If terminus-fonts are installed without X, then emerge installs only fonts into /usr/share/consolefonts. It does not put them into /usr/share/fonts. But cairo library is build to search fonts in /usr/share/fonts and therefore it cannot use terminus-fonts, even when installed. The installation of terminus-fonts should be performed fully, even when there is no X.
terminus should start using the font eclass
Thank you for report J.Taimr. Ported to font.eclass. Also now we install all fonts irrespectively to X USE flag. X USE flag now affects only font.{dir,scale...} generation. FIXED.