13. The Manticore
The Manticore
Ianthe & Skaros
When Eryx came back, he was silent and pale. The black snakes were eerily still, their red eyes strangely muted.
He had no potion in his hand. For the longest time, he just stared at me, as if looking for an answer to a question he hadn’t asked. “Ianthe. Tell me you’ve changed your mind. Tell me you don’t want to leave this place and go to the shade.”
A spark of hope shot through me. Something had changed since the last time he’d been here. I didn’t know why, but the answer was important. “I haven’t,” I replied as I got up. “I won’t ever change my mind.”
Eryx pressed his lips together so tightly they went white. “So be it, then. Come with me.”
Making his way to my side, he hooked his arm through mine. He kept his face turned away, and for once, so did the snakes. Without another word, he guided me out of the garden.
The mist responded to him in a way it never had to me. The moment he waved his hand, it disappeared entirely, and we were standing in the dark corridor again. The abyss loomed ahead, hollow and threatening.
I closed my eyes without being asked to. I knew what was waiting for me beyond that shield. Skaros.
Eryx guided me through the darkness far more swiftly than Iaso had. I barely had the chance to realize I was being suspended into the nothingness. One moment I was standing in the temple, and the next, I was out.
Almost immediately, the air grew more breathable, thick with the sharp perfume of crushed asphodels. Death crystals glinted in the dark, but this time, their light was much dimmer, barely even there.
Just in front of me, in the dark corridor, a group of guards was waiting. The massive Theron had joined a somber Aion, alongside a few others I didn’t recognize. Another lupine creature, this one with white fur. Some harpies. A minotaur. Iaso.
“By order of the Moirae, you are now exiled from Asphodelia,” Eryx stated. “You were right. We cannot cure you. So it would be cruel to keep you here to suffer.”
The words made no sense. I hadn’t asked to be sent away. What I’d wanted was to be with Skaros. How was I supposed to do that if I wasn’t in Asphodelia?
“Don’t be afraid, Ianthe,” Aion told me. “I promise you, this is for the best.”
Him too? I’d thought he’d be on my side, that he’d at least understand Skaros would never harm me. But apparently, that was too much to ask.
I opened my mouth to answer, to protest this absurdity, to fight back. But no words came out.
Without warning, the stone underneath my feet cracked. The building shook, and the death energy around us grew frantic, wilder. Eryx pulled me closer to him, his snakes hissing angrily. “You have no right to her, you shade. Stay in the dirt where you belong and leave her alone.”
The guards shared a concerned look. I couldn’t understand anything anymore. “What’s happening? Someone please… Tell me what’s going on.”
“Skaros is tearing the city apart to get to you,” Theron replied. “The Moirae have decreed you must be taken to the docks. We have to keep moving.”
“To the docks?” I repeated. “You mean out of his reach. That’s why you’re sending me away.”
No one answered. Instead, they ushered me down the corridor, toward the exit of the healing wing.
They didn’t even seem to mean me any harm. But that just made them even more dangerous. They genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. No matter how hard I tried, I’d never be able to convince them otherwise.
In the end, I didn’t have to. Skaros was with me. He was fighting for me. Whatever the Moirae were doing, he’d find his way through their shields and back to my side. We’d be together again. I believed that in a way I’d never believed anything in my life.
I was proven right much sooner than I’d thought. The moment we left the building, a massive surge of plant life surrounded us, desperately reaching for me. Eryx removed his blindfold, snarling. “Absolutely not! This at least I can still do.”
Before my very eyes, the vines and asphodels dissolved, unweaving into columns of silver-blue death energy. I screamed. “No, don’t! Not again! You’re hurting him!”
But that was the point, wasn’t it? To hurt Skaros, to keep him away from me. This was insanity.
I started to struggle in Eryx’s hold, clawing at his arm, trying to pull his focus away from Skaros. The distraction worked. For a single second, Eryx faltered. And that was when Skaros struck.
The remaining foliage shot forward like a hurricane. Pushing Eryx away, it curled around my waist, my arms, and my thighs. The vines lifted me off the shaking cobblestones. The familiar scent of turned earth and rain enveloped me.
A single, massive stem rose from the center of the breach. It hovered before my chest for a fraction of a second. Then, it drove straight into me.
I didn’t cry out. The vine passed through my skin and ribs without tearing flesh. It plunged directly into the deepest, darkest knot of the Thorn-Sickness wrapped around my heart.
The frost from Eryx’s potion shattered.
Pure death energy flooded my veins, chasing the chill from my blood. The vine locked onto the very core of the parasite. The sickness buzzed frantically, fighting the intrusion.
Skaros knew. He knew that I’d been hurting in his absence, and he was taking care of me, like he always did.
There had been times when the disease had tried to fight. In the past, he’d never quite managed to free me from it. “I’m not strong enough,” he’d said. “But I’ll keep trying.”
He didn’t need to keep trying. Not today. He ripped the magic completely out of me, absorbing every single thorn. A wave of blinding warmth washed through my limbs as my body was finally made whole. I went limp. My head fell back against the cradle of his leaves, my eyes fluttering shut.
It was different from the soothing numbness of Eryx’s draught and even from the temporary comfort Skaros had provided in the past. This was truth. This was freedom. Finally, my illness was entirely gone.
But I didn’t get the chance to savor the peace. The vines holding my weight trembled, and the stems around me cracked. They burst apart, violently unweaving into thousands of brilliant, silver-blue threads.
It was so much worse than what Eryx had done before. Every single vine, every single flower disappeared, as if it had never been there at all. I dropped the last few inches to the street, landing softly on my knees as my cradle dissolved into light.
It had been a trap. They’d lured him here. They’d used me so they could get to Skaros.
With shaking hands, I reached for the threads of light. I wanted nothing more than to clutch them close, to drag them inside me. Maybe Skaros could live within me like the Thorn-Sickness had. I didn’t think I would mind that.
But the light shied away from me. “Wait…” I croaked out. “Skaros, I…”
Before I could finish my desperate plea, the threads swirled upward, drawn together by a violent pull. The silver-blue light thickened, twisting and knotting in mid-air right in front of me.
The light hardened into bone. Muscle layered over the skeleton in thick bands. Tawny fur sprouted across a massive, broad chest. Two enormous wings snapped open. A long, thick tail whipped against the cracked marble, the barbed tip scoring the stone.
The silver light vanished.
Skaros had appeared in the center of the avenue.
He stood massive on four powerful paws, his broad, muscled chest heaving. A thick mane of spun gold framed his leonine muzzle. His amber eyes burned with a fierce, untamed fire. “Mine!” he snarled.
He let out a terrifying roar that made every single stone in Asphodelia vibrate. In that instant, I knew I was safe again.
For as long as I could remember, there had always been something strange about me.
Skaros, the manticore.
Skaros, the Auctioneer’s son.
Skaros, the maneater.
When Medea had come along and I’d been unwoven, it had been a relief. And then my mind had fallen apart, and with it, so had my memories and my desires.
Ianthe had been the one to guide me, to put me back together when I’d been just a starving thing buried in the ground. But now, I was back—whole, and on my feet again. And the same protective anger coursed through me still, as it had when I was nothing but a cluster of vines and asphodels.
They’d wanted to cast her out into the cold, away from Asphodelia, to leave her to die. They’d wanted to separate us forever.
Every instinct in me rebelled.
“How dare you? How dare you hurt her?”
Everyone was staring at me in disbelief. The Weaveguards had frozen in place. There had never been a resurrection in Asphodelia, not really. Aion had been brought back, but he was a construct. It should have been impossible.
Two of the group stepped forward, ready to attack. Aion and Theron blocked their path and shook their heads. “If Skaros is here, it is because the Moirae wished it,” Theron said. “Stand down.”
I didn’t know if he actually believed that or if it was a lie meant to placate their hostile tempers. But I almost resented him for it. I wanted them to attack me just so I could destroy them, unweaving them to show that death wasn’t such a gift after all.
Eryx stood among them, his eyes now clamped shut. “We are not the ones who hurt her,” he hissed at me. “That was you.”
A blinding rage took over. Every fiber of my being screamed to tear them apart. They’d locked my mate away like she was an object, and they still wanted to pretend they’d done the right thing?
With a snarl, I dug my claws into the stone.
Venom was already dripping from my barbed tail.
It was so exhilarating to be whole once again, to feel like a fully formed creature, not just a cluster of death energy.
And the blind healer would be the first one to learn how vicious a manticore could be when its mate was threatened.
Before I could pounce, a familiar winged figure dropped down between Eryx and me. “Enough!” Phix bellowed. “I understand your anger, but we aren’t here to fight. If there’s anyone here you should be angry with, it’s me.”
Her? She’d never once done something to anger me.
Granted, I had sometimes wished she’d never held onto me so tightly.
It might have been better if she hadn’t pushed the Moirae to weave me back when they first noticed the flaw in my being.
But whatever frustration I’d felt over that had long since disappeared.
After all, if I hadn’t been alive, I couldn’t have met Ianthe.
No, there was something else going on here, something I still didn’t understand. “What did you do?” I asked.
The words were barely intelligible, but Phix had never had trouble reading me, no matter what I said—or didn’t. “I’m not here as your mother, Skaros,” she explained. “I’m here as the auctioneer of the bride market.”
“The… auctioneer?” I repeated, trying to grasp what she meant.
Phix nodded. “Ianthe already paid the price for the auction. But she didn’t receive what she paid for. We had to rectify that.”
“What… What do you mean?” Ianthe asked, finally getting up.
“The answer is simple, child,” Phix answered. “You are now completely recovered. As a result, you can properly choose a groom, as Charon’s trade established.”
She turned toward me, and her ancient eyes glinted with something like pride. “Skaros has already paid his price. With his flesh, with his will. Now, it is up to the bride.”
She had known what would happen. When no one but Ianthe understood, my mother had still trusted me.
“This is not the Agora of Echoes,” Phix continued, “but now is the time for Ianthe to make her decision. Tell us, child. Is Skaros who you want?”
Ianthe leaned against my flank and buried her hand in my mane. “Yes. He’s the one I choose. Now and forever.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said that. She’d offered herself to me before, when Skaros the manticore had been only a lost hope and a dream. Even so, the certainty in her voice still soothed the raging beast inside me.
I knew then that my mother was right. There was no battle to fight here, and nothing truly worth saying or proving. Ianthe had already told me everything I needed to know.
Without another word, I shifted into my two-legged form and picked Ianthe up in my arms. Cradling her to my chest, I launched myself into the air. It was time for me to claim my mate properly, like she deserved.