Page 18 of The Ruin of Eros

An explosion of gold floods my eyes. My knees buckle. This sensation…I cannot call it taste. I feel it everywhere, my mouth, my throat, then flashing through my blood, to every thread of my being. It is exquisite and voracious. It is a tortuous kind of hunger.

More, I think blindly.

The euphoria spreads through me, feeding its own desire like a snake eating its own tail. I feel it in the tips of my fingers, the soles of my feet; down my spine, tingling in the pit of my stomach.

I open my eyes, breathing hard.

More.

I raise the peach to my mouth for another taste, but a hand closes around my wrist.

“That’s enough.”

I wrench at my hand, trying to free it. “Another bite!”

But he lifts the peach from my fingers and smoothly tosses it toward the cliff. I bolt, my whole body yearning after it, but the chains yank at my ankle and pain rips through me. The force pulls me to the ground. I wheeze with the impact as a few feet away, the peach rolls over the edge of the cliff.

If I hadn’t been chained down, I might have thrown myself into the sea after it.

“It was enough.” He speaks from behind me.

My breathing starts to quiet.

“What was that?” I pant from the ground. “And why could I not have more?”

“Come,” he says. “It is done. The bond is sealed.”

He reaches toward my ankle and, as if the metal is mere clay, he breaks the shackle open. Then he lifts me to my feet. I feel weak, but whether from the cold, from fear, or from that bewitched fruit, I can’t say. It takes me a moment to realize that I am free.

“I wouldn’t try to run,” he says, as though reading my thoughts. “You would regret it.”

Then black shadows are quivering at his back, taking shape. It takes me a moment to understand what’s happening.

They’re wings.

Great dark wings like a dragon’s, unfolding from his back.

This is no man.

“No,” I breathe. “Get back. Get away from me.”

A warm hand grips me.

“Foolish girl. Don’t you see where you’re stepping?”

I look down. I’ve backed up almost to the cliff’s edge. My heart leaps, staring down at the vertiginous drop, the choppy white spray.

The black-winged creature closes the gap between us, then lifts me into his arms, the way I have seen brides in our town carried over the threshold of their new husbands’ homes.

Bride.

What have I done?

And then, before I have time to weigh all my terrible mistakes, we’re airborne. I would shriek, but no sound leaves my mouth. I picture myself plummeting, like Icarus. There’s nothing around us but empty air. Nothing but his grip keeping me from dropping down that ever-increasing distance into the inky sea.

“Breathe,” he says, and I realize I have not been.

“You are…you are a demon,” I say at last. The words are flat. It is not a question.

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