15. An Elegant Solution
An Elegant Solution
Skaros
The feel of Ianthe’s body against mine was like a miracle. Her hand was still tangled in my mane, and her breath came slow and even. The bite on her shoulder had stopped bleeding, but I could smell it. Copper and salt. Clean. No sickness. Just her.
My tail twitched, an involuntary response. She was dreaming, and the bond carried it to me, a faint pull in the base of my spine. She was reaching for me, even in her sleep, and my body answered before my mind caught up.
Rock scraped against basalt at the den’s entrance, the stone grinding in its track.
I pulled out from under her hand, careful not to jar her awake.
My tail lifted with the barb hovering above the floor, a drop of venom pooling at the tip.
I flared my wings. The embers behind me threw my shadow forward, and I angled it to cover her sleeping form.
A snarl built in my chest, low and rattling. If Eryx and the Weaveguards breached my den to drag her back to that freezing temple, I would tear their throats out before they took a single step inside.
The stone stopped moving. Dust drifted down from the ceiling, and the mist of Asphodelia rolled over the threshold, damp and metallic. I braced my hind legs.
Aion entered first. He had to lower his bronze shoulders to clear the frame. Medea followed, keeping close to him. Finally, Phix stepped into the amber light.
My mother folded her obsidian wings tight against her back and stopped a few paces away. Her dark eyes found my face, then traced the muscles of my chest and the curve of my tail.
None of them carried weapons. They smelled of caution and sharp disbelief, but the air lacked the biting tang of a threat.
Behind me, the bedding rustled. Ianthe’s breath caught as she woke. She rose from the furs, wrapping a thick pelt around her body, then came to me. Her hand found my flank, her fingers sinking into my fur as she pressed her weight against my side.
I didn’t lower my wings. I kept my stance wide and my tail raised, positioning myself between the door and my mate.
“You breached my den,” I growled. “Why?”
Phix met my eyes. “You’re my son. I needed to talk to you. Did you think I’d wait for permission?”
She was my mother. She’d kept my den ready, and she’d never believed I was gone.
But she was also a creature of this city, bound by its laws.
She hadn’t come here just to embrace me.
I could smell it on her, the same weight she carried when she spoke of the Loom, of her duties in the Agora.
She had come to tell me something I wouldn’t want to hear.
Medea took a step forward. The cold, sharp scent of her death magic filled my nose, stronger now. But her eyes held something I didn’t expect. Relief.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “When you died, Asphodelia said your death was a gift. The grace of Thanatos, your people called it, and they celebrated. But I grieved. You were kind to me. Kinder than I deserved.”
Medea had once been my bride in name only. The woman whose uncontrolled power had scattered me into threads of death energy. But she’d mourned my loss after I’d been unwoven. I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t know if it changed anything.
“I was afraid of you,” she continued. “After you bid for me. I thought you’d ask for things I couldn’t give.
But you never did, and I’ve carried that kindness since.
Now you’re back. I don’t know what you are, but I know that kindness is in you still.
I can see it. The way you hold yourself between us and her. ”
She looked past my wing to where Ianthe stood wrapped in the dark pelt. Her expression softened into something almost like wonder.
“You found her,” Medea said. “In the dirt, in the dark, you found someone who could hold you. I’m glad, Skaros. I’m glad you’re not alone.”
There were so many things I could have said, but the words refused to come. I’d been honest when I told Ianthe I hadn’t blamed Medea for my death. Did I blame her now? I couldn’t be sure.
In the end, Ianthe saved me from having to find an answer. “You’re right,” she said, lifting her chin in defiance. “He’s not alone. Skaros has me now. I chose him already. So whatever it is that you want to do here, whether it’s an apology or something else… we don’t need it.”
She was speaking for both of us. She had claimed me in front of my mother and the woman who had once been my bride. She didn’t ask my permission. She didn’t need to.
“We’re not your enemies, Ianthe,” Aion said, his metallic voice low, almost gentle. “We never were.”
“Medea unwove him,” Ianthe replied. She looked at the bronze colossus and crossed her arms over the pelt, holding it closed. “And so did you. You were culling the asphodels, gathering him in death spheres when he was reaching for me.”
Aion had only been doing his job as a harvester, and I hadn’t blamed him for it either. But Ianthe had no reason to feel the same.
“The city didn’t understand,” Aion stated.
“But I did. I watched the way the vines moved toward the infirmary. And I knew.” He turned to me and met my gaze.
“You were starving, but you weren’t planning to attack her.
You recognized her the moment she set foot in Asphodelia. As your mate. And so I helped.”
I stared at him. I remembered that day, desperate and frantic, my consciousness pushing through the avenues in the hope that a single bloom might reach her. I’d thought I was clever, outsmarting the construct who visited her ward. I’d thought my own cunning opened the door.
But all along, Aion had been helping. He’d looked at a starving weed fighting for territory, and he hadn’t seen a feral monster. He’d seen his friend. And he’d offered me a lifeline when I’d most needed it.
“You’re talking about the petal,” I whispered. “The one I slipped into your hair.”
“The one I carried,” Aion corrected me. “I suspected you needed a physical bridge to reach her mind. And I knew you’d never hurt her.”
My claws flexed against the basalt floor. “If Iaso had caught you planting feral weeds in a patient’s bed, the Moirae would’ve stripped your rank.”
“I chose to take a risk,” Aion replied. “And looking at you now, I’d say it was worth taking.”
Phix rose from her haunches. “The reunions are touching,” she said, her tail flicking against the stone near the doorway. “But we have a much larger problem.”
And so, we reached the true heart of the issue. The real reason for their visit. “Tell me, then, Mother. What claim does Asphodelia still have on Ianthe?”
“Your bride isn’t the one being claimed,” my mother replied. “You are no longer dead, Skaros. That is a transgression we do not lightly ignore.”
As her words sank in, I cursed my own foolishness.
I should have realized this much sooner.
Death was the ultimate gift in Asphodelia.
To be unwoven was to accept the grace of Thanatos.
To return from the dirt—to pull bone and fur back into existence—was an absolute affront to everything Asphodelia stood for.
It implied that death was a mistake that needed to be undone.
Now that I was back, I was a problem.
“To the city, you’re a walking blasphemy,” she continued.
Her voice was calm, almost dry, the same tone she used when stating facts that couldn’t be argued.
“The Moirae watched you unravel, and they watched you pull the sickness from the girl. They silently sanctioned what was done. They wish for you to remain, my son. But they’re bound by Thanatos’s own laws, and the rest of the city is watching. ”
“What does that mean?” Ianthe asked. “What will they do to him?”
“A creature refusing its end can’t remain in the heart of the city,” Phix answered. “If Skaros is merely a ghost clinging to his old threads, the Moirae will have no choice. The two of you will be returned to the Korinos Wilds.”
The Wilds.
I’d traveled into the depths of Korinos many times as a harvester. I didn’t fear the beasts there; they were no threat to me. But that wasn’t what my mother meant.
I was a creature woven from pure death energy. The cold air, the black stones, and the ambient magic of this city were the only things that sustained my flesh. If I were pushed into the Wilds—a realm overflowing with wild, chaotic life and relentless fertility—I would starve.
Without Asphodelia’s death energy, I’d slowly wither away. No matter how much carnage the Wilds held, it couldn’t actively feed me forever. I’d fall apart all over again.
I turned toward Ianthe. The golden mark on her hand caught the ember-light. I felt her heartbeat through my fur, steady and defiant. She had barely survived a terminal illness. She’d spent years in a failing body. We’d just been reunited. I wouldn’t let anyone pull us apart.
“I won’t leave,” I growled. “I’ll hold this ridge. I won’t take Ianthe out there to suffer.”
“You can’t fight the laws of the city with your claws,” Phix said. “It isn’t about the guards. If the Moirae are forced to cast you out, the Lake itself will expel you. You can’t outlast the Acheron.”
“Then what do I do?” I asked her. Outside of the Moirae and Charon, she was the wisest creature in all of Asphodelia. She must have some sort of plan.
My mother smiled. It was an expression I had rarely seen on her face. “Asphodelia doesn’t cast its own away without offering a path. There’s a way to satisfy the law.”
I waited for her to continue.
“The Moirae weave new life from old death,” she said. “That’s the cycle. To simply reverse an unweaving is a refusal of the gift. You must show the city you’re not a ghost clinging to frayed threads. You must prove you’re something new.”
I looked down at my claws. I’d consumed the life-magic of the sickness.
I’d dragged the raw power of the city’s foundation into my roots.
I’d drunk the death energy from the Acheron itself.
The venom at the tip of my tail carried a different heat now, heavier, denser.
I wasn’t the same manticore who died in my mother’s garden.
But I’d already made that clear when I’d faced Eryx and the Weaveguards.
“And how exactly am I supposed to provide that proof, Mother?”
“The Kratos Circle,” Phix replied. “The Moirae have decreed you must participate in a trial of creation. Show them your weave has evolved. If they recognize you as a new entity, your place here is lawful.”
A trial by combat was a common practice when a dispute reached a bitter stalemate. The Moirae respected power. Words could be debated, but strength on the obsidian stage was undeniable. But the solution came with its own pitfalls.
“If I fight a Weaveguard, they’ll call it a massacre,” I said. “Beating a guard won’t prove I’m evolved. It will just prove I’m dangerous.”
“You will not fight a guard.” Aion stepped forward, his bronze body glinting in the firelight. “You’ll fight me,” he said.
I stared at the colossus. We’d sparred a thousand times, testing our strength against each other, but this wouldn’t be a sparring match. This was a blood trial.
Then I understood. Aion was Medea’s true mate.
I’d died as her proxy groom. As long as I lived, the shadow of that old claim lingered on the Loom.
Fighting Aion would sever that tie. It would prove to the Moirae that my loyalty belonged entirely to Ianthe.
It was an elegant solution, the kind only my mother could craft.
Ianthe’s warmth was firm against my side, her hand sliding deeper into my mane. She didn’t ask me to yield. She didn’t ask me to run. She held on.
There was only one answer I could offer. “Tell the Moirae to prepare the Circle,” I said. “I accept.”