Page 108 of The Ruin of Eros

Atlantis is not only my mother’s ancestral home, it is the land where my father fought. He was a leader of troops there; he helped the Atlanteans win their war and won himself some acclaim on the battlefield. They said even the king had shown him some favor.

It would be a logical place, would it not, to try his welcome?

I swallow.

“What did they look like?” I say. “The father and daughter.”

Eros’s hood turns toward me. I feel him wanting to caution me. The eagerness in my voice must be too sharp to miss.

“The girl was young, like you, miss,” the woman says. “But dark of hair. The man had an old soldier’s build, and walked with a limp. Grey, but with a little red left in his beard.”

I stifle the gasp in my throat, but if I fool our hosts, I don’tfool Eros. He understands. He knows.

My family. Alive.

“Excuse me,” I stand from the table, so abruptly that I almost overturn the meager meal. “I—I am very tired. Is there a place I might lie down?”

Another glance passes between our hosts, and the woman glances down at my barely touched plate with some resentment.

“I will show you.” She stands, and Eros stands too, and bows deeply.

“Good hosts, I will accompany my wife. I fear she is feeling faint after our journey. We are most grateful for your kindness. We will leave at first light, once she is rested—I will bid you our thanks now; we will be gone before you wake.”

“Very well,” the husband says, but his eyes have narrowed again at such abruptness. We file out after the wife, who takes us to the barn. It is dry in here, warm enough and sweet with hay.

“Rest well,” she says, but with some doubt in her voice, and casts a last, lingering look at Eros’s cloaked face. When she has gone he lowers the hood. I feel his stare, and he takes my chin in his hand then, gently moving my gaze to his.

“You believe it is your father and sister?”

I nod.Early in the summer, the woman said. It is autumn now.

“My father had ties to Atlantis,” I explain. “It would be a logical place for an outcast to try.”

Eros hesitates, looking at me.

“Psyche…even if it was them, even if they are alive: you remember, don’t you, what the oracle said?”

His words bring me unpleasantly back to earth. I remember all too well. She said that though they lived, I would not see them again in this life.

And then I start; a tremor goes through me.

That’s not what she said.

She said I would not see them againas a mortal.

As a mortal. What if she meant…

“Damn the woman for talking in riddles!” I burst out. “Eros”—I turn to him—“you said, before, remember? You said I was no ordinary mortal. That I was ‘something more than mortal.’”

What if the oracle wasn’t talking about death? What if she meant a different sort of transition; if my daysas a mortalare now behind me?

The thought sends shivers through me. Could I really be such a creature as Eros has described? It seems likelier that this is some wishful fantasy.

And yet.

And yet.

Eros looks at me gravely. He has understood.

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