The Ruin of Eros

Chapter One

A fire warms my back as I look out over the icy land.

Winter.

We weren’t supposed to still be here by now.

“Shut the door,” my husband says behind me. “You’ll let the cold in.”

It’s barely first light outside. I close the door, and turn. The fire crackles behind him, lighting him up in its golden glow—but he’d glow anyway, fire or no fire. My husband may be a fallen god with waning powers, but he still looks every bit the part. Any mortal would know by looking at him that he’s a creature of some other realm.

At least, they would know it for a moment or two, before the sight scrambled their brains and drove them crazy. Humans aren’t supposed to look at gods, and especially not this god. It is some special curse he was born under: all the gods are born beautiful, but not like this. Not the kind of beauty that destroys the senses. As to why I can look upon him when other mortals can’t, well, it’s a mystery. I don’t know why I’m the exception to the rule. I’d like to say it’s the work of the Fates, allowing us some special kindness, only I know the Fates don’t deal much in free favors.

Besides, it’s not the only thing about me that’s not quite ordinary.

“You’re daydreaming again,” he says, teasing me or chastising me, I can’t tell.

“I’m thinking of Atlantis.”

He nods.

“Soon,” he says.

*

Atlantis is where we have been bound these many months, though it has been a slow journey, and halted completely when winter fell. If we weren’t hiding from all the gods of Mount Olympus, it would have been a different story. But to hide from their gaze we must journey as mortals do, slow and steady. And this winter was much harsher than any I have known before. We began our journey to Atlantis before the leaves started to turn—I thought then we’d arrive before the last leaves had fallen from the trees. But a journey that, even for mortal travelers, should have taken no more than a short season, has taken us two long ones.

The snows were so heavy that many of the roads became impassable, and the blizzards too harsh for a mortal like me to travel in. Not to mention the rivers froze solid and ice cracked the trees in droves, throwing them across the mountain paths. When it thawed, the ice melts flooded many towns. Everyone says they’ve never known a season like this one, not even in the north do they have such weather. The gods are angry, they say. And well they may be. The world is in uproar—in its weather, in its peace among men, or lack thereof. Sometimes I even wonder if we’re the cause of it. That sounds arrogant, no doubt, but since Aphrodite’s son tricked his mother in order to take me as his bride, the unthinkable has happened more than once. Since then, Eros has been exiled from the Pantheon, and his brother, Phobos, was almost killed at my hand.

Eros says he doesn’t blame me for what happened with his brother, back on Olympus, and indeed I had no choice; what I did was only to save him. But still, it was my hand that threw the blade. That maimed a son of Aphrodite for eternity, that left him flightless and deformed.

That is one of the reasons we are pursued: for vengeance. Eros’s brothers, Phobos and Deimos, will not rest without it.

But there’s also the question of the knife, that blade that severed Phobos’s wing. No ordinary knife can do such a thing. Silver or iron or bronze: a god is infallible to all of them. But somehow, the blade I carry with me, the only inheritance I have of my dead mother’s, turned out to be an adamantine blade. How she came to possess such a thing, I cannot fathom. But it has made every god distrust me, and turned them all against us. They want us found so that they can wrest my mother’s blade from my hands—and whether those hands are warm with life or cold with death, I suspect is all the same to them.

*

“Are you ready?” Eros says.

I nod, and he hoists me up onto Ajax’s back. This horse and I have known each other for some time now. He is a horse of the gods, quicker and more sure-footed than any I have known. I wrap my feet firmly around his broad back, and Eros leaps up behind me, finding his seat with one bound. His arrows rattle in the quiver on his back.

My husband’s arrows are not like human arrows. They come in two kinds, and the tips of each contain a potion: one, a toxin that brings death to any mortal creature; the other, a potion that makes them fall in love with whoever they next lay eyes on. I used to think the first kind of arrow was the dangerous one, but now I’m not sure. After what I’ve seen, I wonder if love isn’t the most dangerous curse of all.

Some would say it’s the curse I live under.

After all, a year ago I had a home, a family, a peaceful life. I was engaged to the best discus thrower in Sikyon town. I thought I was happy. And then there was Eros, and my old life disappeared.

But though my life is infinitely harder now, and we live from day to day in uncertainty, I know I would give up nothing. Every time I look in his eyes, I know it. Every time his fingers touch my skin. I used to think it was some witchery of his, some enchantment, that stirred such feelings in me, the flush of rapid heat that sparks through me at his touch. But now I know it is the most natural thing there is. That is what the gods are, after all: they are nature itself.

*

The dawn sky is one such as I have never seen. Flame colors in the east, and the color of a plum in the west, the colors fusing in the center like wine mixed with blood.

Whether it’s a good or bad omen, I can’t say.

The snow around us has started to melt, but there is still enough of it to create a strange reflection of the sky overhead, mirroring its unnatural colors. Below us is the village, and below that, the path that leads down, out of these mountains.

Now we are in the last mountains of the Argolic, one of the three great peninsulas that mark the end of the southern lands. There is nothing after this but islands. Any ships of note in these parts set sail from Skala, the great southern bay ruled by Sparta, and carve around the peninsula to the east. By coming overland to the coast here, we hope to keep a lower profile. These are rugged mountains, and beyond them, Eros has warned me, are only small towns. They will not have anything larger than some small fishing-craft, but that will suit our needs well enough.

Eros nudges the horse’s flank, and we make our way carefully over the crest, and onto the narrow path that zigzags down the first portion of the mountainside before disappearing around a high pass. I take a breath and feel the cold air in my lungs.

We step carefully, little by little. The sky grows thick with clouds again, and I wonder if there is one more snowfall left in this season after all. That would not serve us well.

Eros jumps down.

“You ride. I will walk alongside you a while. I need to stretch my legs.”

Often he makes this excuse, but I think it’s just to protect me and Ajax. Now he walks in front, acting as our sentinel, lest any white wolves of these snowy lands or other dangers befall us. Then again, maybe he does need to be in motion. He is a restless god, full of energy despite his weakened state. Here and there, pockets of his followers still exist, but since the great split with Olympus—since his mother ostracized him—his temples have been outlawed here in mortal lands. Without them, without mortal worship, his powers grow weak. But not his ischys, his life force. That is what keeps a god immortal, what keeps him alive. And that sill flows through him like golden fire. I feel it whenever I touch him.

The hours pass slowly, painfully. Ajax must tread carefully, and we walk in silence, listening for the creak of snow ahead or behind. Listening for danger.

Until something sounds above us.

“Watch out!” Eros shouts, and Ajax bolts forward. A heavy snow-slide comes tumbling off the ledge above us, smashing into the ground where we were a moment ago, before rolling forward, down into the abyss, shuddering. I watch it gather momentum, rolling away from us until it explodes in a final blast of white, far below.

The ice is cracking and the snows are melting; the world is changing and shifting again. I should be afraid, but I cannot find it in me, not today. It would have been wiser to stay in our wooden home some weeks longer, to let the new season settle, but I was eager to be on the way. We have been held back long enough already.

“Are you all right?”

His tone is rough with concern; with anger, perhaps, that I insisted on this early departure. But I have been impatient to reach Atlantis for a long time now. So has Eros, come to that. There have been rumors of war on the island—it is a rich island, often fought over—so Eros has hopes of finding his father Ares, the god of war, there. He thinks Ares might take our part, and defend us against the other Olympians.

“If we have one god on our side,” he says, “others will follow.” But I think finding that one may be harder than he thinks.

As for me, Atlantis is my mother’s ancestral home, and a place I have long wanted to see. But there is another, more urgent, reason for me to be there, and soon.

Months ago, in a small hamlet outside Kalavryta, we heard tell of two travelers who’d journeyed that way before us—travelers bound for Atlantis, whose description was exactly that of my sister and father. Eros warns me not to hope too much, and yet I feel an inner conviction that my family is alive, and that I will see them again. Somehow.

But it is a long way from Kalavryta to Atlantis, and much could have happened between now and then. And even if they reached it, that would have been three seasons ago by now. The longer we delay here, the less likely it seems that I will find them.

“Psyche,” Eros asks again, his voice growing taut now. “Are you all right?”

I answer without turning around, my gaze still locked on the foot of the valley floor where the avalanche tumbled.

“Fine.”

But not long after, Ajax loses his footing, and skids on a sheet of frozen ice below. I lose my balance, tumbling from his back onto the ice-layer. Eros grasps me by the wrist,stopping the momentum from carrying me further towards the edge.

“This is madness.” He breathes through his nose. “Psyche, you risk too much. We cannot continue like this.”

But we can’t turn back now. Besides…

“Listen,” I say. “Gulls.”

I can hear them on the wind, and not, I think, so far away. Gulls mean water.

Just ahead, the path curves around the side of the mountain, beckoning. Before Eros can stop me I step forward, my tread firm and stubborn on the icy ground. I round the bend, and exhale.

There, below us, is the sea.

*

The final descent is neither quick nor easy. In some ways, now that our destination is in view, it teases all the more cruelly, and as the light begins to dim, the path only grows more treacherous. But as evening falls, we are riding into the village, a sleepy seaside place, and excitement overtakes exhaustion.

We cannot see Atlantis from here, not yet, but I know it’s out there. We’ll be there in a few hours—or, if there’s no one to take us tonight, by morning at the latest. If only morning didn’t seem so far away! Small stone houses gather in the lee of the mountain, and here and there a battered fishing craft is tied against the rocky coast. The wooden hulls are weathered, drifting in the still-icy waters of an early spring. Down here, though, the snow-covered world already seems a lifetime ago. Even now, after sunset, the air is cool, but not icy. And yet I wonder why it all feels so quiet.

Eros rides behind me again, his warm weight cushioning me as I lean back into his grip. His hood is down now, as it must be, whenever we are among my people, to shield them from the dangers of his face.

We pass through what must be their central agora. The large square is empty but for a few men clustered together, talking.

“Khaire,” Eros hails them. He jumps down, leading Ajax behind him. The men are clearly surprised to see us. Not many travelers here, I’ll warrant, certainly not the kind that walk here through the mountain passes.

“We seek transport. Have you a craft that will bring us to the isle of Atlantis?”

The men look at each other. They don’t trust a man with a hooded face; why should they? Little do they know it’s for their benefit.

“Aye, we have the craft right enough.” One of them looks from Eros to me. “But I’ll be damned if you make it to Atlantis. Been living under a rock, have you?” The man laughs harshly, probes some wax from his ear and wipes it on his robes.

Eros looks at me.

“It’s not safe to travel, then? The war rages?”

I know what he’s thinking. News of war doesn’t trouble him—quite the contrary. If war rages in Atlantis, the chances are good that the war-god is to be found there. But I’m not sure I share Eros’s optimism that Ares will help our cause—and besides, if my father and sister did somehow make it to Atlantis, it only gives me reason to fear for them.

But the man frowns at us, shakes his head.

“The uprising? That’s over these many months. The old king was killed in his bed. The man who killed him is king now. And no one”—he eyes us, glowering—“no one gets on or off the island except according to the new king’s will.”