Chapter 8 Severed Threads
Severed Threads
Phonos & Daphne
The Stygian Docks were waiting for me.
The moment I landed, I could feel it. The momentum of my flight carried me forward a few steps before I forced myself to a halt, my wings snapping shut behind me.
But a presence was already fixated on me, alerted to my arrival.
Mist coiled around my ankles, the same way it had around the coin.
The stillness pressed on my eardrums, a dead, hungry thing that swallowed sound whole.
The Acheron was watching me, and with it, so was Charon.
The Ferryman stood at the edge of the pier, his back to me, staring out at the placid water of the lake. He was unnervingly still, his ancient ferry pole held loosely in one hand. He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. In this place, he was the mist, the stone, the water. He knew I’d answered his call.
A strange pressure settled behind my eyes.
My thoughts felt heavy, arriving a split-second after my intent, as if the air itself were fighting to keep me from focusing.
It was his magic, a subtle tide meant to erode my balance before the confrontation even began.
I narrowed my eyes, pushing through the resistance.
I stalked forward, my steps heavy on the pier. “You have a talent for insults, Ferryman. Sending your tokens into the heart of my home. Demanding Daphne’s presence. Explain yourself.”
For a long moment, he didn’t respond. The black water lapped softly against the stone. Then, his voice rolled out of the gloom. “I’ve been asking the lake for days if it was certain. About this. About her. It knew what she was. But I couldn’t stop it.”
I refused to be drawn into his maze of riddles. It was a power play, nothing more. “You’re the one who needs to stop. She is my mate. If you don’t—“
Charon finally turned. His eyes were blank, empty of any emotion I could name. “I’m not the real danger here. I just wish you could see that. But you are too blinded by your own greed for her.”
“Greed?” The accusation struck a nerve, raw and sharp. My desire for Daphne wasn’t greed. It was the only thing that had ever made me whole. For so long, I’d felt like an anomaly surrounded by my female family, but with Daphne by my side, I’d known I didn’t need to fear that any longer.
The drone in my skull grew louder, a wall of white noise rising to drown out my thoughts. He was doing this. He was using the connection he had forged on that altar to poison us. “I will not let you touch her mind again.”
A flicker of something, pity, perhaps, crossed his ageless features. “I am not touching anything.”
“Liar.” The screech began to build in my chest, a familiar fire only a Keres could ever understand. Rage, frustration, and protectiveness came together in a single, cohesive whole. The power welled up from my core, a vibrating pool of energy that made the bones in my chest ache.
This was the core of my Keres identity, the weapon that had humbled armies. For Daphne, it was a song, but against an opponent, it was an unstoppable force. I would shatter his focus. I would shatter this cursed pier. I would shatter him.
I threw my head back and unleashed it.
A torrent of weaponized sound ripped from my throat. Scattering the mist, it shot across the pier and slammed into the Ferryman.
And dissolved.
I felt the power leave me, a physical flood of energy. I saw it hit him. But then... Nothing happened. My attack simply dissipated, absorbed into his silence. My throat burned, raw and empty. I had given my all, and it hadn’t even made him flinch.
In hindsight, it made far too much sense. Charon was an existence that predated Asphodelia itself. A mere Keres death screech wouldn’t touch him. But understanding that didn’t make me feel any better about it.
Enraged by my own impotence, I lunged, my talons extended. All thought dissolved into a single, primal need. To make contact. To prove that he could bleed.
He didn’t move. He simply shifted the grip on his pole, bringing the ancient weapon up to intercept my strike. My talons scraped uselessly against the wood. A jarring shock shot up my arm, and the immovable reality of his strength mocked my efforts.
Gritting my teeth, I refused to give up. It felt like madness, but no matter how many times I failed, I couldn’t let his schemes go unpunished.
My feathers hardened and sharpened into a thousand black daggers.
I swept my wing forward, a move that had decapitated countless mortal creatures in the Korinos Wilds.
But Charon was no mortal. He brought the pole around again, a simple block that met the attack with insulting ease.
The dull, dead thud of my feathers striking the wood echoed in the oppressive quiet. No purchase. No damage.
“Are you trying to tear me apart like Theron did, Keres?” He pushed the pole forward, forcing me back a step. When he spoke the Cerberus’s name, the word landed like a blade, twisting in the old wound of my humiliation. “You don’t have his strength, and you are still not listening.”
A fresh wave of rage washed over me, hot and blinding. I roared, batting the pole aside. A single thought was going through my head. The Moirae had woven me into a living weapon, and so far all my tricks were useless against him. But if I could only pin him down, perhaps I had a chance.
I lunged at him, moving faster than I ever had in my life.
But even then, I didn’t hit him. He only dodged and allowed me to defeat myself.
I spun, bringing my other wing around in a back-handed sweep.
It seemed unlikely that I’d be able to hit him now, having failed the first time, but I couldn’t even think about that anymore.
My wing was halfway through its arc when a white-hot agony tore through my soul.
It felt like being ripped in two from the inside out.
The warmth in my chest, the constant presence that was Daphne, vanished.
One moment it was the center of my universe.
The next, there was only a bleeding, gaping wound of pure nothing.
All strength leached out from my limbs. The rage, the fear, the world itself dissolved into a grey, meaningless void. My attack faltered, my body going limp mid-motion.
My knees buckled. The hard obsidian of the pier rushed up to meet me, but I didn’t feel the impact. “Daphne,” I whispered, my screech long forgotten, unable to help me now.
But my mate wasn’t there, and neither was our bond. The last thing I registered was Charon’s looming figure, still hovering over me, and then everything went black.
Sometimes, even a Keres has to walk.
As I stumbled through Asphodelia’s streets, Phonos’s words drifted through my mind, withering away like old parchment. That day, he’d taken me on a walk to show me his city.
A gift and a promise, I’d thought. Now, that memory felt like a ruinous joke.
The shriek in my head was constant, a chorus of a million broken futures, all of them screaming his name.
At the center of the noise, one thread burned brighter than the rest, a thick, golden cord that pulsed with a sickening heat.
It pulled me toward the Weavers’ Hall and then veered, yanking me down a side street that bordered a dark canal. Skeletal barges floated on the black water. And there, kneeling on the obsidian walkway, was the source of all my pain, and the reason I’d survived.
Callista, whose magic had guided me here through the Blighted Lands.
Callista, whom Phonos had loved first.
She was alone, surrounded by a patch of glowing asphodels. Their pure, white light seemed to mock the ugly chaos churning in my gut. I was still wearing a flower crown in my hair, but just looking at them made me feel unclean.
The gratitude and the betrayal slammed into me at once, a warring tide that threatened to tear me apart. You saved me. You ruined me. Why? Why would the Weave be so cruel? Why would it use her light to lead me to him, if he had only ever wanted her?
She was trying to weave, her hands hovering in the air, pulling at the ambient death energy with a frustrated grace.
“This isn’t working,” she murmured to herself, her melodic words a fresh poison in my ears. “Why is this so hard?”
The cacophony in my mind answered with a furious, echoing howl. I took a step forward, my boot striking the stone with a crack that made her look up.
“That’s what I’ve asked myself my whole life,” I said. “Why does everything have to be so hard? Why can’t I just lead a simple life? Unburdened.”
Callista rose to her feet, her work now forgotten. “Daphne, what’s wrong? You look pale.”
“You would too, if you found out your bond was a lie.” The accusation left my lips, sharp and venomous. “That your mate loved another.”
Callista’s eyes widened, and she took a half-step back. “Loved? Daphne, what are you talking about? Phonos—“
“Don’t say his name.” The threads around my heart tightened, squeezing the air from my lungs. “You don’t have the right.”
Except she did, didn’t she? She’d known him first. She’d been his real choice, not me.
“Daphne, I don’t understand,” Callista hesitantly offered. “It’s true that your mate and I know each other. We’re friends. He helped save me, when I first came here, to Asphodelia. There’s nothing else between us.”
She was trying to respect my anger, and for that, I should have been grateful. But behind the mask of her caution, I could see the cascade of countless betrayals.
A memory crashed over me, as potent and vicious as my earlier vision.
The smell of blood and scorched earth. The phantom sound of a hammer striking bone.
The terrified, disembodied screams I’d heard in the ruins of Agrion.
They weren’t just echoes anymore. They were here, in this moment, clinging to the air around Callista.
And beneath it all, the high, keening shriek of a Keres.
“You’re not friends. House Keres claimed you through a battlefield his family made.”
Callista’s face went white. The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin as pale as the asphodels at her feet. “You’re right. They tried. But in the end… That’s not what happened. I didn’t really belong by his side.”
“Because of the Cerberus,” I sneered. “Yes, I already know that.”
Callista released a deep sigh. “Listen, Daphne, I understand why you might be confused. You have no reason to trust me, not really. But this isn’t about me, or about Theron, or House Keres.
The only two people who matter in your bond are you and Phonos.
And you told me yourself, when we first met, that he gave you a choice.
You felt at ease with him. Nothing’s changed, has it? ”
I blinked, trying to clear the fog in my head. Her words made sense. Thinking back, so had Megaera’s. If our bond had been a lie, the Great Loom would have never blessed it. If he’d wanted Callista and not me, surely I’d have noticed by now. Right?
The flicker of hope vanished as quickly as it appeared. Another memory snapped through me, impossibly crisper than before. My vision blurred, and suddenly, Theron was standing in front of me. “She’s mine,” the Cerberus growled.
“She’s mine,” I snarled back, except it was Phonos speaking.
It hurt. Far more than my vision of Callista, far more than what Alecto and Megaera had said. It hurt, because at that moment, I could truly feel him, feel what he’d felt. I couldn’t deny it any longer. I’d chosen him, but he’d chosen her.
I looked at her, at the woman who was his true north, and a sound came out of my throat. It was a dry, humorless laugh that felt like it was ripping me to pieces. “That’s right, Callista. Nothing’s changed. He only ever really loved you. As for me… The only thing I am is a cure for his loneliness.”
“Daphne, no!” Callista tried to protest, but I couldn’t bear another word.
The threads tangled around me, and I didn’t even bother fighting them any longer.
My own rage was a foreign thing, a puppet master pulling my limbs.
I raised my hand, not knowing what I intended to do.
To strike her? To grab her? It didn’t matter, as long as I could somehow tear this ugly truth from the Weave itself.
A threatening hiss echoed in my ears, freezing me in place. “Leave Callista alone, outsider!”
A flash of silver-green erupted from the depths of the canal. A spray of cold water hit my face as a serpentine body slammed onto the path between us, coiling into a defensive posture. Its scales shimmered with an inner light, and its reptilian head rose, poised to attack.
I stumbled back, the shock of the monster’s appearance a momentary crack in my rage.
And then I met its gaze.
For a single, silent heartbeat, there was no sound, no light, only a pair of ancient, reptilian eyes. They were a void, a power that saw beyond the screaming chaos clinging to my soul. They did not attack. They simply unmade.
A sound like a thousand harp strings snapping at once echoed in the marrow of my bones. The deafening noise in my mind cut to absolute silence. And I knew no more.