Page 131 of The Amber Sunburst

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure I have it right. I can see the image in my brain.”

“No, I’m not doubting that,” Alexander says. “But perfect recall is really rare and it’s crazy that both of you guys—” he points to Ophelia and Kallias “—can do it.”

“What a coinky-dink,” Ophelia jokes, clearly confused by the aside, but willing to play along enough to give Kallias a high five before getting right back to her drawing.

Once she’s done and Arete has returned, Ophelia makes Alexander stick out his finger like a pointer and starts guiding it across the board, listing different attributes of the labyrinth.

“And finally, right here,” she says, dragging Alexander’s arm to the right side of the board, “is one of the emergency exits. Here,” she drags him to the left, “is the other. Thank you, Alexander. You may sit down.”

“You are most welcome, ma’am.”

“Ooo, I like that,” Ophelia says. “Now, for the escape protocol. It’s basically what Bios described. In this Trial specifically, you’ll have to find the stone trigger that opens the door, while also communicating to each other and me when you’ve made it so we can all set off the exit’s opening at the same time.”

“And how do we do that?” Eudoxia crosses her arms.

“That’s going to be our mission for this week, I guess. It’s the only problem left, minus the cameras, right?” Ophelia says, sitting back down in her chair.

Everyone nods—until Arete’s little voice comes up from the floor, where she’s sifting through books. “What about the Minotaur?”

“What about him?” Ophelia asks.

“Well, he’ll be a problem too. He could be a real minotaur, I guess, but it’s probably… what’s the word for it?”

“Metaphorical,” Kallias supplies. “She’s right. That’s a hurdle left unaccounted for. We won’t know for sure until we get in there.”

“Monsters can take many forms, I suppose,” Ophelia says, her eyes distant, probably from stress.

The plan only works if it’s airtight, which means accounting for everything. But it’s impossible to account for everything. So how are they supposed to do this?

“Let’s focus on what we do know,” he says, because even if he isn’t feeling it, he’s meant to be the positive one. He can’t drag everyone else down his hopeless spiral. “What’s our plan for navigating the labyrinth?”

Zeno leaves Eudoxia’s room very late at night—so late, in fact, that it might be considered morning. But Zeno wasn’t going to stop playing unless Ophelia, Eudoxia, or Arete asked him to because as much as they like to hear the concerts, Zeno loves to give them.

He doesn’t have to be the ‘happy one’ or the ‘confident one’ or the ‘nice one’ when he’s behind his violin. He just needs to get lost in the music. It’s not very difficult for him—all he has to do is close his eyes and suddenly some sort of magic settles over him and steals him away. Even when he’s just picked up a new song and he can’t get the notes quite right, he’s still lost. Sometimes he’d prefer not to be found. But that’s beside the point.

These days he will take any excuse to play, mostly because there have been fewer and fewer of those as the weeks have gone by.

So tonight he went on for hours, song after song until he nearly fell asleep with the violin under his chin and Eudoxia forced him out of her room ‘for his own sake.’

“Goodnight, Zeno,” he hears very faintly as he closes the door behind him.

“Goodnight,” he responds, even though he knows they can’t hear him. And then, “Ah, Forms,” because he forgot his violin case in there.

Whatever, he can get it tomorrow. He doesn’t want to disrupt the girls’ nighttime routine, and it’s almost three in the morning anyways; no one’s around to see him with the violin.

“Zeno?”

Oh, wow, he spoke too soon there, didn’t he? It’s actually really hilarious for two sleep-deprived seconds.

And then he thinks about it. He’s holding his violin in his hand—actual contraband. And someone just said his name, and if they said his name then they see him, and if they see him then they see his violin.

He’s not sure what to call the panic he’s feeling. Just that it’s eating him from his stomach to his bones and this is so, so bad.

He’s never this lax, he never carries it out without hiding it, he’s just so tired from the late nights and Eudoxia and everything. The one time he does…

“Zeno, turn around.”

He turns.