My vision went blurry. The hollow ache in my chest tightened into a knot of pure, agonizing shock. I knew, with a certainty that defied all logic, who was under that sheet. I took a step into the room, and the door closed behind me, sealing me inside.
I approached the table, my hand trembling as I reached for the edge of the sheet. I hesitated for a single, heart-stopping second.It almost seemed too good to be true. Surely, it couldn’t be so easy. Surely, she couldn’t be here.
I pulled the sheet back, and there she was.
Daphne.
She was perfect. The gentle curve of her cheek, her fair skin, her bright red curls. Exactly the same as she’d been the morning I’d left her in our nest.
The nightmare was over. She was here. She was whole. But how? She’d withered away in my arms.
I reached for her hand, desperate to feel her warmth again, to make sure she was solid. What I found made dread and horror coil in my gut. Her arm was heavy. Beneath her soft skin, something else was hiding. Something inhuman.
“What is this?” I stumbled back, my wings flaring, knocking into a stand of tools with a harsh clang. “What have you done?”
Charon stepped from the shadows and stared at me with his typical impassive disregard. “I have forged a vessel.”
“A mockery,” I snarled, the death energy in my veins screaming to be released, to attack. “A soulless effigy to torment me. A lie, just another weapon against me.”
Was this really why Charon had summoned me back? To taunt me with the face of my failure?
Charon arched a brow at me, and if I hadn’t known any better, I could have sworn he looked exasperated. “You forget, Keres, that I am not like the Moirae. I do not make weapons. Only possibilities.”
What in Thanatos’s name was that supposed to mean? “Stop speaking in riddles, Ferryman. Why am I here? What did you do to her?”
“This vessel was forged from Stygian iron, using the coins in her ritual as a basis,” Charon answered. “Her own essence is its foundation. The Moirae could not reweave her anew, as I’m sure you must have known, but they lent me their power to recreate her flesh.
“She is now something new. A being with no thread. Just like Aion.”
At that moment, the very foundation of my reality seemed to crack. The searing rage vanished, replaced by sheer, ringing silence. And in that silence, a terrifying thought took root.This is real. And Charon expected it the whole time.
After all, he’d claimed the lake had accepted her offering. But the first thing he’d done after the ritual, the day I’d met Daphne, was set the coins aside, in a wooden box. Back then, it hadn’t struck me as odd, but now… Now, I understood.
“But you are not wrong, Phonos,” Charon continued, barreling over my shock. “Right now, the vessel is inert. A body without a soul. It needs a spark, an animating force that only one being can provide. You.”
Instantly, I knew what he meant. A memory flashed through my mind, that of the Great Loom coming to life during our mating ceremony.
“My screech,” I croaked out. “Our soul song.”
I’d deemed the bond severed. I’d felt it die. And yet… Could something as powerful as connection vanish just like that? No, I refused to believe it.
“Your screech is the music that kept her here,” Charon confirmed. “It is the song that wove a soul bond on her skin. For a being never born, it can also be the sound of a beginning. Wake her up, Phonos.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I opened my mouth and screamed like I never had before.
12
The Anchor Holds
Daphne & Phonos
Many years ago, before my gift had ever come to me, I’d sometimes sit on the bank of the river that ran past Dodona. I’d lie with my face inches from the water, watching the clusters of frog spawn. The tiny specks of life held perfectly still in their clear prison, waiting for a signal I couldn’t see. They weren’t alive, but they weren’t dead. They were potential.
Today, I was floating just like they had. A thick, buoyant quiet enveloped what was left of me. I had become a formless awareness preserved in seemingly limitless dark space. The constant pain of the threads had vanished. The weight of a thousand futures had lifted. An eerie peace settled, a stillness so absolute it felt like a physical embrace.
“Where am I?”
A resonance vibrated through the dark, a presence that felt like the inevitable turn of a tide.“You are with us.”
