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“Were you alone when you lived in Asphodelia?” I asked as he stopped beside me.

“In a way. I lived in the Temple of Thanatos, our god of death. It’s a sanctuary for those of us who’ve been badly hurt.” He touched the silk across his eyes. “I was confined there after I lost my sight.”

I stared at him. Father had told me he’d agreed to cover his eyes for our safety. I accepted that explanation and never thought to question it. Eryx found whatever he needed in the workroom, navigated the ruined passages without hesitation, turned toward me before I spoke. I assumed he could see through the silk somehow.

“I didn’t know,” I admitted. I looked away from the blindfold, though he couldn’t see me staring. “You’ve never seemed to have trouble finding your way.”

“I perceive magic. Death energy helps me see, even here, in the Korinos Wilds. My serpents do too.” One of them raised its head, and I watched it turn toward me. “There’s plenty here for us to follow.”

“How… How did it happen?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“The centaurs did it,” he replied. “I was gathering herbs when they attacked me. It was decades ago. I killed them that day, but I didn’t leave unharmed.”

I’d grown up hearing about those clashes, always from people who spoke of holding the Blighted Ones back. I’d never imagined him gathering what his people needed, then having to fight his way home. Now I couldn’t stop thinking of him wounded, so far from anyone who might help.

“The damage changed my sight. It could unmake my own people.” He paused, turning away. “I spent years behind the Temple’s wards afterward.”

“And you had to stay there?” I asked. He’d been a healer then too. There must have been work waiting for him, people who knew him. I thought of him shut away while they went on without him, angry that they had so easily left him behind.

“The Temple can give you a place that comforts you. Your grove, perhaps.” He faced the fog. “You still wouldn’t be free to leave it.”

I looked into the dark trees, trying to imagine it. A grove without the women who’d raised me, without patients arriving or animals seeking shelter. I would have hated it. How long before even the familiar trees became something I couldn’t bear?

“That sounds terribly lonely,” I said softly.

“It was.” His coat brushed mine as he shifted beside me. “I knew exactly what it was like. And when I decided a patient needed to be kept safe, I put her there.”

A patient. I looked at him. We weren’t talking about his own confinement at all.

“Her name was Ianthe,” he continued. “She came from the Wilds. She was dying of the Thorn-Sickness. She entered the bride market in Asphodelia. A manticore named Skaros found her there, though he’d already been unwoven.”

I frowned. I knew his people didn’t die as ours did, but I’d never heard what happened when their existence ended.

“What do you mean, unwoven?”

“Our bodies are woven from death energy. Unweaving pulls those threads apart. Skaros should have ceased to exist, but something of him remained in the city’s asphodels.” Eryx hesitated, searching for the right words. “He fed on her sickness. They bonded, and she insisted he was helping her.”

Feeding on the Thorn-Sickness? If he could consume those roots without harming the person they’d invaded, it would mean more than easing the pain. It might mean a way to survive.

“Was he?” I asked. “Was she getting better?”

“Yes. But I didn’t believe her.” His answer came immediately, and somehow that made it harder to hear. “I believed he was preying on her. The texts I’d studied gave me every reason to think so. I saw a starving creature and a sick woman who wouldn’t let me save her.”

I thought about the parasite under Damon’s skin, about the illnesses I’d struggled to treat at the shrine. Many times, patients didn’t understand what was happening to them. If Eryx had thought Ianthe’s situation was like that, I could see why he’d decided on such a drastic approach. But that didn’t change the outcome, for him or for Ianthe.

“I took off my blindfold and unwove what remained of him. She told me not to.” He lowered his head, bringing a serpent’s coils against his cheek. “Afterward, I sent her to the Temple. I thought the sickness had affected her judgment. Every time she refused my help, I took it as proof.”

I gripped the edges of my cloak. I’d been imagining him trying to save her. Now I could hear a frightened woman telling him to stop, and I couldn’t bear that either. She’d known what was helping her. How many times had she tried to tell him before he took Skaros away?

“Did he come back?” I asked. “You said he’d survived being unwoven before.”

“He did. He consumed the sickness and returned to her. She’s well now, Thalia. They’re both well.”

I let out a slow breath. I’d never known anyone survive that sickness. Had every root vanished? Was she free of the pain? I wanted to ask him everything, but seeing him retreat into himself, I kept quiet.

“I apologized,” he said. “There wasn’t much else left for me to do. Skaros had saved her, and I’d made her fight me every step of the way.”

I could see why the memory still weighed on him. It would have weighed on me, as well, had I been in his place. In a way, I supposed I was.