I had no desire to see them. I’d asked them to keep Daphne safe, and they’d failed. In my heart, I knew they weren’t truly to blame, but a part of me couldn’t help but stew in anger.
My sisters read me as well as they always did. They approached with caution, their expressions a mixture of fear and resolve. “Brother, come home to the Spire,” Megaera said. “There is nothing for you here.”
I stared at the impenetrable wall of mist, at the barrier that kept me from the only option I had left. Her words were meaningless. The Spire was not a home. It was a reminder of my failure.
Megaera flew closer, undeterred by my silence. “Daphne has returned to Thanatos. She has received the final gift.”
Alecto hovered by her side and shot me a quick smile. “I know this isn’t what you expected, but it’s like the Moirae said. Not every mating works exactly the same way. She is still with you, the same way Mother is with us.”
The situation wasn’t remotely the same. Or maybe it was. Maybe the whole time, we’d just blinded ourselves to the fact that we were throwing away our own loved ones.
“Alecto, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve lost everything. Nothing and no one is with me right now.”
“You can’t mean that, Phonos,” Alecto insisted. “Please, brother. You must see. This is a good thing.”
A good thing. The simple phrase disgusted me. It was a clean, sacred label on the most profane thing I had ever witnessed. It was an attempt to make this disaster logical, to file it away in the neat world order of our people.
What little sanity I had left shattered. My sisters vanished. In their place, I saw only the smug face of a universe that had stolen Daphne from me. Now, it dared to pretend that theft was a gift. I wouldn’t let that stand.
I launched myself at Alecto, slamming into her so quickly that she had no time to react. We tumbled through the air, a flurry of black feathers and rage. After that first moment of surprise, Alecto fought back. She was strong, but my agony had given me a strength she couldn’t match. I broke through her guard, my talons raking across her shoulder, leaving deep gouges. She cried out, more in shock than in pain.
I pressed my advantage, forcing her backward. Her feathers sliced me across the face, nearly gouging my eye out. But in the end, she hesitated, not wanting to cripple me. I didn’t have the same scruples.
I charged her again, head-on, heedless of the considerable damage she could do to me. It was a recklessness I’d only ever displayed once in my life, during the battle with Theron. That time, it had come with disastrous consequences. It was ironic that even in this, the Cerberus was haunting me.
Finally, I slid under Alecto’s guard and grabbed her right wing. Burying my talons into her feathers, I twisted the limb at an unnatural angle. She still had the sky. She still had her freedom. I would take it from her. I would ground her. I would make her understand what it was to have everything you loved torn away.
“Phonos, stop!” Megaera cried out. But I didn’t care, not anymore.
Alecto struggled, panic replacing her attempt to reason with me. The cartilage and bone began to give. Alecto screamed, not quite a death screech, but very close.
And then, another wing, this one vast and hard as granite, struck me in the side. The attack came out of nowhere, breaking my hold on my sister. The force of the blow threw me backward, sending me tumbling through the air.
I righted myself and stared at the creature that now hovered between me and my sisters.
She was larger than Alecto and Megaera put together, and her sheer presence would have once been enough to intimidate me. But today wasn’t just any other day, and I just sneered at her, unimpressed. “Stay out of my way, Phix.”
The sphinx glared at me, ancient fury hardening her leonine features. Even so, she didn’t try to attack me. “You do not want to do this, Phonos.”
“Don’t tell me what I want and do not want, Auctioneer,” I snarled. “You can’t bargain with my pain.”
“Your pain is a fire that will consume everything you have left,” she warned me, her eyes glowing with a faint, golden light. “Your sisters. Your House. Yourself. Is that the legacy you wish to leave for the one you lost?”
“Always one for riddles, Phix, but this time, you know nothing. You do not even understand the meaning of grief.”
For them, it was just a word. Semantics. Something human they couldn’t grasp. I’d been no different before Daphne.
When Callista had wept over her lost village, I hadn’t understood. When my mother had been unwoven, I’d found nothing wrong with it. A part of me still didn’t.
But this all-consuming poison burning through my veins… This was something I didn’t need to understand at all. It could only be felt.
“There is no legacy here anymore, Phix, and everything that gave me breath is gone. I am already unwoven. Everyone else is just pretending I’m not. And there is no purpose in it. None at all. Thanatos’s gift is a lie.”
My sisters stared at me, wide-eyed. Megaera was trying to help Alecto, passing her death energy to mend at least some of the damage I’d done. My words surprised her so much that she almost lost control of the flow.
But in the end, I was right, and Asphodelia itself knew it. The mists at the edge of Acheron finally moved. The very barrier I’d been trying to break swirled and parted. A path opened. A silent, undeniable invitation from the island itself.
There it was. My way out. My chance to escape, to find my way back to Daphne.
