“What?” I croaked out.
Her free hand moved. She pressed her palm flat against the center of my chest, resting it directly over my heart. “This.”
A searing, white-hot intensity drove into my sternum like a molten spike. Then came the pulling. A massive, suffocating vacuum seized the inside of my chest.
“No.” The word died as a pathetic rattle in the back of my throat.
Paralyzed by a mixture of agony and horrific awe, I watched her fingers sink into my chest. They left the tunic and the skin unbroken. Slipping past the ribs completely, her hand passed through the physical matter of my body as if I were made of heavy smoke. I felt her fingers close firmly around my beating organ.
She looked at me while standing firmly between life and death. She commanded the threshold with absolute, terrifying authority. I had succeeded. I had made my masterpiece, and she was going to be the last thing I ever saw.
She pulled.
The pain shattered my entire understanding of agony. It ripped my history, my magic, and my identity straight out of my body. The threads of my long life snapped rapidly, severed one by one with the sound of breaking glass.
For a split second, my vision cleared. I saw my own heart clutched tightly in Medea's hand. The organ pulsed wetly, looking incredibly small and pathetic against the backdrop of the blighted city. But there was no rot, no damage she'd inflicted. It was almost as if my daughter's necromancy had transcended the limitations of matter.
Then, Medea smiled at me. “Thank you for the gift, Jason. Rest assured that I’ll use it well.”
Perhaps I should have been terrified. Perhaps I should have screamed or begged. Instead, as I looked into her beautiful, merciless face, I finally understood.
It had never been my destiny to rule the city of the dead. I’d only ever been a sacrifice. In my arrogance, I’d thought I could trick the Acheron. I’d been a fool.
“We win, Jason,”the lake whispered in my head. Medea’s hand twisted around my heart one last time, and I knew no more.
12
The New Thread
Medea
The heart beat against my bare palms, a wet thud that shuddered all the way up my arms. Jason’s blood was drying tight and sticky between my fingers. With every frantic step, I expected the stolen organ to dissolve in my hands. It didn’t.
Through some kind of miracle, I managed to make my way to the Weavers’ Hall. I’d never been here before, but Asphodelia itself seemed to be guiding me.
As I pushed the heavy doors of the Moirae’s domain, the chaos of the city fell away. My breath was swallowed entirely by the cold, crushing silence of the grey marble underneath my bare feet. The air in the vast chamber tasted of burning myrrh and ancient stone. But I forced my tired legs to keep moving.
Soon, Aion. Soon. I’ll see you again.
Near the center of the hall, Charon stood hunched over a wide altar. My colossus lay there, perfectly still.
Charon was leaning over Aion’s open chest, using a slender, silver-tipped tool to carve fine lines into the dark metal inside. I couldn’t see exactly what the ferryman was doing. But the slow, deliberate scrape of silver against bronze was just another reminder of what was at stake today.
At the sound of my footsteps, Charon paused. He lifted his intense blue eyes, his gaze dropping immediately to the pulsing red muscle in my hands.
“Well done, Medea,” he said. “The pattern of the Old World served you well.”
I stopped at the edge of the dais. My arms ached with the effort of holding the heart steady. “I don’t know if it was the pattern or just… me,” I offered. “I just want Aion back.”
Charon set the silver tool aside. “And you will have him. Bring me the anchor.”
I took a step forward, my eyes immediately going to Aion’s face. His bronze features were perfectly serene. He looked exactly as he had right before he went blank beneath me. I had watched the light die in his eyes. I had watched him tear his own core out just to spare my life. Now, as I held the fragile, wet human organ thatwas supposed to help him, a sudden, suffocating wave of doubt hit me.
Could a piece of a human necromancer actually restart a bronze colossus?
“Will this really work?” I asked, the desperate question spilling out into the cold air. “Will this actually bring him back?”
“Of course it will.”
