Page 68 of The Ruin of Eros

Despite her milky gaze, her stare seems to pierce me. She taps her cane and steps closer. Her face is puckered and wary.

“But you are changed,” she remarks. “You fly too close to the sun, girl. I see it in your face. Already you have been singed.”

A question burns in me, but part of me dares not ask. If I don’t ask, I can never hear the worst. But I force myself to speak.

“Can you tell me what became of my family? My father, my sister. Are they alive?”

“They were when they left here,” she says. “What they are now, I know not.”

My heart quickens.

“So they survived…” I gesture. “All this?”

“They were gone before it happened—the king expelled them, not so many days after his men brought you to the rock. They were allowed to bring what their wagon could carry, and the rest was forfeit.” She looks at me. “A few days later, we suffered this collapse. Some said the gods were angry at the king’s harshness: that we had been wrong to expel your family, and to sacrifice you.” She sighs, adjusting her weight, leaning harder on her stick.

“Others blamed you.” She pauses. “But you did as you were bound. If the goddess was thwarted it was not your doing.”

My stomach sinks, hearing her account of it.

“Do you know what direction my family took?” I say. “Where they may have been headed?”

She shakes her head.

“If they knew it, they did not speak of it to me.” Her pale eyes rove slowly, taking in the empty rooms.

“Were you here?” I say haltingly. “When it happened?”

She nods.

“It began in the middle of the day. When the sun was high. It came out of nowhere. Creaking and rumbling, and then a great thundering. Slowly at first, and then fast.” Her fingers tap out a quiet, aimless pattern on the handle of her cane. “For some, there was time to flee. For others, none. The poor took most of the damage. The wealthier end of the town was mostly spared. Such injustice…but it is ever thus.”

It’s hard to look at Lydia’s face.

“Some of us wanted to stay and rebuild, but we did not find much support; too many were afraid. They said that it would be tempting fate to stay. I never saw carts packed so high—gold, jewels, food and wine.” She shrugs her bony shoulders. “I told them they were wasting their time. Places aren’t cursed: people are. Any if a person is cursed, they’re cursed wherever they may go.”

I feel the air sharp in my throat. “You believe that?”

“I do.”

Her pale gaze travels over me.

“I must go looking for them,” I say aloud. “For my family. But I don’t know where to begin.”

She shakes her head.

“I have no answers for you, child. I am no oracle.”

Her thumb rubs the polished wood at the top of her cane. I stare at her.

No oracle.

They’re idle words, and yet they spark a thought in me, a thought that shivers through me. Thereisa place that I can go for answers, but it is an uncertain road, to be sure. I look out the doorway of the house that was once my home.

An uncertain road, but it’s all there is left.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The path to Delphi starts high in the mountains. It’s colder than I expected for late summer, and I keep the hood of my cloak pulled close around me.

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