Page 60 of The Ruin of Eros

“But…why are you doing this? Why are you giving this to me?”

He’s silent.

“You are a fool to leave,” he says then. “But if you insist on leaving…I made a promise to save you. You need not boast that I lied to you.” He watches me. “Put it around your neck.”

I reach, but a twinge of pain in my arm stops me. In this moment, my injuries were the last thing on my mind.

“Forgive me, I had forgotten. Here: I will do it.”

He takes the amulet and leans forward. He moves the hair away from the nape of my neck, his hands gliding over the skin there. I shiver, and he notices. His thumb hesitates, then grazes the skin once more, as if to test its power. This time, I swallow down the shiver, and he hesitates only a moment longer before pulling back.

“Wear it under your clothing,” he says. “Some may know its significance, and those that do will seek to take it from you.”

I run my hand over the stone. It is polished and cool. I’m sure kings have cleared out their coffers for objects of lesser power.

“You’re not angry with me?” I say slowly.

“Iamangry,” he says, and from his voice I would almost believe he hated me, were it not for the gift I’m wearing at my neck. “I’m angry that you’re such a little fool. And I’m angry that I...” He stops.

“No matter.”

I don’t know what to say.

I have called him my captor these past days and weeks, in my head and even aloud. But that is no longer the right word. If I am honest, I don’t think it ever was. He has been haughty, he has been high-handed with his manners, but I think he did try tosave me the only way he knew how.

And he’s saving me again.

When I go, none of this will seem real. I will wonder if I dreamed it up: the honey-wood scent of him; the roughness of his voice and the softness of his hands. The air about him like the air before a storm, crackling and smoky and sweet. The song that my skin makes when it touches his. The wind-rush in my blood when he speaks my name.

I cannot explain these things, or justify them, but there they are.

“Aletheia can pack you some supplies,” he says. “You will leave tomorrow, if you are well enough.”

Suddenly, it’s as though he wants me gone. It’s goodbye.

Just as you wanted.

Except not quite what I wanted.

I touch the cool edge of the medallion. How strange that it should have worked out like this.

“So I must bid you farewell now,” I say.

He inclines his head, but does not speak.

“When I was a child,” I say abruptly, “I played with a little girl who was blind. When we met, she put her hands to my face. To feel it; to see it with her hands.”

“Indeed.” His voice is detached and withdrawn.

“Might I do that now?” I say into the silence. The fabric of the cloak ripples as he turns.

“Why?”

I touch the medallion again.

“I owe you a great debt now. I know I cannot thank you face to face, nor bid you goodbye that way. But this would be a little like that.”

I can feel his stare on me.

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