Page 20 of The Ruin of Eros

“Forgive me. I am a stranger here. Where is”—what to call him?—“where is the one who brought me here?”

But she remains silent—watchful, and silent.

Has she been instructed not to answer? Or perhaps she doesn’t speak the Hellenic tongue. She may be from one of the neighboring countries. A slave, perhaps?

I place a hand to my chest.

“I am Psyche. What is your name, Grandmother?”

Nothing. After a few moments, she turns and disappears back through the doorway.

He told her not to speak to me, no doubt. A wave of foreboding goes through me. Those last memories are becomingclearer the longer I’m awake; the details sharpen. I see it in my mind again, those great dragon-wings, black as oil, unsheathing from his back.

I shiver. Everything here is so beautiful. But demons may be rich, I suppose, and enjoy fine things as much as any king.

I scan the enormous room again: there is the door beside the dining table, where the old woman came from. The bedroom door where I stand now. And on the opposite side of the room, another door. That is the one I make for.

If the old woman will not give me answers, then I must gather them for myself. I will find out what this place is.

And I will findhim.

The door leads to a corridor with a high, vaulted ceiling, lit with torches in sconces—when I looked out the bedroom window it was daytime, but there are no windows here. The corridor seems to go on for a very long way, with doors leading off to left and right. There were slippers by the bed but I did not put them on, and now my feet pad on marble cool to the touch.

I come to the next door and pause. There might be hundreds of rooms in this place, for all I know. It all seems like a dream.

I remember how I thought he was lying when he told me of an enchanted place, one that could shield me from the eyes of the gods. But it is no great stretch to see that this place must be enchanted: at the very least, it was not made by mortals.

So the black-winged creature is no madman. But he might be something much more dangerous than that.

I hesitate, then push open the door beside me.

An empty room—beautiful, grand, and bare. I stand there a moment, then let the door close again and move on. The next room is empty too. I start to open the doors of each room I pass. Some are bare, some are not. One is a music room, but giant in size, with harps and lyres that appear to be made of solid gold, and pipes and flutes and bells, and stringed instruments of everykind. Another room is some kind of library, housing hundreds—perhaps thousands—of papyrus scrolls. Some scrolls hang on the wall, where the writing glows like jewels. Others are tied with silken ribbons and housed in long cabinets that run the length of the room. I’ve never heard of anyone, even the king, owning more than one or two such scrolls. Such work must take years—decades—to produce.

Gently, I close the door again and move along to the next room. No one has forbidden me from exploring, but I probably wasn’t supposed to venture this far.

Then I open the next door, and gasp.

In the center of the room is a white cage many times my height, and so wide it would surely take some time to walk its diameter. And inside it, birds: cawing, clicking, chirruping. A riot of noise and color. I stare. Birds such as these don’t exist where I come from, nor have I ever heard stories of such creatures. Their feathers are yellow, or red, or sea-colored; some are small as gemstones, others as big as a man. They are beautiful, exquisite and strange. And noisy.

After the silence of the corridor, the sound of them is overwhelming.

The noise seems to intensify as I watch them—I think they see I’m here, and are calling to me. Suddenly my breath catches in my chest and I step back, closing the door roughly. I don’t want to look at them anymore, all that beauty in a cage. I move fast down the corridor, which seems more claustrophobic now than before. Doors and more doors! Where is the end of all this?

I go left, then right, wherever turns present themselves. My footsteps echo and ring out. I feel tight-chested, breathless. I need air.

The things I don’t want to think about are piling into my mind now. The rocky ledge in the green dawn; the black-winged stranger and his unholy bargain. The peach. Thebinding, as hecalled it. The way I smelled of him when I awoke.

I am his wife now.

The words don’t seem real. They’re fantastical, absurd. It’s as though I dreamed the whole thing, and perhaps I did—after all, where is he now, the cloaked stranger? There’s no one here but me and that old woman.

At last there’s an end to the corridor, and a door in it. My breath fights in my chest as I burst through it and find myself outdoors, with sky above me. I gulp down air. I’m in a yard, with what looks like a horse stable to my right. The sky is full of scudding clouds, and in front of me there’s an enormous double gate, black metal, intricately formed. There are no gaps in it, no way to see what lies beyond. The rest of the yard is enclosed by high walls. What’s outside those gates? What strange land houses this place? I go to the gate but when I push, it doesn’t budge at all, not a hair’s breadth. I wonder whether it’s a locking mechanism, or something more. An enchantment, perhaps.

I turn, hearing a noise from the stables. The stamp of a hoof, then a whinny and snort, and a horse’s black muzzle nudges its way over the top of the stable door. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a majestic creature. Its coat gleams like black silk, and its eyes are golden, like clear honey.

For a moment we stare at each other.

Then it whinnies again, and three companions come to their stable doors too, snorting softly in answer. One’s a chestnut, one a roan, the last a shell-white. I think they might be the most beautiful animals I’ve ever seen. In Sikyon, horses are rare and valuable beasts. Our horse Ada is a stocky workhorse, old and tired, nothing like these exquisite animals—and yet we were thought rich to have her.

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