Chapter 28 Crossroads #4
Kian said nothing, but his silence was confirmation enough.
The weight of that settled over me like a shroud.
I reached into my pocket, fingers brushing cool metal, pulling the coin free.
It had a dull gleam in the low light. Kian tensed, shadows gathering in the corners of the room in response to his anger.
Hecate’s eyes widened with true surprise. Then her expression shifted into something darker.
“The wards?” Her gaze snapped to Kian.
“They’re holding,” he confirmed, voice tight.
Something unknotted in my chest. I hadn’t realized until that moment why I felt so safe here, why the weight of everything seemed bearable within these walls.
“So you know what this is?” I asked. “Cyrus gave it to me. It keeps showing up. I’ve tried to throw it away multiple times, but it always comes back.”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to make my breath catch.
Hecate carefully picked up the coin from the table, her palm glowing as she examined it.
“It’s from the Underworld,” Kian growled, lips pulling back into a snarl. “A drachma meant for the Ferryman. Traditionally placed under the tongues of the dead to pay Charon for safe passage across the Styx.”
He withdrew his own coin for comparison. The difference was immediate and nauseating. His glowed faintly with warm, steady light, like banked coals.
I examined his coin, touching the metal. “Then why do I have it?”
Hecate’s face went pale as she passed the coin back to me. “Because this one was never meant to offer safe passage. Look closely.”
I turned it over, studying it. On mine, the face side of the coin had the pomegranate seeds fell in an asymmetrical pattern like my birthmark, and the other side of the coin had an upside-down palace with a river flowing above it—the Styx, maybe?
On his, the seeds fell in the opposite direction, the palace towering above a properly-flowing Styx below.
But beneath Kian’s etchings was something mine didn’t have: a faint oily sheen, moving almost like a writhing shadow trapped beneath the metal.
“This isn’t a coin,” Hecate said. “It’s a binding to him.”
My breath caught. “To Cyrus?”
“Yes.” She didn’t flinch from the word. “That drachma doesn’t guide; it keeps your essence tethered to his will, creates a pathway directly to everything you are.
Your power, your soul, every fragment of divinity sleeping inside you.
He can feel you through it. Track you. And when he’s ready… ” She paused, tensing. “He can pull.”
A wave of nausea passed over me.
“What disturbs me most,” Hecate continued, “is the timing. This kind of working, this level of binding, he could have done at any point. In any of your lives. The fact that he chose now, that he gave this to you at the beginning of this particular awakening…”
Her eyes met mine, dark and troubled. “It means he’s ready. Whatever he’s been planning, whatever endgame he’s working toward, he’s prepared to take everything from you. And soon.”
“He’s had chances,” I said. “Weeks of them. I was vulnerable, unaware. He could have killed me any time and been done with it. But he didn’t. Why?”
Hecate reached for the coin again. Her face went pale.
“The binding requires your divinity to be awakened,” she explained. “You’re already starting to remember. If you were not remembering—”
“The binding would shatter,” Kian said, voice hollow. “And she’d reincarnate free of it.”
“Exactly,” Hecate whispered.
“This doesn’t make sense.” Kian swore under his breath. “How did he even get this? Coins forged in the Underworld don’t circulate in the mortal world.”
“His resources are more vast than we initially suspected, it would seem,” Hecate said, her eyes darkening. “This is something we will have to look into further. One problem at a time.”
I stared at the thing in her palm, bile rising in my throat. “So I’m just stuck with it? There’s nothing I can do?”
“Not yet,” She reached out and plucked the coin from my palm with two fingers.
“A binding like this can be broken or reforged. Turned against the one who created it. But that kind of working requires power you haven’t unlocked yet.
Knowledge you haven’t remembered. It will take time, child.
And strength you’re only beginning to reclaim. ”
She set it back into my bandaged hand with clear reluctance.
“Hide it,” she commanded. “Keep it close. Don’t try to throw it away again—that only reinforces the binding. You need to become strong enough to sever it properly or remake it entirely. But be warned.”
Her eyes locked on mine.
“When you have the power to break this chain,” she said. “There will be no turning back. The consequences will reshape everything.”
I nodded, tucking the coin back into my pocket even as my skin crawled.
“Okay,” I said, trying to push past the fear. “Then what now?”
“Training begins tomorrow,” she said, and the air vibrated with her power. “Tonight, you rest and recover. Let your body heal. But tomorrow—” She smirked, “we begin unlocking what’s been sleeping inside you. Then we prepare to join the war.”