Page 14 of The Ruin of Eros

The wind whips the rock face and the crowd cries out, clutching their cloaks about them, clutching their children as if they might blow away.

“Is there something in the water, Mama?” one of the children is saying.

He could be right. It looks choppier than usual, and right here, below the cliffs, it seems to be turning darker.

I think about what’s coming next for me.

If it’s death, I have lived virtuously, no one can say otherwise. Hades may house me in a good place, and surely I will see my mother again.

The crowd is jittery now, people glancing fearfully around at each other. The piper has abandoned his song. The wind is too high; some of the children look as though they truly could get swept away. And the sky seems darker than before. The green light is still there, but it’s as though the dawn has regressed: instead of rising, the sun has vanished again, as if Helios himself does not want to see what is to happen next.

“There! In the water—did you see something?”

A boy of maybe twelve moves closer to the edge, craning his neck to look down, but as he does a wave smashes against the edge of the rock. The spray hurls upwards in a great torrent, easily the height of five men; the boy’s mother shrieks. Her son is on the ground now, clawing at the wet, slippery rock—just a step from the cliff face.

“Get back! Get back, everyone!”

The wind roars even louder, and people crouch down before it. Some are shouting; some screaming. Their fear breaks in a wave.

“Run!” they call.

“People of Sikyon, repair to your homes.” The head councilman tries to speak, but even I can barely hear his voice, so buffeted it is by the wind. It doesn’t matter. People are running anyway.

“We have honored the gods’ will. We leave our daughter Psycheandra to their mercy.”

No one hears his words; they’re all vying to get off the rock. I feel a strange stillness inside me.

The thought comes to me that soon I will be alone, more alone than I have ever been in my life. I turn around to watch the crowds go.

I look for Father and Dimitra. There they are, being escorted into the king’s own carriage. Bile turns in my stomach. It is not their fault, but the king should be ashamed of this charade—pretending that there is some honor in what has happened today, as though my father were parent to a soldier, or a martyred hero!

“Steady!” I hear someone call. The king’s horses are in a frenzy—the stampeding crowd has managed to get ahead of the carriage.

My father is shaking, they have to lift him in. But even as they lift him, he doesn’t look back. Dimitra does, though.

She is the last to leave, the last to see. Her face turned toward me is white in the dim, her eyes furious and bright, unblinking. Her hair bats and whips in the wind, and it is she who reminds me of a goddess now: a goddess of vengeance.

And then the carriage moves off, and they are gone.

And I am alone.

I throw a prayer up toward the dark skies. They say the shades cannot intercede for the living, but how do any of us know?

Mother, whatever is to happen, let it be quick at least.

The waves smash, the green tinge deepens.

And then a shadow falls across my vision, a shadow darker than the darkness. A figure is walking toward me.

A stranger in a dark cloak.

A man.

Where he came from, I can’t say. He has appeared, somehow, out of the storm. Despite the howling of the wind, the crashing of the waves, all I hear is silence as he moves toward me, the black hood draped over his face, falling all the way to his chin. I can see no part of him; even his sleeves fall over the place where his hands should be.

And I know exactly what he is. What he must be:

My executioner.

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