Page 5 of Bought By the Manticore

And now she was here, keeping me company while I waited for the bride market. She hadn’t asked what the lake took. I was grateful for that.

“So much in Asphodelia is silent,” I said. “I thought I should be too.”

Medea hummed under her breath. She didn’t believe me, but she didn’t question my lie either. “It helps, sometimes, to keep to yourself. Just as long as you’re all right with it.”

I wasn’t. But she already knew that. “I will be. Once this is over.”

Beyond the stone archway at the far end of the room, the Agora of Echoes was filling up. The sound filtered back to where we sat, a low rumble of movement and conversation that grew louder by the minute. Through the opening, I caught glimpses of the gathering itself.

Hundreds of creatures filled the tiered stone seating, packed shoulder to shoulder. Winged things perched on the upper tiers. Enormous horned figures sat hunched in the middle rows. A creature with a serpent’s body was coiled around an entire section of bench, and its neighbor didn’t seem to mind. The central stage was a perfect circle of polished black obsidian, and the torchlight from above slid across its surface like oil on water.

“Is it always this busy here?” I asked.

“The bride market is the biggest event in Asphodelia,” Medea replied. “Every monster in the city shows up. Most of them aren’t even bidding. They just come to watch.”

“Wonderful. An audience.”

“An audience that wants you to succeed,” she insisted. “The women who enter the bride market are rare. Death-touched women don’t come along every day. When one does, thewhole city pays attention. For most of the monsters in that amphitheater, this is the closest they’ll ever get to finding a mate.”

For all her encouragement, there was a strange tension in her voice. She wasn’t fully comfortable in the Agora, not really. A part of me wanted to ask her why, to ask her what she’d given up to be here. But I didn’t get the chance.

The sound of claws on stone drew my attention to the archway. A figure emerged from the corridor beyond, and I forgot about the amphitheater entirely.

She had the regal face of a woman, sharp-featured and imperious, with eyes like obsidian. Faint golden patterns adorned her skin. From the shoulders down, she was a lion, sleek and powerful. Her wings, made of dark, overlapping shards, were folded tight against her flanks.

“This is the one?” she asked, and her gaze found me on the bench.

“Yes, this is Ianthe,” Medea confirmed. Her already pale skin lost what little color it had left.

The Sphinx lazily padded into the room, ignoring Medea’s discomfort. “I know what brought you here, what you paid, and what you carry in your blood. I am Phix, the Sphinx auctioneer of Asphodelia. I preside over the market you are about to enter.”

A pale asphodel crept past her front paw as she spoke, its stem winding along the crack between two floor stones. Another followed, and then a third, curling around the base of the archway. One of them wrapped itself around Phix’s paw, and its petals clamped down on her toe. Phix looked down at it and let it stay there, her expression unreadable.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” she said. “But don’t get too close. They bite.”

“Does everything here bite?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Even the prize for your bride market?”

“Everything worth having has teeth,” Phix replied, as calm and emotionless as the Acheron. “But a woman who has already paid Charon’s price should know that better than most.”

She settled onto her haunches in front of me. Even seated, she was taller than me standing. “Tell me, Ianthe. Do you know how the market works?”

“Monsters bid. I choose.” It was the way the bride market worked all throughout Alia Terra.

“The bones of it, yes.” Her tail swept slowly across the stone floor. “The bidders will offer death crystals. They will try to outdo one another because that is what bidders do. Some will bid out of desire. Some out of loneliness. Some because they can smell what runs through your veins, and the scent of it will make them foolish.”

“But I’ll pick whomever I wish.”

“Tradition favors the highest bid, but tradition is a suggestion, not a law,” Phix answered. “The only law in my market is this: the choice belongs to the bride. The Moirae themselves do not overrule it. Do you understand what that means?”

I shook my head. I had no idea where she was going with this.

“It means you are the only person in that amphitheater with any real power,” she finished. “The bidders offer what they have. You decide what it’s worth. Remember that when the noise gets loud and the crystals start piling up.”

Medea touched my arm. “She’s right. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all their enthusiasm. But remember, you’re perfectly safe. And you’re the one who walks off that stage with someone. Make sure it’s someone you actually want.”

I looked at both of them: the ancient Sphinx with her riddles and the silver-haired woman who had pulled me off a shore and into a new world. Neither of them seemed worried about me. Phix was assessing me like a puzzle, while Medea wore the expression of someone remembering her own arrival, finding something familiar in mine.

“All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”