Page 58 of The Ruin of Eros

“It was you who nursed me,” I say, and then regret it. I see how still he grows at those words.

“I will let her know of your progress.” He stands from the bed. “She will be glad to hear.”

I watch him stride from the room. I am not so sure that Aletheia cares very much about my recovery. I think, perhaps, he just wanted to get out of here as fast as he could.

When he is gone I stare at the wall, thinking. Nothing is as I expected. I will not be bed-bound for weeks or months, or the rest of my life. And the demon…I had thought he would be angry, full of rebukes and punishment. But it is not like that at all. There is a heaviness in him, a strange air of resignation which I do not understand.

AmI a fool, not to listen to him? Not to believe that Aphrodite’s wrath will find me once I am outside these gates?

I suppose I am a fool. But even a fool may do what is right.

Later he comes to my room again with a vase of fresh flowers and places them by the window.

“I thought you should like to look at these.”

“Thank you,” I say, surprised.

The sunlight streams in. He hesitates, then takes a seat by the bedside. Neither of us speaks for a while.

“I know you think,” he says at last, “that I came for you that morning on the cliffs because you were desperate. You think that I wanted to drive a bargain from you against your will.”

I glance over, but not up toward his hooded face. For some reason, I’m too nervous for that. I keep my eyes instead on his hands.

“I know that you guess at my power, Psyche. Well, it is considerable.” He turns further toward me. “Please understand, if I had wanted to take you away by force, I could have done so at any time. I did not need your predicament to achieve it.”

Now I do look straight up at him, and my face is flushed for other reasons.

“Am I to congratulate you?” I say sharply. “On yourrestraint?”

He stiffens.

“I only meant…”

“That it is normal to abuse one’s power?” Of course that’s how his world works, and mine too. Whoever has power wields it over those with less. Men over women, women over slaves. And gods over all of us.

“What I am trying to say”—his voice is cooler now—“is that I helped you because I did not want to watch you suffer.” Under the cloak, he shrugs. “I had hoped that once you were here…that you would come to feel…”

A wave of heat ripples through me. He shakes his head.

“No matter. You need rest. I have distracted you for too long.”

Wait,I want to say, as he moves toward the door. Wait, and finish.Feel what?

But he’s already gone.

He does not come back that evening, nor does Aletheia. I watch the flowers at the window until the sun drops down behind them, and then I watch the stars. Sleep does not come. I toss and turn; my bones seem to itch under my skin. Is this what healing feels like?

But my thoughts itch too, restless and insistent.

It seems there may be cruelty in a god, and kindness in a demon. What has he shown me these last days, only kindness? I think of the riddle he teased me with in the weaving-room that day.Gods and demons are in the eye of the beholder,he said. Now I let the words dance in my mind for a moment, I let myself fancy them as true. But it can only be a fancy, and only for a little while.

And yet the thought comes to me, strange and uncomfortable: I do not want to leave him.

Foolish thought.Of course I want to leave here. And Iwillleave here, as soon as I can. He will have to lock me up if he wants to keep me from escaping again. But something in his voice and manner, something heavy and sad, tells me he won’t do that.

I think if I could see his face, this strange spell would fade. If I could see whatever cursed, monstrous thing he is, whatever truth he is adamant that I should not witness. This whisper of insanity in my brain would be silenced, then.

I tell myself to rest. To close my eyes and banish these senseless thoughts. But there is no denying it—just as there is no admitting it. When I’m falling asleep it’s his voice I hear, a voice like wind in the cedar trees. And it’s his scent, like the drift of incense through slow night air, that I find myself straining to catch, hunting it on my hair, my skin.

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