2. A Market of Meat #2
She stepped onto the obsidian, her energy already overwhelming. It tasted of death, sweetness, and something feverish underneath. The crowd tasted it too. The mood in the amphitheater sharpened instantly, hundreds of distinct presences leaning forward at once.
She stood still at the center of the stage. The asphodels I lived in couldn’t reach her anymore. But I could still feel her breathing, the slight shifts of her weight, the steady rhythm of her heart. She was frightened, or perhaps nervous. The two often tasted the same for someone like me.
“Bidding begins at five hundred death crystals,” the lion-woman announced.
“One thousand,” a bull-warrior called from the lower tiers. His energy was blunt and heavy, the kind that tasted of old iron.
“Three thousand,” a winged one shrieked from higher up.
As always, the words came out sharp and vicious, grating over me, practically begging me to attack the speaker.
But my petals were on the ground, and my roots were deep within the soil.
As much as I hated it, the winged ones were beyond my reach.
The lion-woman placed her paws on the rostrum as she acknowledged each bid. “Three thousand from House Keres. Do I hear more?”
“Five thousand crystals,” a dead-walker hissed.
The bids were climbing fast. Each one sent a ripple through the crowd.
Each ripple fed the next, the Agora’s ambient death energy building on itself like a snake eating its own tail.
I could taste the excitement on every creature in the stands.
The hunger, the desire, the competition.
All of them wanted her, and I hated them for it.
They couldn’t have her. They shouldn’t. They had no right. She belonged to me. She was mine. My mate.
The word erupted through me with a force that shook me to the core.
I had no body, no claws, no way to step onto that stage.
I was a tangle of roots and flowers trapped against the wrong side of a surface I couldn’t breach.
But the conviction burned within me, undaunted.
The thought of any of those creatures claiming her made something in me snarl with a newfound, violent ferocity.
A memory flared, sharp and vivid. The asphodels I lived in suddenly felt distant, replaced by muscle, skin, and a dense pelt. I hadn’t always lived in these roots. I’d had a tail, barbed and deadly, and it had curled viciously behind me as I ran.
The memory vanished as if it had never been, but in its wake, something was different.
The flash left a residue. Now, I knew the truth.
Once, I could have walked onto that stage and fought every creature in the amphitheater for the right to stand beside Ianthe.
The lion-woman called me Skaros, and for the first time, the name felt like it belonged to me.
Like Ianthe did. And yet, I could not reach her.
“Eight thousand crystals,” the bull-warrior bellowed.
“Twelve thousand,” the winged one—the Keres—countered. The Keres had always been arrogant and refused to yield. They certainly wouldn’t now.
The crowd’s excitement built and built. All the monsters in the stands were feeding the death energy with their desire. The combined surge pressed against my roots, hot and buzzing.
But I wasn’t the only one who felt it. On the stage, behind the lion-woman, Ianthe took a step back. The sweetness of her energy flickered. Underneath it, the feverish thing I’d sensed earlier stirred and pushed upward.
I knew what it was. I knew it in the way only something rooted and growing ever could.
The thing inside her was alive like I was, a network of roots and stems pushing through soil that didn’t belong to it.
Plant matter, tangled beneath her skin, feeding on what fed her.
And it was finally waking from its dormancy.
The dead-walker shot to his feet, trembling with excitement. “Fifteen thousand death crystals! And I’ll outbid anyone who pushes further! Even you, Alecto!”
In the upper tier, the Keres sniffed in disdain. But I barely heard her. Ianthe was stumbling. Her weight shifted unnaturally, and her legs were growing weaker. The sweetness in her energy was disappearing, swallowed by the feverish growth beneath.
The lion-woman’s scent grew acrid with sudden stress, and she pivoted toward the stage.
I pushed. Every root I had in the amphitheater strained toward the stage.
The asphodels at the threshold reached across the obsidian, stems stretching, growing faster than I had ever forced them.
Growing through stone was slow, agonizing work, like forcing myself through a crack that was never meant to open.
Each inch cost me something I couldn’t name.
“Eighteen thou—” someone started to say.
Ianthe screamed.
The thing inside her erupted. Dark, jagged thorns burst from her skin, splitting her arms and shoulders, climbing up her neck. I could taste them through the stone, bitter, sharp, and alive. The death energy permeating the air soured as everyone recoiled in confusion and fear.
Ianthe hit the obsidian. Her heartbeat stuttered once, twice, and went faint.
The lion-woman was already moving, her heavy paws striking the stage as she closed the distance to Ianthe’s side. The crowd was a chaos of shifting energy, monsters rising from their seats.
My asphodels were still crawling across the stage. Halfway there. Ianthe was at the center, bleeding, the thorns still sprouting from her skin. Just a little farther, just a little faster…
The lion-woman—Phix, the Sphinx, my mother—took my mate in her arms. And then they were gone, and I was left behind.
Everyone thought I was Skaros no longer, and that I had no right to claim a death-touched bride. I’d just have to prove them wrong.