Chapter 5 An Impossible Bid
An Impossible Bid
Phonos
The last time I’d stood in this chasm for a Bride Market, I’d been a different creature.
A desperate, hopeful fool, bidding his entire fortune on a woman never meant for him.
The memory was a scar, and returning to the Agora of Echoes for this ritual felt like pressing a thumb against the tender tissue.
The air was the same, thick with the scent of a hundred different monstrous appetites. But the frantic hope in my gut had been replaced by a possessive certainty.
There was no turning back now. Daphne was mine, and it was a fact as real as the death energy burning through my veins.
Below, Phix stood at her rostrum of bone. As the final torches were lit, she raised a single paw. The guttural murmur of the crowd died, and in the sudden absence of sound, I could almost hear the resonance of Theron’s growl and of my own past humiliation.
“Creatures of Asphodelia!” she roared. “Blessed of Thanatos! The hour is upon us! Tonight, we offer not a simple death-touched, but a soul of unique quality. Daphne of Dodona. One who walked the mortal coil as a Seer, and who has willingly shed her gift to join our weave! A choice made of her own free will!”
At her signal, Daphne walked onto the obsidian stage. She stood tall. Unbroken. My mate. And the memory of Callista vanished, burned away by the reality of my true soul-bonded.
“Behold!” Phix raised her paws, as if her awe of Daphne rivaled mine. “A vessel of rare power, a spirit of immense worth! Let the test of that worth commence! What bid will you—?”
I didn’t let her finish. There was no point. I’d restrained myself from grand gestures until now, but there was only so much even my composure could contain.
“Twenty thousand crystals, from the Keres Spire.”
The quiet following my offer suffocated the assembly, pinning every monster in the Agora to their seats.
It was the crushing pressure of a challenge met and answered before it was even issued.
This, I thought with a grim satisfaction, was how it should have been the first time.
But I had no regrets, not when it had all led to this moment.
I watched Phix on her rostrum, waiting for her to formalize my claim. She recovered, announcing the bid with a note of finality that was music to my ears. “A bid of twenty thousand has been made. Do I hear—?”
A sharp offer burst from one of the basilisks in the lower tiers of the Agora. “Twenty-one thousand!”
A disbelieving gasp swept through the crowd, and then the dam of my authority broke.
An eruption of noise tore through the chamber.
A harpy’s high-pitched shriek of “Twenty-five!” was immediately drowned out by a dozen other monstrous shouts, each bid higher than the last. They were on their feet, a writhing mass of scales and fur and horns, staring at Daphne with a feverish, unnatural hunger.
It was just like at the cyclops’s produce stall all over again, except so much worse. This time, Daphne was the supposed merchandise.
A rasping hiss cut through the din, a noise of ancient greed that I knew well. “Thirty thousand! I’ll give thirty thousand!”
Phix’s composure cracked, her natural calm shattering into genuine shock. “The bid is thirty thousand from the gorgon!”
This was madness. Or was it, really? Maybe it was simple reality. They could all feel it. Her power. It radiated from her, a siren’s call to their base instincts, overriding all logic, all fear. And they wanted her, in a way that had nothing to do with soul recognition.
“Thirty-five. And I will know the name of the next to speak.”
I didn’t shout. I let the promise of violence drop into the air, a current of pure, possessive fury that no one could have missed. And it worked beautifully. Even with Daphne’s allure dancing in front of their eyes, the monsters of Asphodelia still hesitated to challenge my weave-line.
My threat created a vacuum where the frenzied bidding had been. I held the entire Agora captive in the palm of my hand. The moment was mine.
Then, a presence uncoiled from the main entrance tunnel, and the atmosphere in the chamber grew heavy, thick, and cold.
“You already know my name, Keres.”
Charon. Impossibly, he’d come to the Bride Market himself. He never had in the past, as if deeming this part of the process beneath him. Yet tonight, he’d changed his mind.
An invisible force slammed me back into my seat.
Crushing pressure locked my limbs to the stone, squeezing the air from my lungs.
My muscles screamed in silent protest, every instinct roaring at me to fight, to fly, to act.
But I was a prisoner in my own body, a statue of impotent fury.
I tried to shout her name, a denial, a challenge, but the magic had constricted my throat.
The crowd seemed to shrink away as the Ferryman glided toward the stage. His every movement radiated an authority that made a mockery of my own. He did not look at me. He did not look at the cowering creatures in the tiers. His ancient focus was fixed only on Daphne.
He spoke softly, yet his words filled the Agora with an impossible echo of ages. “I offer a memory of the Old World.”
The Old World. The ancient land the Moirae and Charon alone remembered, where they’d lived before they’d been dragged here by the Shift. It was a piece of history, a fragment of Charon’s own past. It was a price I could never hope to match.
I could only watch, trapped and raging on the inside as Daphne slipped further and further away from my grasp. I could do nothing as Phix bowed her head in complete and utter submission. “There can be no counter. The bid is absolute. The auction is—“
The torches in the Agora faltered. The death energy in the air screamed in recognition. On the high dais, the darkness writhed and coalesced with purpose. Finally, it wove itself into a wizened, ethereal form.
Atropos.
The moment she fully manifested, the power that held me captive vanished. I let out a relieved, desperate gasp. I’d never thought I’d appreciate a visit from the Severer as much as I did now, but the Moirae lived to surprise.
“It’s unlike you to make rash decisions, Auctioneer,” Atropos said, each syllable of her admonition a final, unarguable decree. “You and the Ferryman both forget the first rule of all bride markets, the one upon which all others are built.”
Her ancient gaze traveled over the Agora, until at last, it settled on the stage. On Daphne. “A soul is not a treasure to be won. It is a will to be answered. The final choice belongs to the bride.”
The judgment scraped through the chamber, a rasping friction that felt like dust and bone against my skin. But it was also everything I’d been hoping for.
“Daphne of Dodona,” Atropos continued. “Speak your truth.”
Daphne stood tall on the obsidian stage, a lone figure of impossible grace in the face of it all.
She didn’t look at Atropos. Instead, she glanced at Charon, who waited with the patience of the Acheron itself.
She gave a deep nod of her head, a gesture of respectful acknowledgment for the weight of his bid.
Then, she turned away from him, her eyes unerringly finding me in the crowd. When she spoke, her certainty easily cut through the ancient power in the chamber. “I am honored by the Ferryman’s offer. But a memory is the past. What I desire is the future.”
In that instant, the rest of the world and every creature in it dissolved into nothing. There was only her. “My choice is Phonos of House Keres.”
The words didn’t surprise me. They only confirmed what I’d already known, what Daphne herself had already made clear in the Spire.
And yet, a wave of pure, triumphant relief erupted through me.
It was just as exhilarating as the time I’d first gone flying, or the first breath I’d taken as a newly woven.
She’d chosen me. She’d spoken the words, out loud, in front of one of the Moirae, no less. It was almost more than I could bear.
Before the first murmur could ripple through the stunned Agora, Atropos’s dry pronouncement resonated from the dais. “The will has been answered. The thread is bound.”
“The Bride Market is concluded!” Phix finished from her rostrum, raising her paws in triumph. “The prize is claimed!”
Charon bowed his head in acceptance and turned without another word. He glided back into the entrance tunnel and was gone.
The moment the auction was officially over, the restraint inside me shattered. I didn’t wait for the crowd to disperse. I didn’t wait for Phix to dismiss them. I launched myself from the upper tiers, a silent predator finally unleashed.
My entire world had narrowed to the sight of her standing alone on that obsidian stage. I wouldn’t have her wait for even a second longer.
I landed without a sound, my boots absorbing the impact as I came down in a low crouch directly in front of her.
My massive black wings swept forward, unfurling to their full, magnificent span.
They wrapped around us, the tips brushing against each other to form a perfect enclosure.
The roar of the Agora was instantly muffled, the flickering torchlight extinguished.
It was a private world of my own making, one in which no one else but us mattered.
Her scent filled the small space, a clean fragrance that was the only air I ever wanted to breathe again.
I leaned in, gently resting my forehead against hers.
The asphodels in her hair tickled my skin.
The claim rumbled from my chest, a resonance of undiluted possession. “You are mine.”
Daphne pressed her hand flat against my chest, right over the frantic hammering of my heart. “I always was. There was never anyone else.”
I leaned in closer, breathing a possessive vow against her skin. “There never will be.”
She tilted her head up, her expression one of absolute certainty. “I know.”