Page 27 of The Ruin of Eros

I frown.

“And the birds? Does Aletheia feed them too, or are they an enchantment, like the windows?”

He turns my way; I feel his curious glance.

“Aletheia feeds them,” he says. “Though she says she does not much care for winged creatures.”

A joke, perhaps? I remember those terrible dark wings,opening above me like a bird of prey.

Then up ahead something moves in the pond ahead, disrupting the water. Something strange-looking. I almost think…

“What was that?”

“That,” he says, “will be the nymphs.”

Nymphs?

“I should think they are curious about you.”

He leads me past one of the flower-beds, then crouches down beside the plants. I think at first he’s checking them for pests, but then I realize he’s just admiring them. I watch his hands, golden-skinned and dexterous, the nimble fingers turning the leaves gently this way and that. Beautiful hands.

And yet, what is beneath the hood must be hideous.

Even so, I would prefer to see it. To know would still be better than not knowing. At least, I think it would.

He rises to his feet again.

“I do not know what to call you,” I blurt.Demonwill not do: not to his face, even if it is what I call him in my private thoughts.

He half-turns; I think he is amused.

“Why, call mesýzygos—husband.” He is teasing me, and I flush.

“Have you no name, then?” I say, more sharply.

He straightens beneath the dark robe.

“I have more names than you could imagine,” he says. “But I do not wish you to know me by them.”

“Why not?”

He looks at me; I feel the burn of it even from beneath the cloak. But he does not answer me. He merely moves along to another bed of plants, stoops, and examines them as he examined the ones before.

“Do you recognize these?”

His change of subject is pointed. I’d like to press the pointbut I’m not a fool: he has great power, and I have none. What he will not tell me, I will not wring from him by force. Maybe if I’m clever, I’ll win what I wish to know some other way.

I look where he’s crouched, next to a plant with small white buds. It is exquisite—and not at all familiar.

“We did not have such flowers in my land,” I say, with a sudden, sharp pang of homesickness.

“Well, perhaps you will recognize some of them by name.” He points: “Orphine. Bettany. Celandine.” He moves to the next furrow, indicating them one by one. “Mandrake. Artemisia. Thousand-seal. Moonflower. And here: wolfsbane, amaranth, and herb of Lethe.”

I stare.

“The garden is all witching-herbs, you mean?”

He laughs a little.

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