Psychē blinked. Slowly. Once. Twice.
"A… coin flip?" she repeated, her voice sharp with disbelief. "Is that truly all you propose? You wager your soul against a simple flip of chance?"
Acheron's violet eyes remained steady, unflinching, as if the absurdity of the situation belonged entirely to her. He did not smile, nor shift his posture. He simply nodded.
"It is sufficient," he said evenly. Each word deliberate. "Chance carries no favor. Only outcome matters."
Psychē leaned back, her hands folding in front of her as a faint laugh escaped. It was soft, almost musical, but with a sharp edge of incredulity. "A mortal dares reduce the complexities of a divine gamble to such simplicity. How bold. Or foolish. Perhaps both."
"Boldness and folly are alike when measured in souls," Acheron replied. Calm. Precise. Detached.
The goddess studied him closely, her dark eyes flicking from his face to the strands of hair that framed it, to the steady rise and fall of his chest. This was no ordinary mortal. He was far more controlled than anyone should be. There was an order to his audacity that made it feel less like chance and more like craft.
"Very well," Psychē said at last, straightening. Her hands moved with a flourish, summoning a perfectly balanced silver coin that hovered above the table. Its surface shimmered with spectral light, impossibly cold and smooth. "Call it, Acheron."
"Heads," he said.
Psychē arched a single brow, a flicker of amusement in her dark eyes.
"Rules?" she asked, voice sharp but curious.
"Only one," Acheron said evenly, his violet gaze steady. "No interference from either of us in the flipping of the coin, magical, physical, or even spiritual. I'll add that last point explicitly, given that I am facing the Goddess of Souls."
Psychē paused, weighing the words, the faintest smirk tugging at her lips. The rule was fair, even restrictive. She had intended to give the coin a temporary soul to tilt it subtly to her will, but that plan had been barred before it began. Still, she could not deny the elegance of the wager.
The coin began to spin.
At first it was an ordinary motion, the metallic sound small in the gazebo. Then the palace took notice. Moonlight fractured across the palace floor, thin lines of silver crossing marble like veins.
Time stretched. Not metaphorically, but physically. The first revolution of the coin lasted a breath, then another, then an uncounted number, each one containing the scent of a pastry, the rustle of a cloak, the quiet intake of breath from a distant watcher. The coin rotated slowly, suspended in midair.
Reflections of Acheron and Psychē shimmered across its surface. His profile repeated as a curved, violet shadow. Her face appeared as a pale crescent. Every flicker of light that hit the coin sent a message across its face and the message was the future arriving in tiny pulses.
Every flicker of light, every tiny wobble, became monumental. The soft creak of the bench on which Psychē might have sat, the hiss of steam from an untouched teacup nearby, the minute movement of a stray hair on Acheron's temple were amplified.
Tails.
Psychē's dark eyes narrowed, ready to claim victory. The thin muscle at the corner of her mouth twitched with preemptive satisfaction. She did not reach. The rule hung between them like a line drawn in quicksilver. No interference from either participant. She could not break her own declaration without unraveling the wager.
The coin wobbled. For an instant a ripple ran through galaxy-thin light around the gazebo. The hall seemed to exhale in collective suspense.
Then green-gold light erupted from the hall's corner. It was not sudden in the way of explosions. It flowed, a sluice of color that moved like a tide. Enodia appeared, fully manifested, towering and ethereal. When the veil rose the palace felt different, as though a whole register of music had been turned on low.
Her eyes were not the soft darkness of memory. They were ghostly black and they glimmered with contained flame, the kind of flame that consumes without pride. Every air molecule near her seemed to rearrange itself in acknowledgment. The coin spun on.
Enodia reached out. The motion was deliberate. Her finger did not appear to move in the way a human finger moves. The coin's arc shifted as if a draft redirected it, the angle changing by a hair, the balance nudged by an invisible force.
Heads.
Acheron exhaled softly. The sound was almost lost in the cathedral hush, but it was a sound and it carried with it a small, private satisfaction. The first step had succeeded. Enodia's intervention had not violated the rule. She had not been one of the participants. She had not altered destiny with a cheat. Instead, she had acted from outside the wager.
Psychē's lips parted. "No… that is impossible. You cannot—" Her voice was the thin crack of a plan she had not considered breaking.
"You see what has occurred," Acheron said evenly, his voice calm and unshaken. "Rules were not broken. I set the conditions: no interference from either participant. She did not act in violation. The outcome is valid."
Psychē's dark eyes blazed with frustration and awe. She could see Enodia, fully, undeniably present, yet she could do nothing. Every argument she might make to unravel it was blocked by the boundary of the wager itself. The coin had landed and the past could not be undone.
The hall catalogued the moment with the gravity of an archive. Enodia lingered by Acheron's side for a heartbeat, a wisp of shadow and green-gold light, then receded like smoke into the moonlit air. She did not remain to be seen.
Acheron stood perfectly still, hair cascading over his shoulders, posture unwavering, violet eyes resolutely calm. A flicker of warmth passed through his gaze, human and private, visible only if one searched for it.