The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Nine

I force my eyes open and blink—it’s like swimming out of a drugged sleep. But once I can focus again, I can’t stop staring.

I’ve never seen so much gold in one place. I’m gazing up at a ceiling that feels as tall as a temple. The walls are marble, inlaid everywhere with gold. The draperies are silk. When I turn my head I see shimmering fabrics laid across the floor, nothing like the hide or woven rugs we had at home.

Home.

Father. Dimitra.

Do they think me dead?

Am I dead?

I always pictured the Realm of Shades being a little…greyer.

My gaze shifts to the window. No, this cannot be the Underworld—there is a blue sky outside, and a blue sea. The water is still, utterly motionless. But it’s nothing I recognize. Wherever I am, it must be far from Sikyon.

I raise myself up a little and examine my surroundings. I’m in a bed, one that must surely be finer than the one even the King of Sikyon sleeps in. There are objects of luxury everywhere around me: marble and onyx statuettes, bouquets of flowers made of molten gold, and golden vines that climb the walls and twist their way to the towering ceiling. No mortal smith could create anything so fine. I sit up in bed, and the heavy feeling starts to lift. How long have I slept for—hours? Days? I frown, looking around me at this stately bed. It comes to me that this is not an ordinary bed. It is a marriage bed.

And this silk garment I’m wearing, where did that come from? It’s finer than any chiton I’ve ever worn—these seams, the curve of them, they fit my body like a glove, with no need for brooches or pins. But it’s paper-thin, and evidently not meant to be day-clothing, for there is a fine gown laid out on the chair in front of me, together with the most luxurious undergarments I’ve ever seen.

What is all this? What place is this? How did I get here? I touch the back of my skull. I remember the cliff, the peach, and then…nothing.

I raise my hand to my face to brush back the loose hair matted against my forehead, and stop. That smell. Woodsy, like incense. I smell of him.

I look around me at the rumpled sheets, the wide marriage bed. Why can I remember nothing of last night? Nothing from when the demon lifted me into his arms, and I looked down into the water—after that, everything is blank.

As I draw in a breath, the scent of him hits me again. I shiver, then pull back the sheets and place a tentative foot on the floor. These floor coverings…the softness is extraordinary. It’s as if all my senses are waking up, or maybe it’s just that everything here is incomparably finer and more luxurious than anything I’ve felt before.

The bedroom’s gilded door opens noiselessly, and I find myself staring into a room that at first my mind cannot fully absorb. It makes the bedroom look humble by contrast. Here, there are murals on every wall that put the first craftsmen of Sikyon to shame. And the room is so enormous! It must have taken years to paint it all. The furnishings are lavish, too, and none more so than the tremendous dining table at one end of the room which looks as though it could host a king’s gathering. The table is heaped with food—figs, almonds, dates, yogurt, honey, bread with split seams of warm crust—and involuntarily, my stomach cramps and growls. How long since I’ve eaten; how long was I asleep? It seems like days that I’ve eaten nothing but that peach…

That peach.

Next to the dishes of honey sits a single peach, sliced open on a golden platter.

I want to approach the table. I want to devour everything I see there. But I would be a fool to do it: the last bite I took, took me here.

A door swings open across the room and I step back quickly, almost tripping over a lushly embroidered footstool. My breath hitches, but it’s not him—it’s an old woman. Her hair is bone-white, thin as spun sugar. Her face is deeply lined, her eyes black and beady.

She doesn’t look surprised to see me.

“Grandmother,” I address her as I would back home. “Please, tell me where I am.”

She says nothing, just looks at me with those birdlike black eyes.

I bow my head, then try again.

“Forgive me. I am a stranger here. Where is”— what to call him? —“where is the one who brought me here?”

But she remains silent—watchful, and silent.

Has she been instructed not to answer? Or perhaps she doesn’t speak the Hellenic tongue. She may be from one of the neighboring countries. A slave, perhaps?

I place a hand to my chest.

“I am Psyche. What is your name, Grandmother?”

Nothing. After a few moments, she turns and disappears back through the doorway.

He told her not to speak to me, no doubt. A wave of foreboding goes through me. Those last memories are becoming clearer the longer I’m awake; the details sharpen. I see it in my mind again, those great dragon-wings, black as oil, unsheathing from his back.

I shiver. Everything here is so beautiful. But demons may be rich, I suppose, and enjoy fine things as much as any king.

I scan the enormous room again: there is the door beside the dining table, where the old woman came from. The bedroom door where I stand now. And on the opposite side of the room, another door. That is the one I make for.

If the old woman will not give me answers, then I must gather them for myself. I will find out what this place is.

And I will find him.

The door leads to a corridor with a high, vaulted ceiling, lit with torches in sconces—when I looked out the bedroom window it was daytime, but there are no windows here. The corridor seems to go on for a very long way, with doors leading off to left and right. There were slippers by the bed but I did not put them on, and now my feet pad on marble cool to the touch.

I come to the next door and pause. There might be hundreds of rooms in this place, for all I know. It all seems like a dream.

I remember how I thought he was lying when he told me of an enchanted place, one that could shield me from the eyes of the gods. But it is no great stretch to see that this place must be enchanted: at the very least, it was not made by mortals.

So the black-winged creature is no madman. But he might be something much more dangerous than that.

I hesitate, then push open the door beside me.

An empty room—beautiful, grand, and bare. I stand there a moment, then let the door close again and move on. The next room is empty too. I start to open the doors of each room I pass. Some are bare, some are not. One is a music room, but giant in size, with harps and lyres that appear to be made of solid gold, and pipes and flutes and bells, and stringed instruments of every kind. Another room is some kind of library, housing hundreds—perhaps thousands—of papyrus scrolls. Some scrolls hang on the wall, where the writing glows like jewels. Others are tied with silken ribbons and housed in long cabinets that run the length of the room. I’ve never heard of anyone, even the king, owning more than one or two such scrolls. Such work must take years—decades—to produce.

Gently, I close the door again and move along to the next room. No one has forbidden me from exploring, but I probably wasn’t supposed to venture this far.

Then I open the next door, and gasp.

In the center of the room is a white cage many times my height, and so wide it would surely take some time to walk its diameter. And inside it, birds: cawing, clicking, chirruping. A riot of noise and color. I stare. Birds such as these don’t exist where I come from, nor have I ever heard stories of such creatures. Their feathers are yellow, or red, or sea-colored; some are small as gemstones, others as big as a man. They are beautiful, exquisite and strange. And noisy.

After the silence of the corridor, the sound of them is overwhelming.

The noise seems to intensify as I watch them—I think they see I’m here, and are calling to me. Suddenly my breath catches in my chest and I step back, closing the door roughly. I don’t want to look at them anymore, all that beauty in a cage. I move fast down the corridor, which seems more claustrophobic now than before. Doors and more doors! Where is the end of all this?

I go left, then right, wherever turns present themselves. My footsteps echo and ring out. I feel tight-chested, breathless. I need air .

The things I don’t want to think about are piling into my mind now. The rocky ledge in the green dawn; the black-winged stranger and his unholy bargain. The peach. The binding , as he called it. The way I smelled of him when I awoke.

I am his wife now .

The words don’t seem real. They’re fantastical, absurd. It’s as though I dreamed the whole thing, and perhaps I did—after all, where is he now, the cloaked stranger? There’s no one here but me and that old woman.

At last there’s an end to the corridor, and a door in it. My breath fights in my chest as I burst through it and find myself outdoors, with sky above me. I gulp down air. I’m in a yard, with what looks like a horse stable to my right. The sky is full of scudding clouds, and in front of me there’s an enormous double gate, black metal, intricately formed. There are no gaps in it, no way to see what lies beyond. The rest of the yard is enclosed by high walls. What’s outside those gates? What strange land houses this place? I go to the gate but when I push, it doesn’t budge at all, not a hair’s breadth. I wonder whether it’s a locking mechanism, or something more. An enchantment, perhaps.

I turn, hearing a noise from the stables. The stamp of a hoof, then a whinny and snort, and a horse’s black muzzle nudges its way over the top of the stable door. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a majestic creature. Its coat gleams like black silk, and its eyes are golden, like clear honey.

For a moment we stare at each other.

Then it whinnies again, and three companions come to their stable doors too, snorting softly in answer. One’s a chestnut, one a roan, the last a shell-white. I think they might be the most beautiful animals I’ve ever seen. In Sikyon, horses are rare and valuable beasts. Our horse Ada is a stocky workhorse, old and tired, nothing like these exquisite animals—and yet we were thought rich to have her.

Poor old Ada. My eyes tear up despite myself.

Dimitra always loved horses. When we were children, a wealthy family nearby had a few horses, and Dimitra used to make me go with her to visit them. They would always be there behind the stone wall, as if waiting for her, ready to nuzzle her palm and collect whatever treats she’d brought. I was always afraid they would bite her, but Dimitra was fearless. She was so tender with them—tender in a way she never was with me. She’d stroke their foreheads, whispering.

“Were you hungry? Were you lonely? Hush, I’m here now.”

As if they were the motherless ones, not us.

Oh, Dimitra.

I close my eyes. My sister. My father. What are they doing now?

The door back into the great palace opens, and there’s the old woman in the doorway, frowning at me. She still doesn’t speak, but the look on her face confirms my suspicion that I’m not supposed to be here. She just lifts her hand and gestures, beckoning me.

I hesitate, then step her way. Where else is there to go?

Once I’m in front of her, she holds out something for me. A piece of fabric—black, shimmering. It reminds me of that cloak—the cloak he wore last night.

“What is it?” I ask.

She scowls deeper, then shuts her eyes, miming something: a ribbon being drawn across them.

A blindfold ? She stands in front of me, waiting. I shake my head. Why she wants me to blindfold myself, I’d prefer not to guess. But I know one thing, and she might as well know it too.

“I will not be putting that on.”

Then from behind me, I hear a noise: the clanging of a metal gate.

“And what”—a voice, his voice, travels toward us—“seems to be the problem here?”