Page 85 of The Ruin of Eros

But as I speak I use my one free arm to burrow down my side, snaking toward the sheath belted at my waist. I feel thehard, jeweled hilt under my palm. The branches tighten—do they feel my movement? Do they suspect?—and I think my arm will be locked, after all, at my side, and that I will die like this, like a fly in a web. But the thought makes me wrench harder. My shoulder cries out again in agony, but the knife is in my hand now. Without a second thought I raise it and bring it down hard, hoping to cause just a split-second of pain, enough for a moment’s disruption.

But instead there is a terrible, unearthly shrieking. My blood runs cold, and I feel myself falling, suddenly untethered. I’m on the ground: the great tree has released its grip, its branches flinching from me as if scalded. The branch that pinned my shoulders lies severed on the ground. The tree’s agonized call reverberates inside my head. The knife…it did this. It traveled through wood as if it were butter, as though it were nothing at all.

The voices echo and flurry, calls of horror, so frenzied I can hardly make them out. But there is one word I hear.

Adamantine!

I know what adamantine is, but it makes no sense. This little blade in my hand cannot be that.

But the dryads are in chaos, and the mother-tree still cringes from me, so I don’t stop to think, I don’t stop to wonder. I jam the blade back in its sheath, then dash as fast as I can through the circle of trees, back out into the rain, as far beyond the dryads’ reach as I can get. I race in the direction Ajax went, and I run until my lungs sting before I remember that I must not travel through the open fields; that the path is the safest route, if not the shortest.

What was I thinking, to leave it at all? The oracle warned me not to stray from it. What need had I to avoid some mere rain? And then to trust the dryads’ promises! Betrayal is second nature to the gods—and those I just encountered were barelyeven gods anymore. They were what a god may become, if it is locked up and starved of all that is natural to it.

The path is muddy and waterlogged when I get back to it, but I tramp along it nonetheless, letting the wet dirt suck at my sandals. My shoulder throbs faintly; my hair smacks against my shoulders in wet hanks. After being astride a horse for so many days, walking feels like an unnatural motion, newly painful. But none of that is what I think about.

Adamantine.

I think back to the stories told at my father’s knee: adamantine, the only substance that can sunder a god. But it cannot be. Surely the dryads were mistaken. What happened was simply the work of a very sharp blade—even a dryad’s tree is only made of wood.

And yet the feel of it…it makes me shiver even now to remember it. It moved through wood as no blade should, as no bladecan. It was easier than parting water.

I take the knife from its sheath again and stare at it. There is some wet smear on the blade—tree sap, I suppose, only this is sap from a dryad’s tree. I turn the blade side to side, and it seems to me the sap has a purplish glow.Ichor. There is a touch of that in all immortal blood, according to the stories.

I bend and clean the knife against the wet grass, then return it to its sheath.

Adamantine.

If the dryads were right, then how came my mother by such a thing? How came a fisherman’s daughter to possess such a dangerous treasure? By theft? As a gift?

I am told that Atlantis is an unusual place. It is an island more beautiful than most, more perfect and more lush—which is why they say it belonged to the gods once, before they tired of it and ceded it to mortal kings. It is rich with resources, gold and silver and precious gems, richer than other parts of the Helleniclands, and so the mortal kings fight over it even today. Many strange things have washed ashore on its beaches, and gods roam there still, upon occasion.

I shake my head. Still nothing explainsthis.

My mother must have known the blade was special, I decide. But perhaps she didn’t know quitehowspecial.

If only I could ask her.

But I know this much: if the knife is truly of adamantine, then it is the rarest, most dangerous kind of object there is.

My stomach turns at the thought.

I do not feel powerful carrying such a thing. Perhaps I should, but instead it feels as though I have placed a target on my back. If word gets out, which it will, then surely I will become the greatest enemy, not just of Aphrodite, but of all the gods—for the thing I carry can do what not even a god can do to another god.

It can end immortal life.

I swallow the cold feeling in my throat. Part of me would like to get rid of the blade, but that would be foolish now. It will not stem the dryads’ rumors, and it is the best defense I have. Perhaps I will have the chance to make a trade with it. I can buy our freedom, perhaps—mine, and Eros’s.

A small voice laughs within me.You are a dreamer, Psyche,it says.

I wipe the rain from my face—it is lessening now, but the air grows colder. The mud path gives way to stones and crags, and here and there the rocks are sharp enough that they threaten to poke right through my leather soles. My thighs feel weak, the muscles strained with overuse, and the impact of each step seems to judder through my bones. The air is frigid now, the coldest I have known. When I exhale I can see my breath before me. I pull thechitontighter around myself and remember theharpies’ threat, to come for me when my body lay cold on the ground.

I lean into the uphill path.

I miss Ajax. Not just the speed with which I traveled on his back and his steady footing. I miss his presence. I didn’t listen. I chose wrongly. And now he is gone.

The sound comes distantly on the wind: a chorus I remember from Sikyon, one that would make the farmers look nervously at each other, and ensure all the hen houses were secure.

Wolves.

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