Chapter 2 Perfect Compromise
Perfect Compromise
Phonos
“I need to see him! Now!”
I stood on the Stygian Docks, shaking with helpless anger. If this continued, I didn’t know what I’d do.
It had been almost two years. Two years since I’d lost the woman I’d thought was my mate. The loss was a wound that had scarred over but never truly healed, a constant ache in my soul. For months, I’d been adrift in a sea of cold emptiness.
Then, the Moirae had granted me an audience. I remembered the soaring hope as their words echoed in the Weavers’ Hall. Your true match. The soul meant to be entwined with yours. That was what they had promised me, and it had become my new purpose.
But that purpose was currently stalled, trapped on this Thanatos-forsaken pier, waiting for a ferryman who kept his own time.
Aion’s massive form moved to block my path again.
Of course it would be him. Crafted by Charon’s own hands, not by the Moirae, and imbued with all of his father’s infuriating obstinance.
A gleaming, impenetrable wall of placid logic, he was the bronze shadow of the Cerberus who had stolen Callista. “He will not be rushed, Phonos.”
“It is not a whim, Aion,” I spat at him. “My mate is out there, somewhere. The Moirae themselves have set me on this path, and I’m trapped here because your father cannot be bothered to perform his function.”
“His function is not so simple as you believe,” Aion shot back. “Passage is a transaction with the lake itself. It requires balance.”
I ground my teeth, the harsh sound grating in the oppressive quiet. Now I had Aion lecturing me about the nature of the Acheron. As if he’d been the one woven out of the Moirae’s hands, not me. “Then let him balance it and be done,” I snapped back.
Without another word, I finally shoved him aside and started down the long, empty pier. Aion fell into step behind me. “Your frustration will not—“
He stopped mid-sentence, his glowing gaze fixed on the far end of the pier. I followed his line of sight, the argument dissolving in my throat. We were not alone. There, in the unwavering light of the bronze braziers, Charon stood beside the circular obsidian altar.
The air around the altar still hummed with the residue of a powerful ritual.
He held four worn, ancient coins in one palm.
With the other, he produced a small, dark wooden box.
He dropped the coins inside, the soft clinks barely audible in the heavy silence.
As he secured the lid, the finality of that small click sent an involuntary shudder down my spine.
But there was someone more important on the pier.
A human woman sat on the edge of the black stone.
Her frame was so slight her rough tunic seemed to swallow her whole.
Her shoulders were slumped with weariness, and even from this distance, I could see the tremor in her hands.
A messy circlet of white asphodel flowers was woven into her crimson hair, a splash of life against the dark stone of the dock.
The moment my eyes landed on her, the world fractured.
It was an absolute shift in the foundation of my soul. An essence of wildflowers and rain flooded my senses, an impossible and perfect truth that burned away the Acheron’s mist. My universe narrowed to a single, fragile point. “It’s her,” I whispered, not even recognizing my own voice.
For a long, stunned moment, I couldn’t move. The connection to Callista had been a thread I could feel in my soul. This slammed into me like an iron chain, locking into place with a permanence as real as the Moirae’s weave. Soul bond recognition. The true kind that couldn’t be denied.
She had just paid Charon’s price. The memory trade to enter the bride market. The thought sent a wave of possessive relief through me. She was a death-touched bride of Asphodelia. Finally, I’d found her.
I began to move, my steps feeling both heavy and weightless.
As I drew near, my entire body vibrated with the knowledge of her closeness.
My feathers hissed and ached, the way they did whenever I flew too long.
Aion’s concerned questions dissolved into a distant, metallic buzz at the edge of my hearing. “Phonos? What is it?”
I ignored him. My entire focus was on her. She was my mate. I knew that as surely as I knew my own screech. But she was also human, and right now, she didn’t know me.
Taking a deep breath, I lowered my head in a bow. “Well met. I am Phonos, of House Keres. Welcome to Asphodelia.”
It was a formal greeting, too formal for what we were to each other. She didn’t seem to mind. A fragile whisper answered me, laced not with fear, but with a dawning awe. “You… I know your song.”
Song. The moment she spoke the word, I felt blessed. My screech was for killing, for shattering minds. It was not, and had never been, a song. But it was supposed to be.
A Keres’s mate saw the world in shades of wonder.
For such a woman, our screeches were never deadly.
It was one of the reasons I’d thought Callista would be my match.
She’d been immune to my family’s screeches.
And I’d truly thought she’d been the one who’d match me, who’d hear my soul song.
But she hadn’t, and I’d never felt more grateful for it.
My true mate offered me a quick smile. “I’m Daphne,” she said, and nothing I’d thought about Callista mattered anymore.
Daphne. What a beautiful, perfect name. Just like her.
I extended my hand toward her, more than ready to leave Charon and his son behind. “Come. You’re safe now.”
Charon stepped between the two of us, his towering figure more ominous than ever before. “She goes nowhere with you, Keres.”
I turned my full attention to him, to the ferryman who dared to stand between me and my fate. “Her business here is finished. She has paid your price.”
Charon didn’t deign to look at me. His gaze was fixed on the middle distance, as if he was addressing a law of nature rather than my fury. “You assume the only price paid on this dock is for the market.”
The cryptic statement sent a cold draft across my wings. I clenched my fists so hard my talons dug into my palms. “It is the only way a mortal can remain in Asphodelia.”
“Her desire was not to remain,” Charon corrected me. “She wished to be unburdened.”
As much as I wanted to argue with him, there was only one truth about Charon’s existence that I’d always known for a fact. He didn’t lie. That didn’t mean his words made sense. “Unburdened? What are you talking about? She is a bride. She is staying.”
“Her offering is relinquished.” Charon finally turned his eyes on me, the stern lines of his face sharper than ever before. “She didn’t come to Asphodelia to be your bride, Keres. She came for herself, and her purpose in this city is fulfilled. She is leaving.”
Aion took a half-step forward, the caution in his tone a familiar echo of a painful memory. “Father… this was not a simple memory trade, was it? The last time a ritual of this magnitude was performed…”
His unfinished question turned the final key in my mind.
All of a sudden, I could feel the tearing fierceness of the Cerberus’s claws in my wing.
My skin itched with phantom pain. It was the memory of the near-erasure my sisters and I had suffered during Theron’s rampage. But I wasn’t afraid for myself.
The Cerberus’s power had been unleashed by Charon’s reckless trade. And now, he had performed that same careless magic on Daphne. A cold fury settled in my gut, a knot of ice more dangerous than any hellfire. How dare he put her at risk, after his last abysmal failure?
“You took some kind of gift, didn’t you?” I snarled, barely managing to contain an angry screech. “Just as you attempted with the Cerberus.”
“I only took what she didn’t desire,” Charon shot back, completely dismissing my anger. “What she discarded, the lake accepted.”
The lake. Everything was always about the lake with Charon. I had no power to counter that. My only weapon was the one Daphne had provided.
“A trade requires a price,” I said between gritted teeth. “If you took such a gift from her, you owe her.”
“She asked for nothing in return,” Charon replied, his infuriating steadiness unmarred by my paltry attempts to shatter it. “She wishes only to leave.”
The iron chain of our tentative bond suddenly felt terrifyingly fragile. Soul bond recognition meant nothing if she left before I could claim her.
No. I wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to stand between me and my soul-bonded. I’d sooner renege on Thanatos than give her up.
I took a single, deliberate step forward and bared my teeth at Charon. “She is not leaving.”
We Keres rarely displayed such clear aggression toward our fellow woven, but I didn’t care about tradition right now. If anything, I wanted Charon to acknowledge that I was serious. And he did.
“The trade is concluded,” he said, his posture becoming rigid as he faced my threat. “That is the law.”
“I don’t care for your trade,” I growled, wanting nothing more than to tear his throat out with my teeth. “Right now, I don’t care much about the law, either.”
It was practically blasphemy to say such a thing, and a few hours ago, I’d have never dared. But I wasn’t Phonos of House Keres now. I was Phonos, Daphne’s soul-bonded. And I didn’t fear Charon, or any law in Asphodelia.
“Phonos, stop.” Aion quickly moved between me and his father, placing a hand on my chest. “This will solve nothing. Think of her, if not of the Moirae’s rules.”
I looked past him, my gaze locking onto Daphne. Aion was right. Daphne’s eyes were wide with fear, not of me, but of the violence about to erupt. The sight disarmed me in a way Charon never could.
I forced the aggression down my throat, folding my wings so harshly it hurt. Taking a step back, I turned my full attention to her.
In the end, she was the one that mattered. Not Charon’s stubbornness, not Aion’s logic, not even the law. Just her, and her choices.
“If Charon is right, you’re free to go, Daphne,” I told her. “We’d never keep you here against your will. But I beg you to reconsider. You have paid a great price to be here. Join our bride market. Decide for yourself if this is a place you could belong.”
She met my gaze, and in her eyes, I saw a flicker of something beyond her exhaustion.
It was a terrified curiosity, and maybe a hope that echoed the desire in my heart.
“I… I’m not sure what I want,” she whispered, the words so low and fragile I could barely hear them.
“I never thought a bride market was a possibility for me… Not with my gift. But now…”
Her hesitation was the only opening I needed. “Then stay,” I insisted. “At least for a time. There’s no harm in seeing what your sacrifice has earned you.”
A frustrated sigh escaped Charon’s lips, the first sign of emotion he had shown. “She cannot stay here. This is a place of passage.”
We were at a stalemate. This kind of arrangement simply wasn’t done.
Brides completed their trade and went directly to the market.
Sometimes, Iaso granted them a stay in a healing wing if they were injured, but that didn’t apply to Daphne’s situation.
She was tired after Charon’s ritual, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
Unexpectedly, Aion provided a solution. “She can stay with me. My quarters are within my father’s own. She will be safe there and have time to make her decision.”
The thought of her seeking safety from anyone but me was a sharp, physical agony. It felt like giving her away to another, renouncing my claim before I could even properly make it.
But Daphne didn’t reject it, nor did she recoil from the colossus. She actually seemed to be considering it, but looked at me before answering.
Aion was metal, not flesh. And if Daphne wanted to stay at all, it was clearly because of me.
This was the only solution that kept her here, within my reach. Taking a deep breath, I gave a single, begrudging nod. “A perfect compromise.”
Now if I could only make myself believe it.