12. The Bride’s Choice
The Bride’s Choice
Ianthe & Eryx
In Thanatos’s Temple, it was utterly quiet.
It wasn’t the silence of a sleeping village or the hushed stillness of Iaso’s infirmary before dawn. This was a weighty form of nothing. It pressed against my ears, swallowing the faint rustle of my dress and the scrape of my bare feet against the stone.
It wasn’t quite as potent as what I’d felt when I passed through the wards. But it was close. And what made it all the more unbearable was the way the temple looked now.
A damp mist drifted around my ankles, carrying the scent of turned earth and dried leaves. Beneath the mist, the ground was a seamless expanse of dark basalt. Thick roots crisscrossed the stone, forming a tangled web that stretched into the shadows.
It was a flawless replica of the place where Skaros had held me. The Temple had pulled the image straight from my mind, building the sanctuary my heart had asked for.
But it was only an image.
I sank to my knees. The stone was biting cold. I reached out, pressing my palms against the thickest root near my thigh. Once, it had held the steady, rumbling pulse of death energy that mirrored a heartbeat.
But the wood under my hands was dead. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t reach Skaros. Not here.
The bark was rough and dry, flaking away beneath my fingernails like old paint. It carried no vibration. I pressed my cheek against the curve of the root, straining to hear the low hiss of his voice.
There was nothing.
I pulled back, wrapping my arms tightly around my chest. The invisible walls of Thanatos’s Temple severed this space from the dirt of the city. Skaros was out there somewhere, scattered and starving, and I was locked in a prison built from my own memories. We were separated by an unbreakable cage.
A jolt of pain shot through my body. My veins tingled, and a sharp, twisting ache seized my chest, threatening to steal my breath.
I knew that feeling. I’d lived with it for years before the asphodels ever found me. Without Skaros’s touch, and with Eryx’s last draught fading from my blood, the Thorn-Sickness was waking up.
I dropped against the roots, leaning forward and resting my head in my hands. The sickness twisted deeper, tightening a knot around my heart. I gritted my teeth, refusing to scream in the empty room.
As I shifted my weight, my elbow brushed against something solid resting on the ground beside me.
I opened my eyes.
A smooth wooden cylinder lay on the stone. It was a scroll, tied with a frayed, dark leather cord.
It had not been there a moment ago. I stared at it, temporarily forgetting the imminent threat of the Thorn-Sickness.
The Temple shaped itself to the soul seeking refuge, manifesting the things that brought comfort.
It had built the garden, and now, sensing my rising panic, it had pulled the last physical object that had given me clarity in the waking world.
The gift Aion had brought me.
My fingers trembled as I reached out and pulled the leather cord free. The heavy parchment unrolled across my lap. The ink was dark, written in a steady hand.
Aion had told me these were the writings of his father, Charon. They were created to teach a newly awakened bronze colossus what it meant to exist as a person, rather than a machine.
I traced the first line of ink, forcing myself to focus on the words instead of the twisting vines under my skin.
Charon had written about the nature of the Woven. He stated that a construct, a tool, was merely a vessel shaped to serve a purpose. A vessel accepted whatever was poured into it. It remained exactly where it was placed. It had no voice, no desire, and no right to refuse the hands that wielded it.
But a soul was different.
A soul, Charon argued, is defined by the terrible burden of choice.
To possess a soul is to hold the right to walk your own path.
It is the right to choose your own companions, to face your own risks, and to make your own mistakes, even if those choices lead straight to ruin.
To deny someone their choice under the guise of protecting them is to treat them as a vessel.
It strips away the very essence that makes them whole, reducing a living spirit back into an empty cup.
I read the passage twice. The air in my lungs burned, and the thorns dragged mercilessly against my ribs. But my mind felt sharper than it had in days.
Eryx wasn’t protecting me. He was turning me into a vessel. He had decided my choices were invalid because they didn’t align with his medical texts. So he had simply placed me on a shelf where I couldn’t hurt myself.
The mist near the far edge of the garden began to swirl.
I rolled the scroll up, holding it loosely in my hand. I didn’t stand up. I didn’t have the strength to fight him physically. Even making the attempt would only prove his theory that I was wild and irrational. I remained on the ground and waited.
Eryx emerged from the shadows, the dark blindfold covering his eyes. His obsidian serpents shifted in lazy, troubled arcs. In his right hand, he carried a small flask.
“The sickness is awake,” he said, his voice laced with genuine sorrow. “I can hear the distress in your pulse, Ianthe. The fever is rising.”
He stepped closer, holding out the flask. “Drink this. It will mute the pain while I continue looking for a solution.”
I knew exactly what the icy draught would do. The cold would rush into my blood, freezing the parasite. It would also lock Skaros out, ensuring he couldn’t reach me even if he managed to tear the city apart trying.
But refusing the medicine wouldn’t break the wards of this cage. It would only leave me screaming on the floor while Eryx watched, convinced I was breaking down. And Skaros wouldn’t want me to be in pain.
I reached out and took the flask from his hand.
Eryx let out a weary sigh of relief. He believed I had surrendered. He believed the shade’s influence was finally fading from my mind, leaving behind a compliant patient.
I pulled the cork free, raised the glass to my lips, and swallowed the draught in one quick gulp.
The cold hit me instantly. It was an unnatural chill that plunged straight into my chest, coating my veins in frost. The agonizing pressure of the Thorn-Sickness vanished, locked away behind a wall of ice.
My limbs grew heavy, dragged down by the sheer weight of the numbness.
I slumped back against the stone bench, my fingers going slack.
But I kept my eyes open. I stared directly at the dark silk covering Eryx’s eyes.
“Aion gave me a gift a few days ago,” I said. Every word was a struggle, but I forced myself to speak anyway. “He brought me a scroll written by his father. It explained the difference between a tool and a person.”
Eryx tilted his head, his brow furrowing above the blindfold. “Charon’s teachings are sacred. Why speak of them now?”
“Because you are treating me like a tool, Eryx.” I lifted my hand, letting the heavy parchment of the scroll rest on my lap. “You look at me, and you see a broken vessel that needs to be fixed. You believe you know what is best for my body, and you are disregarding my mind.”
Eryx straightened his back. The garden mists swirled harmlessly around his feet. “I am protecting you from a hunter. Skaros’s shade took advantage of your illness.”
“You brought me to this Temple against my will,” I countered. “You isolated me from the mate I chose. You are forcing your protection on me, stripping away my right to make my own decisions.”
“Your decisions were clouded—”
“They were mine.” I cut him off. “If Skaros was a shade, then he was my shade. If what we shared was a mistake, it was my mistake to make. I am a person, Eryx. I have a soul.”
Eryx stood perfectly still. The serpents in his hair ceased their restless movement, hanging motionless around his face. The accusation landed hard. I was looking at a man whose entire existence was dedicated to mending, and I had just told him he was breaking me.
“By locking me in here,” I continued, the cold creeping up my throat, “you are not saving my life. You are just killing me in a different way. Your draught freezes the thorns, but it freezes me, too. You’re numbing my pain, but numbness isn’t a life.”
Eryx flinched. He knew I was telling the truth. But he wasn’t one to give up so quickly. “I know this isn’t ideal,” he finally murmured. “But I swear to you, Ianthe. I will find a way. I’ll free you from the sickness, and from the parasite.”
Turning his back to me, he walked away, his boots silent against the basalt. The mist parted, swallowing his tall figure as he retreated from the sanctuary.
He left me alone in the freezing dark. And as the numbness pulled me under, all I had as an anchor was the scroll still clutched in my hand.
Skaros’s shade was persistent.
I stood in my research chamber, grinding a chunk of death crystals into dust. Normally, the repetitive process was soothing, the simple motions anchoring me in the reality I’d been cut off from so long ago. But today, few things could contain my fury.
In all my years as a healer, I’d never witnessed an entity as violent and vicious as Skaros the manticore.
Truly, I’d never have expected a beast like this to emerge from the Moirae’s design.
But after seeing what Skaros had done to Ianthe, I could only assume a fatal flaw had occurred during its creation.
In hindsight, I should have seen this coming long ago. The rabid shade had been stalking Asphodelia’s death-touched brides for years. But I’d remembered the manticore who’d once wanted to join Thanatos’s Temple, and I’d thought, “It means nothing.”
I’d made a mistake, and an innocent had paid the price for it.
My snakes swirled and hissed around my head. I’d seen the brutal attack through their eyes, and they knew, as I did, just how gruesome it had been.
“Kill it,” they said.
“Hunt it,” they told me.
“Erase it,” they insisted.