Page 28 of The Ruin of Eros

“If that is what you wish to call them.”

The names he speaks are ones that, for the most part, I’ve heard spoken only in whispers: herbs and plants with strange properties, some which I believed to be purely mythical.

He bends down to another plant, and crushes a leaf between his fingers, then holds his hand out for me to smell. I inhale cautiously. There’s the smell ofhim—that cool, dark forest smell—and something else.

“Rosemary?” I frown. Surelythatis not magical.

“Deep magic does not come from any one root, Psyche.” It sounds like an admonishment. “The true potency is in the combinations. Very little is magical on its own.”

“So is this—is this where your powers come from?” The words escape me before I decide to speak them. But he just laughs.

“These herbs? The source of my power? You will ask me next whether it is your little mortal king that powers the sun.”

I hate when he speaks in this mocking, teasing way. For abrief moment, I had forgotten to be on my guard.

“What is it, then?” I say staunchly. “Whatisthe source of your power?” He may call me ignorant and provincial if he wishes, what do I care?

I can feel him regarding me from beneath the cloak.

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” He plucks the stalk of rosemary, grinds it beneath his fingers.

“Do you think you can find your way back to these gardens?” he says.

I’m reluctant to answer since he refuses to answermyquestions, but I nod anyway.

“Good. Perhaps you can help Aletheia gather some herbs tomorrow. Harvest season will soon be upon us.”

And with that he has moved on, his long stride already pacing ahead of me down the path.

*

Back in the palace, our footsteps echo down the corridors. His pace has slowed, and as we walk together, something occurs to me.

“Aletheia…she wears no face covering before you.Shemay look upon you. Why is that?”

I hear the shrug in his voice.

“Aletheia? She is not an ordinary mortal.”

“Not a mortal?” I frown. “What is she, then?”

“She is a god-child. Her father was mortal. Her mother was not.”

A god-child.Like Heracles and Perseus, and the other great heroes of myth.

“But she is old, like a mortal.”

“There are holes in your knowledge, wife.” When he says the wordwifehis voice is wry, and my cheeks warm once more.

“God-children are still mortal; all of them age. Aletheia, however, is gifted with more longevity than most.”

I lift my head.

“How old is she, then?”

“She was born before your great-great-grandfather.”

That silences me for a moment. In Sikyon, the elderly are given great respect. But “elderly” does not begin to describe a person of Aletheia’s years. She must be over a hundred years old.

---