Chapter 6 The Soul Song
The Soul Song
Daphne
If there was anything I’d learned throughout all my years as a seer, it was that some things were as unavoidable as death itself. Fate was absolute, and there was nothing anyone could do to change it.
I didn’t have my gift anymore, but I didn’t need it. Now, more than ever, I knew I was meant to be with Phonos. And I’d never been happier to embrace my own fate. “Can we go home now?” I asked him, as he cradled me close.
Slowly, reluctantly, Phonos unfurled his wings. “Whatever you want, Daphne.”
As he released me from his embrace, the world rushed back in. The torchlight was harsh after the intimate dark. But the amphitheater had emptied, leaving only echoes of the frenzied bidders behind. Phix had disappeared, retiring to her den now that her duty was done.
The corner where Charon had stood emanated a damp chill, suitable, perhaps, after everything that had happened.
I still had no idea what to make of the Ferryman and his offer, and I couldn’t fathom what had possessed him to bid for me.
He made no secret of his disapproval of me.
He should have reveled in having me out of his home.
But maybe ancient beings were just like that, acting in ways regular humans like me couldn’t hope to understand. After all, one of them had stayed behind in the Agora and kept watching us in silence. And she was as much of a mystery to me as Charon was, if not more.
The old woman. Ever since the moment she’d first appeared, something about her had felt so familiar. I didn’t know why, but I could’ve sworn I’d seen her before.
She glided down from the dais, a river of shadow flowing over the stone steps. Phonos shifted at my side, but her focus was entirely on me. “Not so fast, children,” she said. “The Keres’s claim is not yet complete.”
She raised a hand, the skin dry and age-spotted, and gently touched my cheek.
A papery coolness, holding no warmth yet no malice, spread from the point of contact.
It was a touch that felt overwhelming, a connection to endings, to a power that had forgotten life.
And just like that, I remembered where I’d seen her before.
Awe and terror warred in my chest, constricting my throat until I could barely draw a breath. “You... You were in my vision.” She was the crone who’d been standing at the giant Loom, with two other women.
A flicker of something deep and knowing stirred in her eyes. “Yes,” she rasped. “I am Atropos, the Severer. And you are brave, child. But to be bound to a Thanatos-blessed, you must undergo one final step.”
Her gaze held me, a void that promised no escape. “The Thread Entwining.”
The moment she spoke the cryptic words, the world began to unravel. The hard edge of the obsidian stage beneath my feet softened. The torchlight wavered and bled into streaks of fire, and the Agora dissolved into a shimmering haze.
We fell and fell for what seemed like forever, and yet, our journey ended in the blink of an eye. One moment, I was clinging to Phonos. The next, I was somewhere else entirely. The scent of fate and inescapable knowledge assaulted my senses, too familiar and suffocating.
I cracked my eyes open and there it was. The Loom I’d seen in my vision. Towering over me, a terrifying structure of bone and petrified wood, it made me feel less like a person and more like an insect.
I’d expected many things when I’d come to Asphodelia. A second chance, if I was extraordinarily lucky. Death, if I wasn’t. But I hadn’t actually considered how I’d feel if I faced this horrific thing again.
An oversight, perhaps, but a part of me hadn’t quite believed it was a real object. Fate was strange like that. Half the time, the images my gift had shown me weren’t clear representations of reality. But in Asphodelia, everything was different.
It was so easy to see myself crumbling under the weight of the artifact’s power, to remember how I’d struggled against threads I couldn’t control. For one horrific second, I thought the same thing would happen now, that I’d lose my resolve and my mind, all over again.
But that part of my life was over. I wasn’t at anyone’s mercy now. I took a breath and the moment passed.
Two other women emerged from the shadow of the Loom. One younger, fair-skinned and smiling, the other stern, mature in appearance. The maiden and the matron. Just as I remembered them.
“Welcome, Daphne of Dodona,” the maiden greeted me. “I am Clotho, and this is my sister, Lachesis. You need not fear us or the Loom any longer.”
“It once showed you what you were not ready to see,” Lachesis continued. “Now, it will guide you on the path you were always meant to have.”
Any other day, their reassurances would have meant nothing. But today wasn’t just any day. Phonos stood by my side. He hadn’t let go of me for a single instant. I focused on the comforting familiarity of his touch. He was real. Solid. An anchor.
“I… I understand,” I offered.
The words came out shaky, more uncertain than I’d have liked. My skin still itched with apprehension, and my skull pounded in a remembered migraine. But I refused to let that stop me.
Phonos pulled me away from the Moirae and forced me to face him. His massive wings blocked my sight of the Loom. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. Remember, you—“
“Phonos.” I cut him off. “Don’t.”
The image of the Spire rose in my mind, the safety he had built with his own hands, the nest he’d created so we could have a future. He had no expectations of me. He’d truly be willing to wait an eternity for me. Maybe he already had. But I’d also waited, and I wasn’t willing to any longer.
“I already made my choice. Earlier. And at the market. I won’t let my fear take it from me. Just… don’t let go of me.”
“Never.”
Phonos knelt on the marble, his head bowed. I sank down beside him, the stone floor biting into my knees through the thin fabric of my gown.
Clotho shot me a look so gentle it was almost jarring. “The threads of a soul bond are woven at creation. Today, you will lock them into their final place. But you have to be brave a while longer.”
“The Loom awaits its catalyst,” Atropos said. “And only the Keres’s song can turn it.”
I didn’t recoil, but I came very close. They wanted us to perform the act here. Before them. Before it.
A flush of mortification washed through me, hot and sharp.
It wasn’t entirely surprising. Monsters often had their specific ways to claim their brides, and it stood to reason that here in Asphodelia, traditions would be particularly strange.
But it wasn’t stranger than everything I’d seen. Everything I’d experienced.
“This is our way,” Phonos explained. “To us, to the Keres, a death screech is a soul song. One only our mates can hear. One that will bind us forever.”
I nodded. It made perfect sense. After all, hadn’t he been music to me from the very beginning?
Phonos rose in a single, fluid motion. He offered his hand to me, his focus so absolute that the Moirae seemed to fade into the background.
As he led me toward the Loom, each step felt both terrifying and triumphant.
By the time we stopped, every fiber of my being was already vibrating with anticipation. “Ready?” he asked.
I looked past his shoulder at the colossal structure. Its bone-white form was a mute testament to my torment. It was also part of my past, not my future. “I was ready the moment I set foot in Asphodelia. Nothing will change that. Not even the Loom.”
Phonos traced the line of my jaw with his knuckles and lowered his lips toward mine. The kiss was slow, impossibly gentle. “That’s right. Let them watch. I’m the only one who can touch you. Who can feel you. And you’re the only one who can feel me.”
I reached for the back of my neck. That was exactly what I wanted. To feel him, to have him claim every part of me, no matter how broken and scarred. My fingers found the single, hidden clasp of my gown. With a soft click that echoed in the vast hall, I set myself free.
The gown slithered from my shoulders, pooling at my feet in a whisper of silk. Phonos’s breath hitched. He didn’t move. He just stared. His attention struck me like a tangible heat, tracing a path down my throat and over my collarbones.
My nipples beaded into tight, aching points. The amethyst in his eyes flared, the light inside them a raw, inner fire. That gaze consumed me, peeling back every layer until all that was left was the naked truth of my own need.
In a single motion, he closed the space between us.
His hands clamped onto my body, one firm against the small of my back, the other cradling my thighs.
He lifted me as if I were made of air, a surge of inhuman power coiling through his arms. But despite his monstrous strength, he held me with heart-wrenching care.
When he carried me the final few steps and laid me down, I only felt comfort.
There was no bed in the Weavers’ Hall. The Moirae wouldn’t need something so plebeian.
Our claiming would happen on solid marble.
But I barely flinched when my bare back touched the cool stone.
Warmth bloomed from where he touched me, spreading through my veins with such potency that the rest of the world vanished.
One of the first memories I had was of winter.
I’d been freezing on the streets of Dodona, an orphan child with no shelter and no hope.
And then, my gift had come to me for the first time, guiding me to a heated barn.
I hadn’t realized it at the time, but that pocket of life-saving heat had been a double-edged blade.
Not Phonos. Phonos was pure warmth, a true safe harbor in a world where everything that had kept me alive had cost me so much.