Page 27 of Bought By the Manticore

Since I lacked claws, I lashed a thick vine like a whip, striking the basalt floor a hair’s breadth from Eryx’s boots. The stone cracked. Splinters skipped across the room and clattered against the walls.

Eryx didn’t flinch.

He stood his ground, radiating a terrible purpose. “I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me with no choice.”

He raised his hands, his fingers finding the knot of dark silk at the back of his head. What did he think that could accomplish? A gorgon’s gaze couldn’t harm anyone in Asphodelia. Just as Iaso was harmless to me, so was Eryx.

Eryx tore the blindfold off, and in an instant, I knew I’d been wrong.

The moment the gorgon’s gaze hit me, so did the pain. The death energy flowing through me stopped. The vibrant green of my vines drained away, bleeding into a lifeless gray.

I had accepted unweaving once before, in the courtyard outside my mother’s den. I’d embraced Medea’s power and had even been thankful for my destruction. But that had been a quiet surrender. This was violent and forced, unnatural.

I tried to fight it, to feed on the death crystals, to overpower him through Asphodelia’s own gift. But Eryx’s dark power won out, and the brittle vines cracked. One by one, the asphodels that had helped me sneak into the infirmary melted away.

Every inch of me disintegrated into streams of silver-blue light. “Skaros!” Ianthe screamed. The terror in her voice pierced through the crashing noise of my own destruction.

“Ianthe,”I whispered in her mind.

I fought the unmaking. I strained to keep the dome over her intact, desperate to shield her from the power tearing the room apart.

But the destruction raced backward. Within seconds, the canopy protecting Ianthe was nothing more than indistinct waves of death energy.

I felt the exact second my consciousness took the final blow. Her frantic thoughts vanished from my mind. Our bond wasn’t complete yet. It couldn’t withstand the gorgon’s brutal attack.

The sudden mental silence left me hollow, isolating me within the deafening roar of my unweaving.

I lost my grip on the room. I lost the scent of her skin. Starving once again, my unraveled sense of self scattered back into the cold dirt beneath the city.

“I’m so sorry, Ianthe. I didn’t realize… I should have sensed that creature sneak into the infirmary much sooner.”

Iaso hurried across the room, the bronze serpents in her hair trembling in agitation. “I promised I’d protect you, and I… I utterly failed.”

She reached the edge of the bed and threw a thick woolen blanket over me, pulling it tight across my shoulders to hide my bare skin. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

I stared at her in disbelief. Safe? When they’d just taken away the person most important to me?

A few minutes ago, I had been cradled in a living embrace. Skaros’s presence had been a steady weight in my mind, his devotion chasing away even the memory of the Thorn-Sickness.

Now, he was gone, leaving behind only faint wisps of death energy.

“She’s still in shock,” Eryx said. He had already closed his eyes, no doubt trying to protect me from his lethal gaze. But it was too late. He’d already harmed me more than he could imagine.

“Of course I’m in shock,” I shouted. “You killed him!”

Eryx shook his head. “It’s not possible to kill here in Asphodelia. I merely returned his threads to the earth. He won’t ever be able to touch you again.”

I took a deep breath. The sharp touch of the parasitic vines was gone, though the ghost of the sensation remained buried deep in my marrow. But the Thorn-Sickness was not gone. I could feel the faint, dark roots of the disease lingering at the very edges of my awareness, waiting in the shadows of my blood.

It didn’t scare me, not as much as Skaros’s absence did. “You don’t understand anything. I already told you… He was helping me. Taking the pain away.”

“No, child,” Iaso said softly. “That was Eryx’s draught. It numbed the pain. You know that, don’t you? You remember.”

She was talking to me as if I was simple, as if I’d completely lost my mind. But they were the arrogant and foolish ones. “Of course I remember what the potion did. And I also know you both admitted you had no idea how to cure me.”

I half-expected Eryx to ignore me again. Instead, he listened, actually nodding. “You’re right. I have no real answer to your condition. But Ianthe, you need to understand… Neither did the shade.”

“Stop calling him a—”