The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Ten

My stomach flips over. I turn and there he is: tall, cloaked, striding toward me. Daylight doesn’t make him look any less intimidating.

You did not dream him after all.

But I rather wish I had.

“Well, Psyche.” He comes to a halt before me, a faceless figure in black. “You are up and dressed. That is well.” The hood swings as he looks between the old woman and me. “But what is the problem; has Aletheia not made herself understood?”

The old woman looks at me, her eyes narrowed. I indicate the piece of fabric.

“She seemed to wish me to wear that, across my eyes.”

He pauses a moment.

“That is correct. In my own house I claim the privilege of shedding this cloak—which means you must be the one to wear a covering.”

I stare at him, at the darkness where a face should be.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean,” he says, “that you are not to look upon my face. And since humans are deplorable at keeping their eyes closed unless they are asleep, a blindfold, regrettably, is necessary.”

I can only stare. I had thought his strategy in concealing himself last night was all just a part of coaxing me into making this bargain. But I had been expecting—expecting with some dread—that today he would show his true self to me, whatever terrible face accompanies those demon wings.

“You mean I am not to see your face, even now?”

The black hood shifts.

“You are not to see my face—now, or ever.”

I stare. I do not wish to be blindfolded. Besides, however bad it is, whatever’s under that cape, it would be better to know than live with horrible imaginings.

“And why should that be?” I challenge. “Are you Medusa’s counterpart, then? Is your head made of snakes? I hear no hissing.”

He sighs, as though addressing a child.

“No, Psyche. I am no Gorgon, as you surely know.”

“Then why may I not look upon your face?” I demand. I knew it: he keeps me from seeing him, not for my protection, but for his own vanity. For power. He does not want me to know how ugly he is.

He does not hurry to answer.

“Think of it as a test,” he says finally.

“A test of what?”

“Obedience.” It seems to me there is a touch of humor in his tone, but I see nothing funny here. Nothing funny in being bound to an oath I never wished to swear. My throat feels dry.

“But how am I to live here…and never see you?”

“You must,” he says simply. “I will not risk anything else.”

My thoughts spin. Is this really to be my life? To live with a faceless host, and spend my days blindfolded? And what risk can he mean? There is nothing he can fear from me .

“It is only for the evenings,” he says lightly, as if it’s no imposition at all. “During the day I will be absent and you may do as you please.”

“But…” I step backwards. “I can go to another room while you are here. You will have your privacy…”

“No. I request your company at my dinner table.” His tongue lingers on the word request , as if I could doubt that this were anything but an order.

“Aletheia?” he says.

The old woman hands over the black cloth.

“Hold still,” he commands. I want to argue, but I’m too disoriented by all he has just said. What is it he doesn’t want me to see? Why go to such lengths to hide it?

The black silk slides down my face, settling over my eyes, blocking out the world. My eyes fight against the darkness, straining for light, and my mind fights too, like an animal refusing to be caged.

I will myself not to panic, then gasp involuntarily as the blindfold tightens, pulling hard against my eyes as he fastens the knot. Perhaps the blindfold is enchanted, too: the darkness is absolute, denser than the darkest night. And something tells me that if I tried to slip the knot myself, I would find it as stubborn as that iron gate.

“Breathe,” he tells me.

He said that before. Memories rear up in my mind again, as if the darkness sharpens them. I remember his black wings, the rush of air on my bare skin—and that voice, telling me to breathe.

I grimace.

I breathe, but not at your command.

“Good. Now Aletheia will give you her arm. She will lead you upstairs.”

I feel her bony grip on my arm—not hard, but not gentle—and then she moves away, pulling me with her. I have the terrible sense of stepping off a ledge, as though the next time I place my foot down it won’t find the marble floor, but a void to plummet into. A memory rushes up of Dimitra and me as children, playing at leading each other blindfolded around the house. It always gave me vertigo. Father had an explanation.

It’s not the threat of falling which makes us afraid, he said . It’s fear of the unknown.

Dimitra had pulled a face at that.

I’m not afraid of the unknown , she’d said. She was right.

The fear was always mine.

*

We make left turns, and right turns, and go up a flight of stairs—though I remember no stairs from my wanderings—before Aletheia lets me pause. This blindness—this forced blindness—is exhausting. My mind feels too alert, like an animal that senses something is amiss. I hear a door open, and then close once I’m ushered through.

His voice speaks from behind me.

“We are back in the great-room, Psyche. Come—there is something I wish to show you.”

The great-room: I suppose he means that enormous, muraled room that my bedroom opened onto.

I feel his presence draw nearer and he takes my forearm, quite gently. A strange feeling floods through me. I remember once again the ride through the air from Sikyon, the few moments of it before I lost consciousness. I felt it then, too, where his skin touched mine—this sensation, as if I could feel the life in his veins, the same way that when dipping one’s hand in a moving stream, one feels its current. It seems to sing out under his skin, the song of his life force, coursing and rippling.

Are demons immortal, I wonder. Perhaps this is what it feels like to touch an immortal.

He leads me a few paces forward, and stops.

“Careful. This stone is uneven.”

I hesitate, then feel it out with my foot. One wide, square stone, raised higher than the rest.

“This is the Hearthstone,” he says. “The heart of this palace. The oath-binder.”

Beneath the black silk, I blink.

“And why do you speak of oaths?” I fold my arms across my chest. “Have you not taken all the pledges you needed from me already?”

He sighs, as though I require some great patience from him.

“Psyche, I wish you to speak it here, on the Hearthstone: that you will never look upon my face.”

I don’t know why I hesitate. Why would I even wish to see his demon face? It is the other faces I’m thinking of now. The other faces so far away from me, which I love and cannot look upon.

“Very well,” I say. “I will never look upon your face.”

Not that I can imagine having the opportunity, given the lengths he’s going to prevent it. But my words seem to hang in the air, strangely final. Then he clears his throat, and the moment passes.

“Aletheia, we will eat now. Please prepare the lady Psyche for our meal.”

I feel Aletheia’s bony grip close over my arm again, and she tugs me away, into what I realize—once she shuts the door, and loosens the blindfold—is my bedroom. But out the window I’m greeted by the strangest sight. The view has changed: it is no longer of an endless, tranquil sea, but instead, seems to look out over a thick forest. I stare, then close my eyes and open them again. But the sea does not reappear.

Am I to believe this palace is… moving, somehow?

Aletheia makes an impatient noise in her throat, and indicates the divan where a new change of clothes has already been laid out.

“I am to wear these?”

I wait for Aletheia to turn her face to the wall while I change. My old nurse helped me dress often enough, but I do not wish to be naked under those scornful, beady eyes.

When I’ve finished, she gestures to a chair and table with a large mirror on it. I hesitate, then take a seat. She takes a comb from the desk and begins to run it through my hair, none too gently.

“Ow!” I protest. “You might go a little slower.”

She doesn’t listen, but proceeds to fasten my hair with surprisingly nimble fingers.

Since our nurse left, Dimitra is the only one who has dressed my hair—we used to dress each other’s. But that stopped some years ago, around the time people started to call me beautiful. Which was also around the time Dimitra began to dislike me.

Aletheia’s hands do not shake at all; they are precise and deliberate. Her movements do not match her age, I have noticed. Her walk, too, is the sprightly, powerful walk of someone much younger. But as I watch her gnarled old hands secure my hair in braids and pins, I can’t help but cringe. Despite her deftness, she is too old to labor over me like this, doing something I could certainly do myself. It makes me uncomfortable for another reason, too: I do not wish her to beautify me for him . But when she has finished, I must admit she has some special gift. My hair has never looked so elegant, and she has brushed it to a fine radiance, so that now it seems to catch the light strand by strand.

Then she holds up the strip of black silk once more. I feel my jaw lock. I want to protest. Perhaps I should protest. But what are the chances of me getting my way?

“All right,” I sigh. “Put it on.”

She does, and I try not to think of a lamb being led to the slaughter.

*

When Aletheia leads me through the doorway, I don’t need to see the table to know a feast lies there. The smells are mouthwatering, to the point that I have to keep swallowing the saliva that pools under my tongue. Grilled meats—something rich, like venison, and the briny smell of roasted fish; there’s the earthy tang of rosemary, oregano and thyme…stewed berries and jellies, I can smell them all.

Is it the blindfold, enhancing the senses that must substitute for sight? Or is it possible that my senses really are getting sharper in this place? Everything seems so…heightened.

I swallow, feeling the desperate growling in my stomach the nearer we get to the food. Aletheia stops, and I stop abruptly with her. She lets go of my arm and I hear the squeal of a chair being dragged out. She nudges me toward it; I feel for it, then sit.

There’s the sound of another chair sliding out.

“Well, good evening, wife.”

The voice sounds almost amused again, delivering the word wife like it’s a joke. It is a joke, I suppose—just not an amusing one.

“Your hair looks very well.”

“Aletheia did it. I had no say in the matter.”

“Hm,” he says. There is the sound of wine being poured, and the heady smell of it wafts toward me. My stomach rumbles again. How long since I last ate?

“Here,” he says, and I feel a glass next to my hand. I shake my head.

“No wine? You are sure?”

“I am sure,” I say, because although every fiber of my being wants to reach out and grab at whatever heaven-scented food and drink lies before me, I don’t trust myself to let any of it pass my lips. It might undo me completely; unravel me, like the peach did before. I don’t know what enchantments, what spells of seduction, exist in this place. There is no telling what they might do to me.

“I am not hungry, either.”

There’s a pause.

“Not hungry?” I hear him sip the wine. I swallow; my throat longs for a taste.

“You think my food is drugged,” he says. “I suppose to a mortal it may seem so. Things are different here. You will notice your senses become more heightened, pleasure and pain are amplified.” He pauses. “After dinner I will show you the gardens. You will see where some of our food comes from. You will see there is nothing sinister in it.”

Gardens? I had thought to find only walls and doors in this place.

“Nevertheless,” I lie through my teeth, “I am not hungry.”

“Very well.” His voice is unconcerned. “Suit yourself.”

He thinks I am being pettish, perhaps; that I am sulking for attention. Well, let him think it.

He carves something on his plate. I hear the sound of his lips parting, the sound of chewing, swallowing. I can almost feel the pleasure he takes in it.

“So,” he says after a while. “You explored my palace while I was gone. What do you think of it?”

I keep my hands folded in front of me. My belly growls, tormenting me. There is no need for me to answer his question. He knows well enough how astounding a place like this must be to my eyes. It would be extraordinary even to a king.

“You are blindfolded, not gagged,” he comments after a while. “I believe you still have the use of your tongue.”

“Where are we?” I say finally. “Where is this place?”

There is the sound of him chewing quietly. He does not hurry to swallow.

“I do not think my answer will satisfy you. In your world, you speak of the thin places—places where borders between the realms are more permeable.”

I’ve heard that. At home, they say there are parts of the forest—deep caves, or deeper lakes—where we may glimpse the Underworld.

“We are no longer in the mortal realm, Psyche. This is an enchanted place. A protected place.”

My throat dries up.

“We’ve left the mortal world?”

He pauses. “We are not outside it, but beyond it. The mortal world overlaps with us, as two footprints might overlap each other in the sand.”

I frown, struggling to understand the analogy, and what it means for me. “But you—you can move freely between them?”

“ I can. Mortals cannot.”

His voice is easy, its timbre rich and low. It is not how the voice of a demon should be. It is the kind of voice Father used to adopt when he would tell us stories, back when Dimitra and I were small children and sat at his knee. A voice for heroes and their great deeds.

But those days are long gone. I’m no longer a child, and I know that voices lie, just as faces do.

“I don’t remember getting here,” I blurt. “I remember the peach”—I blush, just thinking of it—“and then nothing. You lifted me from the cliff, and then…everything is blank.”

“Yes,” he says. “I did not wish you to see which way we flew. So I bade you sleep.” I remember the single word he intoned, and the darkness that came over my senses then.

“You magicked me, you mean.” An angry shiver goes through me. “You put a spell on me.”

And if he can do that, what else can he do? Can he command anything he likes? If he wished to, could he command now that I eat, and my hand would take the food and my mouth would open for it, against my will?

“I do not force mortals to act against their desires,” he says quietly.

I don’t let him see me scoff, but it is as though he hears my thoughts.

“Not,” he amends, “unless it is absolutely necessary.”

His confession only reminds me of what I already know: I must not trust this man. Although he is not a man at all, is he?

“What happened when you took me here?” I say. “I woke up in that bed wearing strange clothes, that’s all I know. What happened before that?”

He stops chewing.

“It is a short story. You were asleep. I told Aletheia to find you a sleeping-gown, and some clothing for the morning, and to put you to bed.” He takes another sip of wine; I hear the swish of liquid and the deep swallow.

“That is all?” I say, forcing my voice to be steady; remembering the rumpled sheets, the scent on my skin.

“That is all,” he confirms.

“Your smell was there,” I flush. “When I woke.”

There’s amusement in his voice.

“I carried you here in my arms, Psyche. If my smell on your skin offends you, there is a remedy for that. Or don’t they bathe in Sikyon?”

To my horror, I feel a rush of heat gathering suddenly behind my eyes. I will it back down. I will not rise to his bait.

“I have already told you, Psyche,” he goes on, when I say nothing, “I will take nothing from you that you do not freely give.”

Except for my obedience. My obedience, in exchange for his help. That was no small bargain.

“So what does it mean, then,” I keep my voice in check. “That we are…bound, this way?” What can this senseless “marriage” mean to him? It certainly does not seem to mean what it means in my world. He does not intend to make a slave of me, nor a courtesan.

“What,” I say slowly, “do you get out of it?”