We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Exquisite Ruin by AdriAnne May, a darkly romantic reimagining of the minotaur myth publishing with Gallery Books on March 25th.
Sadaré wakes in a labyrinth, remembering nothing except that she is a powerful sorceress. Her only companion is a hostile immortal named Daesra—beautiful, dangerous, and demonic—who bound his divine soul for power and revenge.
Despite their animosity, the two have no choice but to work together to reach the center and defeat the monster who prevents their escape. But the longer they wander, the more deadly and alive the maze becomes—and the more Sadaré finds herself drawn to Daesra in ways she can’t explain.
As sorceress and demon develop a tenuous truce, the labyrinth gives Sadaré glimpses of their shared history of passion and pain that make her question everything she knows. Unlocking the secrets of her past may be the only way to survive and heal their entwined fates—but as she learns more about the betrayals that brought them to the labyrinth, Sadaré begins to fear that the monster at the center could be Daesra… or even herself.
The next break we reach in the corridor is a fork with only two branches to the left and right. This is what I’ve feared even as I knew it was coming: no clear way forward or down, only side to side. The paths appear to be identical. Even the roots and statues are equally congested over the wide cobblestones.
Daesra seems unconcerned. “Let’s go right.” His dominant side, I’ve observed, though I don’t know if he’s used that to make his decision as foolishly as I did. “Follow me.”
I follow without arguing—for now. And I don’t have to for long. My silence has a satisfied weight to it after we both round a bend and find ourselves facing a dead end.
I would gloat more audibly, except there are a pair of statues there that make me swallow any taunts, posed on a low platform, pressed up against the final wall. They’re in the throes of passion or violence or… something. The one standing behind looks like a mortal man, and there’s a woman with her back arched against him, in the style of my dance. Except, instead of being put off by it as Daesra was, the man has one of his arms wrapped tightly around her chest, making her breasts swell temptingly above her parted tunic, his other hand clenched around her throat. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted, her head tipped back onto his shoulder. Her own arm is raised to wrap behind his head, leaving herself completely exposed. His lips are bent so as to kiss the slope of her neck. Or maybe to bite it.
“Well, it’s clearly not this way,” Daesra says, abruptly turning on a hoof and marching back the way we came.
My eyes locked on the statues, it takes me more than a breath to follow him, lost in a reverie of a hard body lining mine as if carved to fit, strong arms holding me pinned, soft lips and sharp teeth caressing my throat, before I shake myself out of it. What repulsed him in the configuration has ensnared me… and I’m a fool for it. This maze is no place for such distractions. Unless, perhaps, I’m using such things to my own ends. My own advantage.
We return to the fork and take the left passage, after which I do manage to laugh at the daemon. Because we arrive at another dead end that’s empty of all but a low plinth. Pogli barks at nothing, and my snort echoes in the empty space.
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Exquisite Ruin
“I don’t see why you’re pleased,” Daesra says over folded arms as he glares at the blank stone wall. “Remember, you also don’t make it out of here if I don’t, and as of now we have no path forward.”
He’s caught me there. I limp ahead on my burning leg and hesitate as I note the exact same shape and placement of the plinth as at the end of the other passage, just minus the statues. I scrutinize the stone behind it—and spot the fine seam running from the ground up the towering wall, until it vanishes out of sight.
Pogli barks again, flapping his stubby wings. Perhaps not at nothing.
“It’s a door,” I say. “If a colossal one.”
Daesra scoffs. “Not even I could open a door that big. And I am rather strong.”
I ignore him, pointing at the plinth. “It’s only missing the statues. They must be the key.”
He looks surprised, perhaps because he didn’t notice the pieces of the puzzle first. I don’t know how my eyes picked out the details before his—and then I tell myself firmly to stop selling myself short, mortal though I am.
“So do we haul them over here and set them in position?” he says, his tone heavy with skepticism. “I don’t think you can manage to carry one, which leaves them both conveniently to me, I see.”
“No,” I say slowly. Not wanting to admit what I’m thinking.
He turns on me with rising impatience. “Then what?”
“There are two of them. And two of us.” I don’t meet his gaze, and yet I can sense his eyes on me, and then on the plinth, spotting the indentations on the surface where feet would rest, just as I did. “Perhaps we need to…” I can’t finish.
The inside of my chest feels like it’s constricted, and it has nothing to do with the tightness of my ropes.
“Very well,” Daesra says eventually, his voice flat. Almost resigned. “I don’t know why the maze would want to torture us like this, but it’s worth a try.” His usual smirk appears on his face. “I assume I get to play the part of the man, despite my hooves.”
“I suppose,” I say, feeling in somewhat of a daze as I make my way to the plinth behind him.
He steps onto the low platform, his hooves clacking sharply on the stone, and pivots to face me, leaning back against the wall, muscular arms at his sides. He beckons me with a flick of his fingers.
“Your turn,” he says.
I step up in front of him, much more hesitantly than he did. And then I can’t move; I can only stare at his broad chest. Frozen. In fear, yes, but there’s something else, too. I just don’t know what.
“I think you have to face away, if we’re to resemble the other pair,” he says, arching his brow.
Cursing myself under my breath, I turn my back to him. Waiting for his nails to pierce my flesh. Almost wanting them to, with a sort of sick anticipation.
“Sadaré,” he says with exaggerated patience. “Come here. I won’t bite.”
“Won’t you?” I breathe.
His large hands land on my shoulders, startling me, and he pulls me firmly back into his hard chest. “Not right now. You’re decidedly not to my taste.”
I don’t entirely believe him as we both stand there awkwardly for a moment, pressed against each other, his heat at my back.
“So I should…” I begin.
“Yes, and I’ll…” He pauses, waiting.
I close my eyes and try to recapture the sensuality I saw in the statue of the woman—or that I felt when I was happily spiting the daemon with my dance. I arch into him, tilting my neck into his shoulder and raising my hand to the back of his head, letting out a little breath to part my lips as my fingers wander into the waves of his hair. It’s surprisingly soft. My ropes bite deeper into my calf and tug at my ribs, but I hardly notice the discomfort next to the sensation of him.
This feels both strangely familiar and completely wrong. Like my foot in someone else’s shoe, even if the shoe fits.
He freezes, long enough for me to murmur, “Are you going to make me stand like this forever?”
His arm comes hard around my chest, just like the statue of the man holding the woman, hoisting me against him and eliciting a gasp from me in earnest. As if to choke off the sound, his other hand seizes my neck. He bends his mouth to my throat, where I can feel his hot breath on my skin—and my swallow against his palm. Prickling heat erupts across my scalp, traveling down my spine and sinking into my core. When his lips brush my neck, my knees go watery beneath me. My hand involuntarily tightens in his hair, and the daemon lets out a small groan, deep in his throat.
A loud crack and a grating rumble sound behind us. Daesra practically shoves me off him and spins away, leaping from the plinth. The both of us are breathing harder than we were, I note, before my own gaze wanders drunkenly to the crevice widening in the stone before us.
What was that? I can’t help but think, and I don’t just mean the strange magic behind the towering doorway—more of a narrow fissure—opening onto a new passageway that I can now glimpse. I rub my throat without thinking, and then hurry after the daemon as he slips into the new gap. I only vaguely make sure Pogli is following. I’m too dazed to even smile when one of Daesra’s horns clacks against the stone in his haste. I wonder if he doesn’t like tight spaces at his size… or if he’s eager to put distance between the two of us.
He certainly keeps me at arm’s length when we all emerge on the other side of the wall. We spill out into a passageway lined with trees and piled with roots much like the one we left, except this one almost immediately forks into a pair of descending stone staircases that level out into matching corridors. And the same distance down each, there are shimmering curtains of what looks like quicksilver, hanging vertically this time.
Mirrors. Two of them. The paths mirror each other as well— both forward and down with no dead end, with the potential reward of a new memory either way, which makes me lean toward them on my toes even as part of me wants to shy away from whatever they might reveal.
“I think we should split up,” Daesra says immediately.
I blink at him in alarm. “I was given to understand—quite clearly—that it was dangerous to do so.” I glance at the identical corridors again. Is this an exception to the rule… or a temptation to break it?
The daemon doesn’t look concerned. “Only if one of us takes a wrong way, yes. But if both ways are correct, we should investigate both.”
I can’t help but think he’s disturbed by our recent… proximity… and would prefer less of it. I don’t entirely blame him. And yet, if splitting up turns out to be dangerous, it’s likely to be worse for me than it will be for him, as he’s the immortal. Trepidation ripples through me. The thought of continuing without him, not having his strength at my back—if not literally—makes me feel frightfully vulnerable. Cold. Naked.
But there’s no way I can tell him that.
Excerpted from Exquisite Ruin, copyright © 2025 by AdriAnne May.
