Page 64 of The Ruin of Eros

His hand is over my mouth now, but it’s too late. I don’t know what’s happening, but I can tell it won’t be stopped. I can’t find my voice, to ask questions or even to cry out.

Around us, the walls continue to tremble. The floor shakes harder. My hair swings against my shoulders; the bed seems rattled by an invisible hand.

“What’s happening?”

He knows: I can see in his face that he knows. He throws my discardedchitonat me.

“You must leave here. Now.”

Leave?

“Can’t you forgive me for this one thing? It was an impossible promise! I had to see. I had to know.”

“I know,” he says. “And now we both must pay the price.” His voice is sharp, but his face is full of a terrible sadness, which is worse. “I do not ask you to leave as punishment, Psyche. Soon this place will fall. And you must not be here when it does.”

I stare at the walls, the cracks like webs, growing furiously in all directions. The grinding sound of stone on stone. On the ceiling, cracks are spreading like tree-roots. Whatever’s happening is outside his control, and that frightens me: he is a god.

“Can’t you stop it?”

“Psyche,go!For once in your life, you must trust me!”

I stare at him, his radiance, his furious eyes. The shuddering is everywhere now. I don’t dare look up at the ceiling to see the cracks.

“What about you?” The way everything’s shaking, I have to talk between rattling teeth.

He makes an impatient noise.

“I am a god. Stone will not crush me.”

Then why are you so afraid?I want to ask. Because he is: I can see it in his eyes, in everything he tries to hide.

“You wished to run from here, so run.” His voice is harsh, the cold voice I used to hear and hate. I stare at him, and the pain wells up in my chest. This doesn’t make sense. It isn’t fair.

“You won’t come with me. Why won’t you come with me?”

His gaze shifts as if to find mine, but he stops himself in time. He refuses to look at me, no matter how much I want him to.

“You will not see me again, Psyche. Forget what you can.”

Forget?

Forget?

And then I feel a terrible shaking, a shuddering. It’s as though the very bones of the earth are creaking, as though some great edifice is about to give way. I become conscious of something else in the shadows. There, by the bed: the shadows are building something. A form. Almost human.

“What is it?” I whisper, the dread multiplying.

“It’s broken, Psyche. Run, before you are ruined.” His voice sounds distant, far away. “I can’t come with you, don’t you understand? You must run. Run, before she gets here.”

“Before who gets here?” I shout, frantic now. But I already know.

I had forgotten, for a moment, whose son he is.

He does not look at me—does not, or cannot. Either way, his face is stone.

And with one last sob I tear myself from the bed and hurl myself toward the doors.

*

---