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“The box was there when we arrived.” Aster gestured toward where she had been lying. “On the floor beside her. Completely empty.”
Theron crossed to it at once and crouched, running his fingers lightly over the wood.
“Curious,” he murmured, making me grit my teeth. I didn’t care for fucking curiosities. I cared for Alexandra, warm and alive and berating me about something… anything.
“Theron,” I finally snapped, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Give me something.”
He abandoned the box without complaint and rose. “Then let us see what this room remembers.”
“And how exactly do you expect us to do that?” Aster asked, his own patience clearly fraying.
Theron gave him a pointed look. “I don’t expect you to do anything.”
Aster folded his arms. “Then explain.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Theron drew a heavy silver ring from his finger and held it up for all of us to see. The dark gemstone set within it caught the torchlight, faintly etched with a winged staff and two intertwined snakes.
“The Caduceus,” I murmured, recognizing the symbol of Hermes at once.
Theron nodded, turning the ring slowly between his fingers, scattering fractured light across the chamber walls.
“This was blessed by Hermes. God of travelers, thieves, merchants, and, on occasion, those with exceptionally good taste.” He paused. “It allows me to summon to my hand any possession I have bound to it.”
Before any of us could respond, the ring flashed, and something small appeared in his palm. A crystal vial no larger than my thumb, filled with clear liquid.
Lazaros stepped closer. “What is it?”
“Water from the River Mnemosyne,” Theron said, turning the vial in the light. “Also called the Pool of Memory. It once flowed in the Underworld.”
I frowned. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Few have, and for good reason.” His expression turned almost wistful. “The river dried up centuries ago. Too powerful a thing to exist, so the gods drained it to dust, rather than let lesser hands learn what it could do.” He shrugged, looking down at the vial. “This is all that remains of it.”
My eyes widened, understanding now the cost of such a thing, but I had to question if it was worth the life of an innocent maid.
“And how will this help, exactly?” Aster asked before I could.
“The water reveals a memory. The truth of a lost past. I will pour it into the room and then we will wait to see what it will show us.” He glanced about the chamber.
“And if it reveals nothing?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the frustration from my voice.
“I will not lie to you or give false hope. If it reveals nothing, then our hope of saving her diminishes greatly, for I do not believe I have anything else in my collection that can help her.” Silence settled over the chamber. All or nothing then… fucking perfect, I thought bitterly before praying to every god in existence.
Aster’s expression also darkened in a way I knew far too well.
“Hold on.”
I recognized that tone. It rarely came before anything good.
“You’ve worn that ring this entire time,” Aster asked.
“And?” Theron asked, making Aster roll his eyes.
“Then why, in all the gods’ names, did you drag us halfway across the realms after the Weaver’s Torch?”
Theron regarded him with the patience of something that had watched empires rise and rot to dust. “You labor under a misapprehension,” he said. “The ring does not answer for the whole of my collection. Only my most prized possessions are bound to it, and the Weaver’s Torch was never among them. It lay in the deepest vault, behind doors no hand but mine may open.” He turned the silver band idly on his finger as Aster’s jaw worked like a grinder, his teeth gritting.
Theron’s gaze sharpened. “Remember, you didn’t cross the realms to fetch a trinket, Minotaur. You came to ask a king for his aid, and your queen paid what I asked for it. The journey. The bargain.” His voice cooled. “The judgment of the gods, in my garden, where she might so easily have been left standing among the rest of my statues. That was never a thing my ring could have spared her. It was the cost. And she chose to pay it.”
