The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Twenty-One

There’s movement beside me, and light in the darkness, and someone moves the cool rag from across my eyes. I gasp, the light is so bright.

“Psyche.”

His voice. And it comes back to me then: the rearing horse, that moment of blinding pain. A shudder goes through my body.

It didn’t work.

I close my eyes again. Trapped. And worse than before, now. Will he lock me in my room after this? I’ll never get another chance.

He dabs the cold compress across my forehead again, then drops it in a pail by his feet.

“Ajax is a strong creature. Your injury is serious.”

I try to turn away, but a shriek of pain races up my right side.

“Be still,” he urges. “Psyche, did you hear what I said? Your injuries are...considerable.”

Even blinking hurts.

“How bad?” I say finally.

“Your right leg and arm were crushed. Some bone fragments, I fear, may be too small to heal fully. Your organs, at least, were spared. The damage to tendons, ligaments, I have not counted.”

The recitation is a grim one, and I can tell by the flatness of his voice that he knows it. He doesn’t sound angry: he sounds cold and emotionless, which I suppose I should be used to by now. Perhaps the anger will come later.

“I will bring whatever remedies my garden has to offer,” he says. “But nonetheless, you are mortal.”

I look away.

“If you mean I’m to die from this, then say it.”

He sighs.

“No, but as to whether you will walk again, I will not venture. It may be a slow process, and the healing will be painful.” He sits back. “But you will have my care and Aletheia’s, day or night.”

I close my eyes tight. To never walk again...I try to picture such an altered life. After all that has already happened, perhaps such a change should feel small. But now it strikes me that I should have taken up the demon’s offers when I had the chance: I should have run through those endless gardens and felt the scented grass crush under my feet, exploring as far as my legs would take me; I should have swum with the nymphs in that crystalline water.

“I had to get to Sikyon,” I say. “My family...”

But the act of speaking hurts, and I stop.

“I should have guessed you would attempt something like this,” he sighs. I look up at the cloaked face. From here, I see the merest trace of his shadowed jaw.

“You think Aphrodite’s eye does not search for you out there? It is foolish of you not to believe me.”

“Believe you?” I wheeze. “You wonder that I do not trust your words? Think of what you concealed from me.” Although the pain is shattering, I turn my head to look at him directly.

He bows his head just a fraction.

“I should not have concealed Sikyon’s fate from you. And yet I spoke the truth about your family. I believe they are yet alive, and thought perhaps in time I would be able to bring you good news. I did not wish to torment you with the knowledge of a tragedy you could not change. What is done now, is done. Neither of us can undo it.”

“You spoke so carelessly of them,” I murmur. “You told me their lives did not matter. As if what had happened was nothing.”

The black hood bows further.

“I did not mean to sound so callous. I merely meant...Psyche, I knew you would hold yourself responsible. As I held myself responsible: I should have predicted there would be some such retribution. I should have predicted it, but I did not.” He pauses. “I don’t regret saving you that day—I cannot regret it—but I blame myself for not foreseeing what would happen, for not being able to warn or save your people. When I spoke harshly last night, I was trying to ease that guilt. It is true that to my kind, all mortal life seems brief—sooner or later, all of you will enter Hades’ realm. But that does not mean your lives aboveground do not matter. I will carry Sikyon’s tragedy with me.”

Something floods me with his words, and I close my eyes. I cannot help it: I picture the children of the village, the small ones playing with marbles in the agora. And the youths I knew and the girls my age, recently married or about to wed. The elderly, the infirm, the frail. Which of them made it out of there?

“If you had left me on that rock…” The words tumble out, bitter. “If we had let the goddess have her way, they would all still be alive.”

He sits silent for a while.

“Lives are not coins, Psyche,” he says at last. “They cannot be so easily traded, one for another. Justice has a price of its own, and your death would have been a great injustice. I cannot regret my actions there—only that I could not avert that which came after.”

I say nothing to that. What’s to say? What does it matter to me, what he regrets or doesn’t?

“I will never know what happened to my family,” I say finally. “And they will never know what happened to me.” I feel my voice growing fainter, and greyness starts to cloud my vision.

“For now, Psyche, you must rest,” the demon’s voice says. “Your body needs it. Rest, and I will be here when you wake.”

The last words are all but lost. They float as if on grey mist, and I fall into a dreamless sleep.

*

I wake and sleep many times, and whenever I wake either he or Aletheia is there. Mostly, though, it is him. They feed me broth, and some sort of nectar, and there is always some new poultice or compress, the smell of strange herbs and ointments.

“Drink this,” they say, and I do. Whether it is days or hours or weeks that pass, I could not say.

And then I wake, and the room seems brighter than before. Sunlight is streaming through the windows, and this time it does not hurt my eyes. I am alone, but only for a short while. The door soon opens, and when he sees me awake, he hurries in, his black cloak swirling around him like water.

“How do you feel?”

I hesitate, making a quick inventory of my limbs.

“Tired, but there is only a little pain.”

“Indeed? Our remedies may be helping more than I expected.” I see his hood shift toward the window.

“You have slept for a day and a half.”

Is that all? He could have told me years.

The demon leans forward, and I shiver as he unwraps the bandages. I stare at his hands, the wiry golden hairs on the backs of them. His bronze skin seems to cut the air with light, and his grip is strong and sure. One palm cradles my leg as the other hand unwinds the bandage, and I feel the warmth of him, the weight of my limb suspended in his grip. I can feel each of his fingertips and the skin of his palm, and smell his wood-and-honey scent.

I think a sigh escapes my lips, and I clamp my mouth shut.

“I will check the bones.” He clears his throat. “If you do not object.”

I hesitate, then nod, though I’m not sure what he means. Gently he pushes my sleeve back to my shoulder, then moves a hand slowly down my arm, as though his skin is listening to mine. I stare at him.

“You can…feel, what’s inside?”

He ignores me. He seems distracted: I think at first he is about to deliver some ill news, but I can read him better than that now. It’s not dismay I’m witnessing, but surprise.

“What is it?” I say.

He doesn’t answer, just moves his palm to my leg.

“May I?”

When he skims his hand along the skin I bite down, because although the sensation that shoots through me is not pain, it’s just as vivid. A shiver so keen and bright, it’s like pain.

He sits back then, and I can feel his stare.

“Your bones,” he says slowly, “are healing extraordinarily well. Or at least, extraordinarily fast.” He pauses. “If you continue like this, perhaps in a few days you could be walking again.”

I stare at him. In my fever, did I misremember? I thought he told me I might never walk again; that if I did, it would likely be a long road.

“A few days ?” I say. “That is all?”

His voice is halting.

“I admit, I am also surprised. Though I suppose…” He seems on firmer ground now. “My garden may have even greater healing powers than I realized. And Aletheia, too, is a talented nurse.”

“It was you who nursed me,” I say, and then regret it. I see how still he grows at those words.

“I will let her know of your progress.” He stands from the bed. “She will be glad to hear.”

I watch him stride from the room. I am not so sure that Aletheia cares very much about my recovery. I think, perhaps, he just wanted to get out of here as fast as he could.

When he is gone I stare at the wall, thinking. Nothing is as I expected. I will not be bed-bound for weeks or months, or the rest of my life. And the demon…I had thought he would be angry, full of rebukes and punishment. But it is not like that at all. There is a heaviness in him, a strange air of resignation which I do not understand.

Am I a fool, not to listen to him? Not to believe that Aphrodite’s wrath will find me once I am outside these gates?

I suppose I am a fool. But even a fool may do what is right.

Later he comes to my room again with a vase of fresh flowers and places them by the window.

“I thought you should like to look at these.”

“Thank you,” I say, surprised.

The sunlight streams in. He hesitates, then takes a seat by the bedside. Neither of us speaks for a while.

“I know you think,” he says at last, “that I came for you that morning on the cliffs because you were desperate. You think that I wanted to drive a bargain from you against your will.”

I glance over, but not up toward his hooded face. For some reason, I’m too nervous for that. I keep my eyes instead on his hands.

“I know that you guess at my power, Psyche. Well, it is considerable.” He turns further toward me. “Please understand, if I had wanted to take you away by force, I could have done so at any time. I did not need your predicament to achieve it.”

Now I do look straight up at him, and my face is flushed for other reasons.

“Am I to congratulate you?” I say sharply. “On your restraint?”

He stiffens.

“I only meant…”

“That it is normal to abuse one’s power?” Of course that’s how his world works, and mine too. Whoever has power wields it over those with less. Men over women, women over slaves. And gods over all of us.

“What I am trying to say”—his voice is cooler now—“is that I helped you because I did not want to watch you suffer.” Under the cloak, he shrugs. “I had hoped that once you were here…that you would come to feel…”

A wave of heat ripples through me. He shakes his head.

“No matter. You need rest. I have distracted you for too long.”

Wait, I want to say, as he moves toward the door. Wait, and finish. Feel what?

But he’s already gone.

He does not come back that evening, nor does Aletheia. I watch the flowers at the window until the sun drops down behind them, and then I watch the stars. Sleep does not come. I toss and turn; my bones seem to itch under my skin. Is this what healing feels like?

But my thoughts itch too, restless and insistent.

It seems there may be cruelty in a god, and kindness in a demon. What has he shown me these last days, only kindness? I think of the riddle he teased me with in the weaving-room that day. Gods and demons are in the eye of the beholder, he said. Now I let the words dance in my mind for a moment, I let myself fancy them as true. But it can only be a fancy, and only for a little while.

And yet the thought comes to me, strange and uncomfortable: I do not want to leave him.

Foolish thought. Of course I want to leave here. And I will leave here, as soon as I can. He will have to lock me up if he wants to keep me from escaping again. But something in his voice and manner, something heavy and sad, tells me he won’t do that.

I think if I could see his face, this strange spell would fade. If I could see whatever cursed, monstrous thing he is, whatever truth he is adamant that I should not witness. This whisper of insanity in my brain would be silenced, then.

I tell myself to rest. To close my eyes and banish these senseless thoughts. But there is no denying it—just as there is no admitting it. When I’m falling asleep it’s his voice I hear, a voice like wind in the cedar trees. And it’s his scent, like the drift of incense through slow night air, that I find myself straining to catch, hunting it on my hair, my skin.

It’s night when I wake again. I’m disoriented, and at first I think it’s the pain of my healing limbs that has woken me. But it’s not that. I hear the sound of the bedroom door closing.

“Who’s there?” I say sharply in the dark.

There is quiet, and then in the darkness the quick sizzle of fire, and a candle bursts into flame.