The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Thirty-Two

I can’t move. I’m immobilized, arms at my sides, feet locked.

“Why do you do this?” I force my heart to beat steadily, and my voice to stay calm. “I undertook to do you a favor, a fair exchange. Who will plead your case if you do not let me go?”

“You are more useful to us like this,” the voice answers. Her tone has changed. It is not so plaintive or so cloying now.

“You are the one Aphrodite seeks. The troublemaker. If we are the ones to catch you, she will thank us.”

Thank us! Free us!

My heart thunders in my chest.

“So I am to be your bounty?”

“You are to be our tribute,” the voice answers.

My throat is dry; my mind races. There is one thing, only one, I can think of. My quiver of arrows is pinned against my back, and the great branch holding my shoulders keeps me from raising my arm. But my mother’s knife is still strapped to my waist, and I think I have just enough movement to reach it.

Perhaps it’s just fancy to think that a knife will do any harm to a dryad, but it’s all I have. Even a small wound may cause a shock, enough to loosen her grip for just an instant, and an instant will be enough.

I don’t have time to doubt myself.

“Do not kill me.” I play for time. “You will arouse the wrath of my husband. You would not wish to be cursed by the gods a second time?”

But as I speak I use my one free arm to burrow down my side, snaking toward the sheath belted at my waist. I feel the hard, jeweled hilt under my palm. The branches tighten—do they feel my movement? Do they suspect?—and I think my arm will be locked, after all, at my side, and that I will die like this, like a fly in a web. But the thought makes me wrench harder. My shoulder cries out again in agony, but the knife is in my hand now. Without a second thought I raise it and bring it down hard, hoping to cause just a split-second of pain, enough for a moment’s disruption.

But instead there is a terrible, unearthly shrieking. My blood runs cold, and I feel myself falling, suddenly untethered. I’m on the ground: the great tree has released its grip, its branches flinching from me as if scalded. The branch that pinned my shoulders lies severed on the ground. The tree’s agonized call reverberates inside my head. The knife…it did this. It traveled through wood as if it were butter, as though it were nothing at all.

The voices echo and flurry, calls of horror, so frenzied I can hardly make them out. But there is one word I hear.

Adamantine!

I know what adamantine is, but it makes no sense. This little blade in my hand cannot be that.

But the dryads are in chaos, and the mother-tree still cringes from me, so I don’t stop to think, I don’t stop to wonder. I jam the blade back in its sheath, then dash as fast as I can through the circle of trees, back out into the rain, as far beyond the dryads’ reach as I can get. I race in the direction Ajax went, and I run until my lungs sting before I remember that I must not travel through the open fields; that the path is the safest route, if not the shortest.

What was I thinking, to leave it at all? The oracle warned me not to stray from it. What need had I to avoid some mere rain? And then to trust the dryads’ promises! Betrayal is second nature to the gods—and those I just encountered were barely even gods anymore. They were what a god may become, if it is locked up and starved of all that is natural to it.

The path is muddy and waterlogged when I get back to it, but I tramp along it nonetheless, letting the wet dirt suck at my sandals. My shoulder throbs faintly; my hair smacks against my shoulders in wet hanks. After being astride a horse for so many days, walking feels like an unnatural motion, newly painful. But none of that is what I think about.

Adamantine.

I think back to the stories told at my father’s knee: adamantine, the only substance that can sunder a god. But it cannot be. Surely the dryads were mistaken. What happened was simply the work of a very sharp blade—even a dryad’s tree is only made of wood.

And yet the feel of it…it makes me shiver even now to remember it. It moved through wood as no blade should, as no blade can . It was easier than parting water.

I take the knife from its sheath again and stare at it. There is some wet smear on the blade—tree sap, I suppose, only this is sap from a dryad’s tree. I turn the blade side to side, and it seems to me the sap has a purplish glow. Ichor . There is a touch of that in all immortal blood, according to the stories.

I bend and clean the knife against the wet grass, then return it to its sheath.

Adamantine.

If the dryads were right, then how came my mother by such a thing? How came a fisherman’s daughter to possess such a dangerous treasure? By theft? As a gift?

I am told that Atlantis is an unusual place. It is an island more beautiful than most, more perfect and more lush—which is why they say it belonged to the gods once, before they tired of it and ceded it to mortal kings. It is rich with resources, gold and silver and precious gems, richer than other parts of the Hellenic lands, and so the mortal kings fight over it even today. Many strange things have washed ashore on its beaches, and gods roam there still, upon occasion.

I shake my head. Still nothing explains this .

My mother must have known the blade was special, I decide. But perhaps she didn’t know quite how special.

If only I could ask her.

But I know this much: if the knife is truly of adamantine, then it is the rarest, most dangerous kind of object there is.

My stomach turns at the thought.

I do not feel powerful carrying such a thing. Perhaps I should, but instead it feels as though I have placed a target on my back. If word gets out, which it will, then surely I will become the greatest enemy, not just of Aphrodite, but of all the gods—for the thing I carry can do what not even a god can do to another god.

It can end immortal life.

I swallow the cold feeling in my throat. Part of me would like to get rid of the blade, but that would be foolish now. It will not stem the dryads’ rumors, and it is the best defense I have. Perhaps I will have the chance to make a trade with it. I can buy our freedom, perhaps—mine, and Eros’s.

A small voice laughs within me. You are a dreamer, Psyche, it says.

I wipe the rain from my face—it is lessening now, but the air grows colder. The mud path gives way to stones and crags, and here and there the rocks are sharp enough that they threaten to poke right through my leather soles. My thighs feel weak, the muscles strained with overuse, and the impact of each step seems to judder through my bones. The air is frigid now, the coldest I have known. When I exhale I can see my breath before me. I pull the chiton tighter around myself and remember the harpies’ threat, to come for me when my body lay cold on the ground.

I lean into the uphill path.

I miss Ajax. Not just the speed with which I traveled on his back and his steady footing. I miss his presence. I didn’t listen. I chose wrongly. And now he is gone.

The sound comes distantly on the wind: a chorus I remember from Sikyon, one that would make the farmers look nervously at each other, and ensure all the hen houses were secure.

Wolves.

I cannot tell how far away they are, but they are ahead of me at least. The wind is in my favor, carrying their howls back to me, instead of my scent toward them.

The rain starts to fall again, but strangely. It’s softer, colder, feathery. I put a hand out, watching it land against my skin, slow and milky. I have heard of this. Father said that in the northern lands it happens sometimes. The water in the sky is so cold it changes shape and texture, forming this odd, feathery rain they call snow. I push on as it grows thicker, muting the world around me.

Then I round the next bend, and let out a gasp. This white rain, this snow, has coated everything. It lies thick on the ground and edges every tree-branch with white. The sky is white, the earth is white. How is anything supposed to survive in such a place? How am I supposed to survive?

My wet clothes are beginning to freeze, and the chill is making me shake enough that the quiver of arrows strapped to my back rattles. Only three of the cedarwoods are left now. If only I had been able to collect those left behind in the harpies’ field.

I walk on, the wind at my back, the world like crystal. There is fog, now, as well as the snow. I seem to trudge through it for a very long time. And then I stop, hearing a noise at my back. It’s almost muffled by this snow-covered world—but not quite.

I turn, and see him. A young wolf, perhaps born just this year. But large enough already to kill me, quick enough to corner me with one spring. He bares his teeth at me, his hackles all risen. A deep growl curls from the back of his throat.

Danger . The word comes into my head as if someone else has placed it there: as though it’s not my thought, but the wolf’s. And though it’s surely just a fancy, it makes me remember something useful. He may be just as scared as I am, and may attack, not for food, but because he sees me as a threat.

I drop my eyes a little, bending my body lower so as not to look like I’m challenging him.

Pass , I think, and step away from the path. I push the word at him, an invitation, not a command, pushing it toward the place the word danger seemed to spring from. Maybe if I think it hard enough, my whole body will show it; somehow I will make the creature understand.

And perhaps somehow he does, or perhaps it is the fact that another great chorus of howls drifts now from some distant place. The young wolf snaps his gaze to the hills beyond me. He darts one last, brief look my way before darting forward and disappearing into the shadows and the thick snow. Only then does it strike me that I could have used the knife. I could have thrown it as he ran, and had a pelt tonight, to keep me from freezing.

But it’s too late now, and besides...the wolf may not have heard the promise I made him in my head, but to me it was a contract. I will not hurt you if you will not hurt me .

If only I could make such a contract with the winter air. My breath’s coming fast, and each intake chills my throat, a cold burst that flares in my lungs. The light is not yet gone, but the sun is below the horizon, and the moon is out. I wonder if I will survive the night out here.

Is it better to keep walking, or try to find a place to bed down? But if I bend down in the snow, it is surely a guarantee of never waking. And every step is a step closer to my goal.

To reaching him.

Will he be glad to see me? Will he berate me for how I left him, for the fall of his temple? Memories flash through my mind of my first days in his palace. His haughtiness, his amusement. As though because I was mortal, and a woman, my emotions must be flimsy things. At least, that is how it seemed to me then. But there were assumptions I made, too, about his intentions and his character. I did not understand how much he had risked, all to offer me the one contract that would stand between me and death.

And what now? Even if I reach him; even if I free him?

Eros belongs in the Olympian halls, where I could never be welcome.

I shake my head. One foot in front of the other .

The snowy landscape grows bluer, the fog thickens. The sound of my feet on the icy ground is like crystals breaking. Ahead I can see where the path narrows and dips into the earth, a gully of sorts, though any water that once flowed at its base is dry now. Rocky walls rise up on either side, banks of sheer stone with trees at the top.

I cannot see how far it goes on like this, before the path returns aboveground. I will be sheltered from the wind, which is an advantage, but I don’t like the idea of being down there for very long, unable to run except along a straight line, and exposed to anything that might be prowling above.

I walk on, and hear my footsteps grow louder as the walls of the gully rise on either side of me. The snow on the bottom muffles my step a little, but not fully. It’s a fraction warmer down here at least. Above me, the trees climb higher, almost meeting in the middle over the ravine, black shapes against the foggy sky. It will get dark much sooner down here, I realize. Perhaps if I don’t see light after this next bend I should turn back.

I put my hand to the steep wall, feeling my way. The stone is cold and hard. That’s what’s making me shiver, I suppose, and causing this sudden prickling feeling.

When I round the bend, instead of more light, there’s less. The world is almost black. But there, in the darkness—I stop in my tracks. Pinpricks of light, forty or fifty of them, hovering there like tiny, greenish stars.

Until a pair of them blinks.