Page 6 of Bought By the Manticore

“No one is ever ready,” Phix replied. “But that has never stopped anyone.” She rose to her full height, and her lion’s body uncoiled with the easy power of a born predator. “Come with me.”

As I followed her through the archway, the asphodels trailed me down the corridor. They clustered at the threshold where the stone floor met the obsidian stage, their pale blooms pressing close together. I looked down at them. They swayed toward me, gentle and insistent, so different from the one that had latched onto Phix’s paw.

I stepped onto the stage and left the flowers behind.

The meat was taunting me again.

By now, I was used to it. The silver death-woman always laughed when I bit her fingers, and the lion-woman only let out a low rumble. A part of me wanted to rip their throats open, to feast on their flesh. But the lion-woman never failed to say, “It’s all right, Skaros,” and it felt like more than a taunt.

Skaros. That name sat somewhere deep in whatever I had instead of a mind. The lion-woman said it often, usually when my roots wrapped too tightly around her paw. She said it with the sharp reprimand reserved for a misbehaving child. I didn’t understand why it mattered. I only knew that, when she said it, the hunger eased, and I stopped biting.

But the lion-woman was talking to the rest of the meat today. And all of it—everything that was happening—was a taunt.

There was someone else among the meat. Not blood. Not just a meal. Something that made my roots strain through the cracks in the stone.

I had always been hungry. Since the first moment I’d become aware of myself in the ground, the hunger had been constant, a gnawing emptiness that only eased when I tasted flesh. Every creature that walked above me smelled like a meal. Every footstep on the stone above felt like a weight I wanted to drag down and consume. It was the only thing I knew about myself with any certainty. I was hungry.

This was different. This new creature’s energy poured through the stone like something warm and liquid. The hunger rose to meet it, but it wasn’t like before. It was quiet and raw.

I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that I wanted to be closer to the creature, and all the meat was in my way.

The lion-woman’s weight shifted on the bone rostrum at the head of the stage. Her scent sharpened, the way it always did when the amphitheater was full. She was settling into a commanding stillness.

“People of Asphodelia,” she projected, her voice booming across the tiers. “Blessed children of Thanatos. A woman who has paid the ferryman’s price and earned her place on this stage walks among you. She carries death in her blood and has crossed the Acheron to find what the bride market offers. I present to you the death-touched bride, Ianthe.”

Ianthe. The new creature’s name was Ianthe. It suited her.

She stepped onto the obsidian, her energy already overwhelming. It tasted of death, sweetness, and something feverish underneath. The crowd tasted it too. The mood in the amphitheater sharpened instantly, hundreds of distinct presences leaning forward at once.

She stood still at the center of the stage. The asphodels I lived in couldn’t reach her anymore. But I could still feel her breathing, the slight shifts of her weight, the steady rhythm of her heart. She was frightened, or perhaps nervous. The two often tasted the same for someone like me.

“Bidding begins at five hundred death crystals,” the lion-woman announced.

“One thousand,” a bull-warrior called from the lower tiers. His energy was blunt and heavy, the kind that tasted of old iron.

“Three thousand,” a winged one shrieked from higher up. As always, the words came out sharp and vicious, grating over me, practically begging me to attack the speaker. But my petals were on the ground, and my roots were deep within the soil. As much as I hated it, the winged ones were beyond my reach.

The lion-woman placed her paws on the rostrum as she acknowledged each bid. “Three thousand from House Keres. Do I hear more?”

“Five thousand crystals,” a dead-walker hissed.

The bids were climbing fast. Each one sent a ripple through the crowd. Each ripple fed the next, the Agora’s ambient death energy building on itself like a snake eating its own tail. I could taste the excitement on every creature in the stands. The hunger, the desire, the competition. All of them wanted her, and I hated them for it.

They couldn’t have her. They shouldn’t. They had no right. She belonged to me. She was mine. My mate.

The word erupted through me with a force that shook me to the core. I had no body, no claws, no way to step onto that stage. I was a tangle of roots and flowers trapped against the wrong side of a surface I couldn’t breach. But the conviction burned within me, undaunted. The thought of any of those creatures claiming her made something in me snarl with a newfound, violent ferocity.

A memory flared, sharp and vivid. The asphodels I lived in suddenly felt distant, replaced by muscle, skin, and a dense pelt. I hadn’t always lived in these roots. I’d had a tail, barbed and deadly, and it had curled viciously behind me as I ran.

The memory vanished as if it had never been, but in its wake, something was different. The flash left a residue. Now, I knew the truth. Once, I could have walked onto that stage and fought every creature in the amphitheater for the right to stand beside Ianthe. The lion-woman called me Skaros, and for the first time, the name felt like it belonged to me. Like Ianthe did. And yet, I could not reach her.

“Eight thousand crystals,” the bull-warrior bellowed.

“Twelve thousand,” the winged one—the Keres—countered. The Keres had always been arrogant and refused to yield. They certainly wouldn’t now.

The crowd’s excitement built and built. All the monsters in the stands were feeding the death energy with their desire. The combined surge pressed against my roots, hot and buzzing.

But I wasn’t the only one who felt it. On the stage, behind the lion-woman, Ianthe took a step back. The sweetness of her energy flickered. Underneath it, the feverish thing I’d sensed earlier stirred and pushed upward.