That reality suddenly became my worst nightmare. Daphne’s hands began to liquefy, to slough away. Her hair lost its luster, turning dull and brittle as it detached from a scalp that was no longer there.
I was holding a corpse. A decaying, putrefying thing that wore the face of my soul.
Daphne’s flesh melted like tallow, revealing the stark white of her skeleton. The last vestiges of her red hair withered away. For a horrifying moment, I was holding her bones, a fragile frame still wrapped in the remnants of her dress.
A scream built in my chest, a Keres screech born out of the sheer magnitude of my agony.
But before I could unleash it, the final horror occurred. The bones themselves began to fail. A fine, spidery crack appeared on her skull. It spread, branching out, and then the entire structure of her face collapsed inward. The skeleton, no longer held by the grace of a soul, succumbed to the brutal reality of Asphodelia’s energy. It cracked and fell apart, the bones snapping like dry twigs. Even the fibers of her gown withered away.
Within seconds, the figure that had been my mate dissolved into a cascade of grey powder. It all sifted through my fingers and settled in a small, pathetic pile on the obsidian ground.
Dust.
She was dust.
The screech in my throat died. I stared at the pile of powder, a last remnant of the woman who had been my entire world. Thehollowness in my chest was no longer a wound. It was my entire being.
I lifted my gaze from the ground, feeling utterly numb. Everything I’d ever believed was a cruel fiction. The gift of Thanatos had only ever been a curse, nothing more. And I’d lost my mate to it.
Death wasn’t a power worthy of worship. How could it be, when it had so easily erased the purest thing that had ever existed?
A gust of wind blew through the channel, and Daphne’s ashes began to scatter. I should have reached for them, protected this last part of her that I had left.
But at that moment, I truly understood. She wasn’t coming back. And there was only one way to reach her again.
Dazed but determined, I got up. With every passing moment, my decision was making more and more sense. “Phonos…” I heard someone say.
I didn’t know who had spoken, and I didn’t bother trying to figure it out. Instead, I launched myself upward, a ragged arrow of pure agony. It was almost ironic that my wings would work now, when there was no battle left to fight. But I’d embrace this twisted stroke of good fortune, because I could do little else.
I only had a single hope left. If mortal death had claimed my mate so quickly, surely it wouldn’t refuse me. But to do that, I had to leave Asphodelia.
10
Already Unwoven
Phonos & Theron
From the moment the children of the Moirae came into being, there was one rule we immediately learned. Asphodelia was our world. We couldn’t leave on our own. Charon was the only way in and out of the island.
I was done asking permission for anything.
I slammed into the invisible barrier at the misty edge of Asphodelia, a blur of Keres fury meeting an immovable truth. The bones in my right wing snapped. It hurt less than Daphne’s absence.
With my wing shattered, I had no purchase on the air. I plummeted toward the black water of the Acheron. But even then, there was no respite. Only endless despair.
As the wind screamed past me, a strange warmth rose from the lake below. It was an impossibly gentle energy, a touch that felt almost familiar. The mists surged upward, wrapping around my broken wing.
My bones ground and fused, knitting back together with a flawless precision. The physical pain vanished, stolen from me.
I almost howled in frustration. Why was this place protecting me, when it had killed my mate? It felt like yet another betrayal, a taunt, a reminder of the Moirae’s words.“You are a child of death,”they’d said. But I didn’t want to be, not anymore.
I forced myself to focus and pulled out of the dive, hovering above the dark lake. In here, I was a prisoner, trapped in the cage of my own nature. But out there, in the distance, lay the Korinos Wilds. Daphne’s home. Out there, away from the Acheron, there were places where death energy didn’t run rampant.
In Asphodelia, I was immortal. Eternal. In Korinos, I would wither away and die, like Daphne had. But first, I had to cross the lake.
Charon would never grant his permission. Of everyone in Asphodelia, he was the only one who’d tried to help us. But he wouldn’t go so far, wouldn’t defy his own duties. No, I had to do this on my own.
Bracing myself, I flew at the barrier again. I was halfway to the edge when I felt two familiar presences approaching me from behind. Alecto and Megaera.
