10. Safe
Safe
Skaros & Ianthe
Death-touched brides were a treasure in Asphodelia. I’d always known this, even before I’d turned into a creature that was neither alive nor dead.
For me, the brides had been meat. The silver death-woman, every other human just like her—I’d only seen them as food. It had been my greatest shame, the source of my guilt. Of my sorrow.
Ianthe had changed that. She had cured me of my hunger. The moment I’d sensed her, my lust for flesh had all but disappeared.
But the healers didn’t know that. Standing in the doorway of the chamber, Eryx and Iaso stared in disbelief. They did not see the cure. They smelled the raw death energy pouring off my roots. They saw the feral vines suspending a naked, exhausted woman in the air, and they saw a monster.
I tasted the sudden, aggressive shift in Eryx’s energy. The air around the blind healer turned sharp and volatile. “This is… Asphodelia has never witnessed such a horror since the first Woven emerged from the Moirae’s hands.”
I couldn’t reason with them. And for all that they were healers, gorgons were dangerous monsters at heart.
I carefully settled Ianthe down. The moment her back touched the bedding, I withdrew the vines from inside her body. She scrambled backward against the pillows, pushing herself up onto her elbows before pulling her knees to her chest.
I couldn’t let them look at her. I couldn’t let their serpentine eyes rest on her bare skin while she was entirely vulnerable.
I surged upward, drawing on the death crystals embedded in the floor, in the walls. Using the overflowing death energy, I wove a dense, overlapping canopy over the mattress. I buried Ianthe in the dark, shielding her completely from the doorway.
Our bond remained in place, and I could still reach for her mind. “Stay beneath the leaves. They don’t understand what we have.”
“Skaros, let me talk to them!” she pleaded, her thoughts pushing frantically against mine. I could not bring myself to deny her, even though I knew it was no use.
When Ianthe parted my vines enough to look at the healers, I didn’t stop her. “Iaso, please!” Ianthe called out. “This isn’t what you think. He took the pain away!”
“Ianthe?” Iaso took a hesitant step forward, her voice thick with horror. “Eryx… This is horrible. It’s making her defend it.”
“Do not listen to her, sister,” Eryx said, taking a heavy step toward the bed. His boot scraped harshly against the stone. “The death energy of a starving shade clouds the mind. It weaves sweet illusions to keep the prey docile.”
“I’m not prey!” Ianthe sobbed. “He’s helping me! Why can’t you understand that?”
“I understand perfectly,” Eryx replied, entirely unmoved by her tears.
I pushed her back, shielding her behind the canopy once again. If the gorgon thought he could take her from me, he would soon learn otherwise.
“Get away from her, predator,” Eryx ordered. “I know what you are. I won’t allow you to touch this innocent woman again.”
I should have been the one to issue that threat. He had no right to touch Ianthe or be anywhere near her, yet he was the one making her cry. The manticore that lived inside me roared in anger. I wanted nothing more than to rip him apart.
Since I lacked claws, I lashed a thick vine like a whip, striking the basalt floor a hair’s breadth from Eryx’s boots. The stone cracked. Splinters skipped across the room and clattered against the walls.
Eryx didn’t flinch.
He stood his ground, radiating a terrible purpose. “I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me with no choice.”
He raised his hands, his fingers finding the knot of dark silk at the back of his head. What did he think that could accomplish? A gorgon’s gaze couldn’t harm anyone in Asphodelia. Just as Iaso was harmless to me, so was Eryx.
Eryx tore the blindfold off, and in an instant, I knew I’d been wrong.
The moment the gorgon’s gaze hit me, so did the pain. The death energy flowing through me stopped. The vibrant green of my vines drained away, bleeding into a lifeless gray.
I had accepted unweaving once before, in the courtyard outside my mother’s den. I’d embraced Medea’s power and had even been thankful for my destruction. But that had been a quiet surrender. This was violent and forced, unnatural.
I tried to fight it, to feed on the death crystals, to overpower him through Asphodelia’s own gift. But Eryx’s dark power won out, and the brittle vines cracked. One by one, the asphodels that had helped me sneak into the infirmary melted away.
Every inch of me disintegrated into streams of silver-blue light. “Skaros!” Ianthe screamed. The terror in her voice pierced through the crashing noise of my own destruction.
“Ianthe,” I whispered in her mind.
I fought the unmaking. I strained to keep the dome over her intact, desperate to shield her from the power tearing the room apart.
But the destruction raced backward. Within seconds, the canopy protecting Ianthe was nothing more than indistinct waves of death energy.
I felt the exact second my consciousness took the final blow. Her frantic thoughts vanished from my mind. Our bond wasn’t complete yet. It couldn’t withstand the gorgon’s brutal attack.
The sudden mental silence left me hollow, isolating me within the deafening roar of my unweaving.
I lost my grip on the room. I lost the scent of her skin. Starving once again, my unraveled sense of self scattered back into the cold dirt beneath the city.
“I’m so sorry, Ianthe. I didn’t realize… I should have sensed that creature sneak into the infirmary much sooner.”
Iaso hurried across the room, the bronze serpents in her hair trembling in agitation. “I promised I’d protect you, and I… I utterly failed.”
She reached the edge of the bed and threw a thick woolen blanket over me, pulling it tight across my shoulders to hide my bare skin. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Safe? When they’d just taken away the person most important to me?
A few minutes ago, I had been cradled in a living embrace. Skaros’s presence had been a steady weight in my mind, his devotion chasing away even the memory of the Thorn-Sickness.
Now, he was gone, leaving behind only faint wisps of death energy.
“She’s still in shock,” Eryx said. He had already closed his eyes, no doubt trying to protect me from his lethal gaze. But it was too late. He’d already harmed me more than he could imagine.
“Of course I’m in shock,” I shouted. “You killed him!”
Eryx shook his head. “It’s not possible to kill here in Asphodelia. I merely returned his threads to the earth. He won’t ever be able to touch you again.”
I took a deep breath. The sharp touch of the parasitic vines was gone, though the ghost of the sensation remained buried deep in my marrow.
But the Thorn-Sickness was not gone. I could feel the faint, dark roots of the disease lingering at the very edges of my awareness, waiting in the shadows of my blood.
It didn’t scare me, not as much as Skaros’s absence did. “You don’t understand anything. I already told you… He was helping me. Taking the pain away.”
“No, child,” Iaso said softly. “That was Eryx’s draught. It numbed the pain. You know that, don’t you? You remember.”
She was talking to me as if I was simple, as if I’d completely lost my mind. But they were the arrogant and foolish ones. “Of course I remember what the potion did. And I also know you both admitted you had no idea how to cure me.”
I half-expected Eryx to ignore me again. Instead, he listened, actually nodding. “You’re right. I have no real answer to your condition. But Ianthe, you need to understand… Neither did the shade.”
“Stop calling him a—”
“The death energy of a starving hunter is overwhelming.” Eryx cut me off. “The resulting surge of power floods the host’s body. It brings a temporary euphoria. The relief you feel is real, Ianthe, but it is merely a byproduct of a beast’s feeding frenzy.”
He did not believe me. He perceived only a woman whose senses had been overwhelmed by a rampaging monster.
“It wasn’t a frenzy,” I insisted, my voice trembling. “He asked for my permission. He was gentle.”
Eryx shook his head slowly. “I know exactly who that was, Ianthe. I knew him in life, when he still understood the boundaries of morality. He came for you because he felt the corrupted affliction of Thorn-Sickness. Eventually, the hunger would have driven him to consume your healthy flesh as well. I could not let him hollow you out.”
The horrifying truth clicked into place. Eryx knew the secret Medea had shared with me. Somehow, he had perverted her words, viewing my mate as nothing more than the ultimate predator.
“We cannot leave her in this room, Iaso,” Eryx continued, turning toward her. “The foundation here is compromised. The shade knows her scent, and its hunger is stoked. When it gathers its threads again, it will return for her.”
“I will take her to the upper wards,” Iaso offered, tightening her grip on the blanket draped across my shoulders.
“No,” Eryx decided. “The upper wards are still connected to the city’s soil. I will take her to the Temple.”
I shrank away from him, my bare feet hitting the cold floor. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I have to stay here.”
“The beast has tangled its roots into your thoughts,” Eryx murmured. “I will not leave you exposed to the dark.”
He reached out, his hand finding my arm with unerring accuracy. His grip was gentle but unyielding.
I tried to pull away. I wanted to fight them, to run into the corridor and search the gardens for any trace of his silver-blue threads. But the horror of Skaros’s unweaving left me too weak to move. My knees buckled, and I almost fell to the floor.
Iaso caught me before I could collapse. Together, she and Eryx guided me away from the bed.
I looked over my shoulder as they led me toward the open doorway.
The stone floor was empty. The shadows beneath the mattress held no warmth, and the air smelled only of spilled medicine.
And as I left Iaso’s infirmary, I knew I was being taken away from the only place in Asphodelia where I had ever truly felt safe.
My mate was gone, and I couldn’t do anything about it.