Page 59 of The Ruin of Eros

It’s night when I wake again. I’m disoriented, and at first I think it’s the pain of my healing limbs that has woken me. But it’s not that. I hear the sound of the bedroom door closing.

“Who’s there?” I say sharply in the dark.

There is quiet, and then in the darkness the quick sizzle of fire, and a candle bursts into flame.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The flame seems suspended in the blackness, its small light floating on a dark sea.

His black cloak makes a deeper darkness than the night, and I see his golden hands wrapped around the taper, and the faintest outline of his jaw, uplit from the candlelight. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a glimpse of his face, and the sight of it teases strangely at me. There is nothing hideous about the flicker of it that I see. And then I remember to be afraid. What is he doing here, in my bedroom, in the middle of the night? Why does he come here in darkness, when I should be sleeping?

“Psyche. You are awake?”

For a moment I think of feigning sleep. But surely he can see the whites of my staring eyes—and besides, he is not easy to lie to.

“I am awake.”

The silence is thick as he gathers words. I realize he has come here to tell me something, and my first thought is for my family. His voice is heavy; my heart clenches. If he has news of them, it cannot be good.

“You are determined to leave,” he says at last. “I know that the escape you attempted, you will attempt again. And again.” The candle lowers; he sits down on the corner of the bed, opposite me.

“A woman of good sense, I think, would stay. But you will not. Am I correct?”

I stare into the darkness.

Will not. Cannot.It’s all the same. There’s nothing I can doabout Sikyon’s destruction now. But I can’t hide in here while things get worse.

“I must face my fate,” I say finally. “Whatever it is.”

His head turns away from me. I can read him so well by now, but in the darkness I still struggle. Is he disappointed? Angry?

“It is foolish of you. But, if you must go…” He breaks off for a moment. “If youmustgo, if youwillgo...there is something I can give you.”

He reaches, then, inside his cloak, and pulls out what looks to be some kind of necklace: a leather string with a white stone medallion. The medallion has an eye carved into it.

“This,” he says quietly, “is a Shroud. There are only a few of them in the world.”

I gaze at it. I have never heard of such a thing.

“What’s it for?”

And why is he giving it to me?

“Wear it and you will be hidden from the eyes of the gods, when they search for you.”

I feel his gaze—but what he’s saying makes no sense.

“Hidden?”

“I cannot offer you complete invisibility,” he says. “No charm can grant that—but it will help. You must understand, Psyche: Aphrodite can track you as a hound tracks a rabbit. She could spot you a thousand leagues farther than the sharpest-sighted eagle. That is why mortals cannot flee the gods. That is to say,unshroudedmortals cannot flee the gods.”

He drops the medallion in my palm.

“But while you wear this, she cannot catch the scent, and her sight is dull.” I hear the frown in his voice. “Even so, try not to draw attention to yourself. Keep among crowds.”

I stare at the talisman in my palm. Can this be real? Is it some kind of hoax? Does the demon speak from some delusion? It is hard to believe I am holding an object of the kind of powerhe claims.

I turn my face up toward him.

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