Page 33 of The Ruin of Eros

I’m on my bed, eyes shut tight, but the hot tears I was waiting for don’t come. Now that I’m alone, in the privacy of this strange bedroom, I can’t cry. My body has forgotten how.

What do Father and Dimitra think; do they think me dead? Does anyone know the truth of what happened to me that night?

EvenIdon’t know the truth.

I stare up at the window, now showing a blue sky and a calm sea again.

Lies, lies, lies. I sit up in bed, take off one of my silk slippers and hurl it at the picture.

“Leave mealone!”

To my surprise, the window goes black. Did it obey me, or did I somehow break it?

I turn away and collapse once more on the bed. My whole being smarts with betrayal—but who is it who has betrayed me? My town, my family, or myself? WasIthe fool, agreeing to this devil-bargain? Or just a woman with no choice left to make?

I don’t know which answer is worse.

Hours pass, and when a knock sounds at the door, I ignore it.

“Go away,” I say when it comes again.

But it persists, crisp and insistent.

Finally I go to the door and fling it open. It’s Aletheia. She stands a few feet back, gazing her impassive gaze at me. I had thought to feel more sympathy for her, knowing what I now know of her past, but all I can see is the stony dislike in her eyes. I’ve done nothing, and yet she hates me. Is it to be my fault, that I’m a prisoner of this place?

She takes another step back, and I see the dining table is laid again—it must be lunch hour. My stomach does something at the sight of the food, but all I feel is a bitter knot where hunger ought to be.

I shake my head.

“No.” I make to close the door again, but she reaches out and stops its path. She’s stronger than her old body looks. She nods her head toward the table and the message is clear:Sit. Eat.

I scowl at her. “I said, I don’t want any.”

She says nothing, only walks to the table and waits, her eyes fixed on me.

“You needn’t pretend you don’t understand me,” I snap. Now that I know her silence is intended merely to snub me, it’s driving me to the edge. She may hate mortals, but sheispart-mortal. She ought not to treat me as though I am less than a beetle.

But now my eyes can’t help straying to the table, stacked with persimmons and pomegranates, dates and figs; cheeses and yogurts and sweet curd and all manner of confections baked in honey. There are foods there I haven’t yet learned to name, foods no one in the Hellenic lands has seen. A surge of hunger roars through me.

“I don’twantit, damn you!”

A pang of guilt shoots through me for swearing at her, but the look on her face when I say it—the way her scorn only deepens—makes me push the guilt away, and want to do worse.

Something is bubbling through me, a kind of rage I haven’t felt in a very long time. It pushes me forward to where Aletheia stands smirking, her arms folded in a sardonic stance. The words burst out of me before I know they’re there.

“I’m aperson, damn you! And I don’t want to be here—do you understand?I don’t want to be here.”

And I push the table as hard as I can.

It doesn’t tip, but it rocks—and piled as high as it is, rocking is enough. One tureen crashes into another; platters slide toward the floor, the weight of them tugging the table-covering with them, and the goblets follow. Dishes careen to the floor and shatter. Glass smashes. Fruit splatters ripe against the marble tile, or rolls across the floor; yoghurt and honey pool and drip.

I stare at it all, feeling dazed. Did I really do this? I feel the tingling under my skin turn electric, then fizzle. Once I’m no longer angry, I’m ashamed.

Aletheia is down on her hands and knees, slowly picking things up from the ground. She still doesn’t speak, doesn’t reproach me, doesn’t show any emotion at all. Just a methodical crouching and lifting as she bends her old knees down to the ground, straightens, and replaces a piece of broken earthenware on the table, and then another.

I can’t bear the sight of it—her old body, her age-spotted hands, bending and stooping.

“Leave it!” The words choke themselves out of me. “Aletheia, please.”

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