Page 2 of Bought By the Manticore

Fera reached for my arm, trailing her aged fingers over the dark thorns curling underneath my skin. “This is all my fault. I should have been better. Should have found a way.”

“Even the ancient nymph clans can’t heal the Thorn-Sickness.” I shook my head and forced myself to smile. “You can’t mend what the gods have decreed.”

Fera pressed her lips together so tightly they went white. I wanted to thank her for all the care she’d given me, for everything I’d learned at her knee. But the words simply refused to come. Somewhere in the distance, a satyr bellowed, “Leave everything we don’t need behind. We’re running out of time.”

The door to the cottage burst open. A familiar one-eyed satyr rushed in, his face flushed with exertion. It was Silenus, the same man who’d warned us of our imminent doom. “Healer, it’s time. The last of the centaurs have just left. You can’t stay any longer.”

“Watch me,” Fera insisted, refusing to look away from me.

But Silenus refused to be swayed, thank the gods. He let out a loud whistle, and two other burly satyrs came from outside. Fera tried to cling to me, to fight them off. They dragged her out anyway. Before long, her angry wails faded into the distance. I was left alone with Silenus.

“Do you want to take pity on me, satyr?” I asked him. A part of me hated him because he’d been the final herald of my misfortune. The man who’d made all of them leave me behind. Maybe it was only fitting that he helped me find peace, instead of leaving me here to die alone. “One last good deed. To kill the cripple.”

The satyr made no move to kill me. Instead, he eyed me with something akin to… regret. “Listen, girl. Before I came here, I was an innkeeper in Colchis. I heard many things, some true, some not. But five years ago, a group of men came into my tavern.”

His gaze grew distant, and for a long moment, he didn’t speak at all. “They called themselves the Argonauts,” he finally continued. “Their leader… his name was Jason. A hero, many called him. And maybe he was. But that night, when he came to the inn, I heard him speak to his people.

“He knew where it was, the city of the dead. It’s real. He was looking for it. And… he had a girl with him. A quiet, pale woman.”

Silenus covered his mouth, as if fighting the urge to throw up. “The woman ran that night. And then, the Blight came and ate Colchis whole.”

“W-Why are you telling me this?” I asked him. Perhaps it was uncharitable, but in that moment, I didn’t care about anyone else’s misery. “Why does it matter?”

If Silenus noticed my resentment, he didn’t show it. “Jason called that girl ‘death-touched’,” he replied between gritted teeth. “And I don’t know if it means anything, but he said the women who carry death in their blood belong with the Blighted Ones.”

I lay there, on the tiny, blood-stained cot, and stared at him. Was that supposed to be comforting? Maybe it was.

“I ran after that,” Silenus confessed, shaking ever so slightly. “I’ve been running ever since. From Colchis, Jason, and that pale girl. But you are not me. Maybe… maybe you should be running toward the Blight, not away from it.”

Without another word, Silenus turned on his heel and left the cottage. He didn’t even bother closing the door, leaving it ajar as if to mock me one last time.

Running toward the Blight, indeed. I couldn’t even get up from the bed. I wasn’t going to run anywhere anytime soon. The best I could hope for was to close my eyes and sleep forever.

A stubborn vine slithered around my wrist and squeezed. The skin stretched taut in an obscene display, and the delicate bone threatened to snap. I stared at my own pulsing flesh, caught in a dark fascination with what the Sickness was doing to me.

Some wide-eyed nymphs in the village called it an ‘ancient gift’.“How blissful it must feel,”they’d once told me,“to have Korinos itself grow underneath your skin.”

But the older shamans did not share their awe. Fera had once said it was an old illness, so ancient it might very well predate the Shift. I believed her, and above everything else, I knew the intimate reality of the weakness and pain the Thorn-Sickness loved to inflict.

“Do you understand me?” I murmured, half to myself, half to the vines. “Can you tell if I have any hopes and dreams left? Do you want to consume those, too?”

Underneath the ragged blanket that covered my half-naked body, another vine squeezed my leg. That was answer enough.

I slumped onto the bed and stared at the wooden ceiling. I couldn’t close my eyes, not with all the pain I was in. But perhaps… I could distract myself. Surely, the gods would show me the mercy Silenus hadn’t. Surely the Blight would come soon.

By now, the villagers had long left. I was all alone in the only home I’d ever known, in a cottage that already smelled like my own death. My only company? The thorns consuming me from the inside out.

And then I saw it. The glow. When Silenus had spoken of the Blight, I’d expected a dark fog, the kind that always lurked over the distant lands of the dead. Instead, a silver-blue light danced into the room through the cracked-open door. Any other day, I might have called it playful. Today, I found it… curious, perhaps? Intrigued?

Or maybe it was the Thorn-Sickness that was curious. Suddenly, the vines no longer seemed so inclined to devour me from within.

Time seemed to slow, and each individual fragment of light crystallized into a perfect, glowing bloom. An asphodel. Fera had told me of the flowers of the dead, but I’d never seen one myself. I hadn’t exactly hoped to, but maybe I’d been wrong about that. Maybe the nymphs hadn’t been entirely mistaken, and sometimes, even death could bring you unlikely blessings.

Gradually, the cottage filled with flowers. They crawled toward me, their light blinding, yet impossibly soothing.

This was my chance. If I closed my eyes now, I’d fall asleep and never wake. I’d feel nothing. It would be easy. The beautiful glow of the flowers almost seemed to encourage me. But at the same time…

“Maybe you should be running toward the Blight,”Silenus had said before he left.