“Because of her gift,” I answered. I already knew it wasn’t true. I already dreaded what the Moirae were actually going to say.
Lachesis shook her head. “No. Because even without knowing it, they sensed the incipient death on her.”
I felt sick. All those people at the auction had somehow realized what I’d completely missed. “I don’t understand. How is this possible? Without a death-touched blessing—“
“She should have never lived long enough to get to Asphodelia, anyway,” Atropos cut me off, her words carrying the same finality as her shears. “That’s true. No mortal can survive the death energy here intact.”
“Not without help, at least.” Clotho glanced from Daphne to Callista, an uncommonly sad look on her ageless face. “But you already knew that, Phonos. She said it, didn’t she?”
As I tried to process the meaning of Clotho’s words, a withered petal of asphodel detached from Daphne’s hair. It drifted down, a grey, lifeless husk, and settled on her pale cheek before turning to dust.
Just like that, I understood. It had been the flowers. The crowns I’d constantly woven for her. Because I’d thought their light suited her.
Clotho was right. Daphne had told us outright that Callista’s asphodels had guided her through the Blighted Lands. But they hadn’t just been a guide. They’d been a shield.
The asphodels had been keeping her alive in an environment that was slowly, inexorably poisoning her. They’d sustained her,protected her. And maybe some kind of instinct had told me they were needed. I’d never particularly enjoyed weaving flower crowns, not until I’d seen Daphne on the pier.
But nothing I’d done had been enough. In the end, the asphodels were just flowers. They couldn’t keep her safe from the absolute, unmaking power of a basilisk’s gaze.
My gaze snapped from the dust on her cheek to Charon. “You knew.”
“From the beginning,” he admitted. “I tried to send her away, back to the Korinos Wilds where she belonged. But, Phonos, I am only a servant of the lake. I can demand prices and make trades. I can’t force anyone to take paths they do not desire.”
If I hadn’t felt so numb, I might have burst into laughter. I’d been so stupid. I’d seen his caution as a threat, his wisdom as a trick. I’d thought his offer at the Bride Market was a sign of his malice, when in reality, he’d only been trying to help.
“Why did you never tell me? I’d have taken her away, if I’d known.”
“The lake had made its decision, Phonos,” he answered. “It was out of my hands.”
He’d told me that much earlier today, when I’d first arrived at the pier. I hadn’t understood it then, and in a way, I didn’t understand it now.
Nothing made sense anymore. When my mother had been unwoven, I’d felt nothing but happiness for her good fortune. But now… Now I couldn’t even remember what being happy meant.
I looked back at the Moirae, my last hope for some kind of solution to this insanity. “You promised me. You showed me the thread. You told me she was my match.”
All my life, I’d thought I could trust the Moirae. What reason would they have to harm me, a creature that had come from their own hands? But I’d been a blind fool.
“This was always her fate, Phonos. For her thread to be severed like this,” Atropos said, her tone devoid of any kind of pity. “No seer can escape fate, no matter where they hide.”
She spoke with such calm, as if I was just supposed to accept this unavoidable conclusion. But how could I?
“She wasn’t just a seer. She was my mate. And you let her die. You made sure of it.”
Atropos had been the one who’d stepped in at the Bride Market, when Charon had made his bid. They could have let us know something was wrong a thousand times. But they hadn’t. Why?
“Phonos, you aren’t wrong, and we did not lie,” Clotho said. “She was your mate. But you are a child of death, and she was not. Not every mating can have a perfect balance.”
I clutched Daphne closer, burying my face in the fiery red of her hair, trying to find a trace of her scent, a ghost of her warmth. But there was nothing. Only the terrifying stiffness of something that was no longer a person.
Then, it began, a subtle, sickening shift in her weight in my arms. The skin of her cheek felt suddenly... loose. A faint, cloying odor rose from her, like the smell of fruit left too long in the sun.
I pulled back, my breath catching in my throat.
Her skin, the skin I had kissed only that morning, was beginning to discolor, turning a bruised purple. It seemed to sink, to lose its firmness, pulling away from the delicate bones of her face. Her lips were darkening, peeling back from her teeth in a grotesque snarl.
“No,” I whispered, unable to believe my eyes. I ran my thumb over her cheek, and the skin shifted, threatening to tear.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen mortal death before. I’d worked as a harvester for decades before my dispute with Theron had forced me to drop my position. We’d gone through countless battlefields, places of death which, for us, had been a gift. One that my own family had created. I’d never deemed any of it strange.
