” he whispered again, quietly, with the surety and strength of truth-telling.A soft weight emerged underneath him, between their two bodies.Ronan’s eyes opened. He looked more peaceful than Adam had ever seen him.Adam sat up slowly and looked down. Lying on Ronan’s chest was a ball of string.