“No,” Charon said, striking the base of his pole against the stone floor. The sound echoed so loudly that even the sphinx flinched.
The entire workshop grew darker, the air heavier, more oppressive. Charon’s creations suddenly seemed to be staring at me. The ferryman was angry, desperately so.
But Aion still wasn’t willing to let it go. “Father, if there is a chance—”
“What you seek is destruction, Aion,” Charon interrupted, closing the distance between them. “Daphne was mortal before she became a construct. She was born with a human soul. You were not. I built you to be a mindless conduit for volatile energy. The storm that woke your consciousness forty-seven years ago was an anomaly—a fragile, beautiful accident.”
Charon’s expression softened into heavy, ancient grief. “The lake’s blessing requires raw, unfiltered power to forge a bond outside the Loom. This is how your sister became the Keres’s mate. If we subject you to that ceremony, the surge of the Acheron’s power will shatter your mind. You will survive physically, but your consciousness will burn away. You will return to being the mindless vessel I originally built.”
A suffocating silence filled the cavernous workshop. I stared at the bronze giant standing beside me. He was the only creature in existence who could hold me. And the laws of this city demanded his destruction to keep me.
“Then I will kill them. Every last one. Whatever talents Jason has…”
“Aion, Jason is a chosen of Thanatos, and he has committed no crime against our city,” Charon shot back. “By all means, leave Asphodelia. Take the girl with you. Crush the necromancer under your boot. And then what? How long will it take the lands of the living to kill you? You are a creature of death energy, my son. You cannot survive out there.”
“I will take my chances,” Aion said quietly. He kept his gaze locked entirely on me. The blue light of his eyes flared with a fierce, blinding certainty. “If it frees Medea, it will be worth it.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “No.” I grabbed his thick bronze wrist, my fingers digging desperately into the metal. “I will not let you. I will not trade your soul for my safety. I would rather walk back to the Argo.”
“An unnecessary martyrdom,” Phix said, cutting through our despair with cold, feline pragmatism. She began to pace, her lioness’s paws making no sound against the stone. “The situation is clear. Medea’s touch unweaves flesh. Charon cannot extract her toll. Aion is the only citizen who can survive her, but he lacks the legal thread to claim her. And Jason waits at the borders.”
She stopped, turning her dark, depthless gaze back to us. “The solution is a proxy.”
Aion went completely rigid. “You would give her to another?”
“I will arrange a binding to a legal citizen to satisfy the Moirae and grant her refuge in Asphodelia,” Phix corrected, her sharp wings giving an impatient flutter. “She need not pay the bride market fee. A monster will claim her in name only, leaving her safely in your shadow.”
I stared at the sphinx, my mind struggling to grasp the twisted logic. “Who would agree to that? Who would buy a bride they can never touch?”
Phix’s lips curved into a subtle, terrifying smile. She looked past me, her eyes fixed on a truth only she possessed.
“Someone whose own nature makes taking a traditional bride an impossibility,” Phix replied. “He requires the appearance of a bond just as much as you require the protection of one. The arrangement serves us all.”
I suppressed a shiver. She was arranging a hollow marriage, a political cage designed to trick the law of Asphodelia. And she had known from the very beginning that it would come to this. She’d come here not to make me an offer, but to notify me of the only possible solution.
“The bride market convenes tomorrow evening,” the sphinx commanded, flowing toward the heavy iron doors. “I have found your shield, Medea. Prepare yourself for the Agora.”
She vanished into the corridor. I stood in the heavy, dust-scented silence of the workshop, my fingers still gripping Aion’s unyielding bronze arm. A plan had been forged to save me from Jason’s grasp. But as I looked up at the quiet devastation in Aion’s glowing eyes, I understood the true cruelty of Asphodelia. To stay with the man I loved, I had to let a stranger buy me.
4
The Proxy
Aion
For a threadless colossus, the Agora of Echoes had never been of much personal interest. I’d been here countless times before, out of simple curiosity, out of the desire to watch the others find what they yearned for. It was the first time I had actually come here for myself.
I remained hidden in the deepest shadows of the upper gallery. Beside me, Theron leaned against the cold rock, his massive arms crossed over his chest.
It felt so much like the time when he’d been waiting to claim Callista, yet so different. He and his mate had properly finished their rites. Medea and I could never even hope for that.
For a long time, neither Theron nor I spoke. We simply watched the tiers below fill with the ancient, hungry elite of the city.
“They do not know her,” I couldn’t help but murmur. “They’ll want her, but they won’t really understand why she’s special.”
“Of course not,” Theron said quietly, his gaze fixed on the empty obsidian stage below. “You are the one who is her mate. Not them.”
It was such a simple reality, but it didn’t make the hurt any less. If anything, the gaping hole in my chest was growing wider. “I have never questioned our ways,” I murmured, gripping the stone railing. “But right now… I want to break this amphitheater apart.”
