Page 34 of The Ruin of Eros

But she doesn’t leave it. She doesn’t look at me.

“Please, Aletheia. I’ll do it.”

She stoops again. She has taken a rag from her pocket, and is swabbing at the floor. Shame drives into me like a knife.

“I saidleave it!” It comes out as a scream, and we both stop dead. I have shocked her as much as I’ve shocked myself. The shriek of my voice still rings in my ears.

She drops the cloth and disappears through the door without turning back.

My limbs are shaking. I stand for a while, panting. The silence of the room seems to have a life of its own—as though it is watching me. Eventually I turn and go back to my bedroom, and lie on my bed in the tangle of sheets.

What’s happening to me? I should never have spoken thatway to an old woman, friend or enemy. Shame washes over me. Is this who I will become, if I remain here—someone cruel, violent? I turn in the unmade bed; it seems every part of me aches.

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying there when a voice—hisvoice—sounds on the other side of the door.

“Psyche—are you listening?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I have made accommodations for your sullen ways. But it will not continue. You’ll treat Aletheia with respect, and my home the same way.”

He stops. He’s waiting for me to retort, but I say nothing.

“It’s dinner-time now,” he says. “I won’t ask you to join me, though I think you must be hungry.” He pauses again, and after a while I hear him take a step back from the door.

“Starve yourself to death if you like,” he says finally. “But I don’t think you have the will for it, mortal.”

His footsteps retreat and I roll onto my back, blinking up at the ceiling.

Courage, Psyche.

I can cling to one thing: I will not let this place change me. I will not lose sight of who I am.

For the rest of the night I push down the hunger pangs when they scrabble for purchase in my belly. I think of baby birds, their mouths stretched open, pushing each other aside, demanding to be fed. I can hear him out there, the scrape of his chair as he sits down, the sound of a flagon of wine pouring into a glass. I can smell everything out there, the honey-roast smell of browned meat; the sharp scent of lemons and of mint; the waft of bread warm from the oven.

After a little longer of this, I’m light headed. I can’t think of anything else but my body.

He’s right, I am weak.

But not that weak.

I curl into a ball on my bed, and wait for sleep.

*

When I wake, the window in my room shows a view of a field of emmer wheat under the morning sun.

The light is thin, still early. But I push myself from the bed and begin to dress.

I see now how it has to be. I will have to be strategic. Patient. I cannot live inside a cage—however gilded it may be—but ifhewill not release me from here by choice, then I will find another way. Every prison has its window. Every cage has its crack.

I will get to work on finding mine.

When I nudge open the bedroom door, I find a note.

Aletheia requires your help in the gardens today.

So he wishes me to go back to the gardens? Well, I have other plans. My intention is to find my way back toward the yard with the stable and the high gate. I know it is the way in and out of this place. All I need is to figure out how it unlocks.

But though I try to find my way through the corridors as before, somehow the correct turns elude me. I reverse back from dead end after dead end until I’m hot and frustrated. I was sure I was on the right path this time. Before, I found it quite by accident, but now it seems almost to avoid me.

I turn on my heel, and go in the opposite direction, and after a while come to a door that is familiar. My heart leaps, but then I recognize it. It’s not the door to the stable-yard at all, but the door out to the gardens.

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