Chapter Twelve
Moments later, there’s the sound of footsteps pounding hard across the temple floors. They’re making for the exit, the great doors that lead back out to the street. I’m groping in the near-dark, scrambling to understand what’s going on. The one who screamed—I feel sure it is not the person running through the temple now. What awful thing has happened here?
They’ve almost reached the doors now. I see them pause, silhouetted against the night. For what? Why do they linger?
And then a blaze, sudden and dazzling, bursts from near their feet.
Fire .
A trail of flame is licking fast across the stone floor. Stone does not burn like this. The one who fled from here must have poured out fuel of some kind to let the flames burn so fast, so bright. Before my voice seemed frozen, but at the sight of the fire my throat unstops.
“No—wait!” The line of flame is spreading in front of the door. I’ll never make it out. On the other side, the shadowed figure darts out into the night, but the fiery gauntlet blocks my path. I stumble forward, my mind still slow with sleep.
Those screams.
But I don’t have time to think about that now. I have to focus on getting out of here.
And then another figure, tall and cloaked, seems to emerge from the very heart of the flames. My heart turns over.
“Psyche,” he says, in his deep, familiar voice, and my legs almost give way.
Eros .
“Stay back,” he says. There’s someone else in the darkness behind him, a swirl of motion from near the doorway, another tall figure moving through it.
“Look out!” I call. “There’s someone behind you.”
But he only shakes his head, and indeed, the shadow by the doorway does not attack. Eros walks toward me, his cape black against the flames.
“Psyche.” I cannot parse all the emotions in his voice. “What are you doing here? You should not have come.”
“I had to.” The words burst out of me in a jumble. “Hermes threatened me. He said I still had my mother’s blade. He said he’d reveal me to the other gods. I think he might have been the one who sent the raiders—that it was not Deimos at all.”
Eros looks startled.
“I had to trick him to get away,” I press on. “I stole one of Aeolus’s horses, and…” I hesitate. “And I might have eaten one of the Hesperides apples.”
Eros closes his eyes for a moment.
“You were supposed to be safe there.” I can feel the pain in his voice, the disappointment. The blame.
“But Hermes-” I say, feeling stung. His face darkens.
“I will see to Hermes. But Psyche, you have to stop this.”
“Stop what ?”
“This insistent running toward danger. This recklessness.”
“ You’re the one who chose to come here,” I protest. “You’re the one who wanted to hunt down Deimos and his knife.” Before I met Eros, I don’t think I was ever called reckless in my life. But the life we lead—the life he brought me into—does not make for calm tides.
“Those screams,” I say. “What happened?”
He looks at me, a somber look behind his eyes.
“Sparta’s temples to Ares are being attacked. Insurgents have been coming in the night. Setting fire to the temples.” He looks at me. “Killing the priests.”
The breath leaves my lungs. The red-robed priest I met earlier.
“He’s dead?” I murmur, and Eros nods.
“They broke into the sanctum.”
I do not pray much anymore, but I offer up a silent prayer all the same for this dead man’s soul. I heard his death. It was not a peaceful one.
“Insurgents?” I say then, thinking back to Eros’s words. “Spartans?”
“Messenians, it seems.”
Messenians. I have heard of them, vaguely, one of Sparta’s conquered cities. They wish to throw off the Spartan yoke, I suppose, and this is their way of showing it.
Something softens in the air between us—perhaps it is the specter of mortality. At last, Eros crosses the small distance between us and folds me to his chest.
“What am I to do?” he murmurs into my hair. “How am I to protect you, Psyche? Perhaps Olympus was not safe for you, but nor is it safe here.”
I pull back, wanting to look into his eyes. It’s better to be together, I want to tell him. He should not have let them separate us, no matter what Athena promised. But then that other figure emerges from the shadows, and the words leave me.
I feel a bolt of familiarity as she turns her golden eyes on me—not a tawny gold, like Eros’s, but an orange gold, crackling like a brazier. Her hair cascades down her back, a river of flame. Her cheeks are high and sharp; her brows impossibly graceful, her face haughty. Beautiful as a raw flame. This is the woman from the tapestry, made flesh.
“I am Nemese,” she says. Her voice, too, is that of a god—rich and full-throated. My own voice chokes me.
“I know.”
It is hardly a way to speak to a god—no bowing, no dropping of the eyes, no humble murmured prayer. No wonder she’s frowning at me. She glances at Eros.
“She was to be in Olympus, was she not? Under Athena’s care?”
I swallow the acid feeling in my throat. She knows all about me—but until yesterday, I knew nothing of her.
And what on earth is she doing here, now?
“Nemese is pledged to fight by my father’s side,” Eros says, reading my unasked question. He turns back to her. “And it seems Psyche was compelled to leave Olympus.”
Nemese scans my face.
“She ran away, you mean?” She looks at me, as though I have become slightly interesting. “It seems you are resourceful, at least.” She glances toward the doorway behind. “Did you see them? Whoever committed this sacrilege?”
“It was dark.” I feel at a loss. I sound stupid, no doubt—sleeping through something like this. But I have questions of my own.
“I will see what I can find.” Nemese stalks off into the darkness, without a backward glance. This time, as she reaches the wall of flame, she crouches on the floor beside it, putting her palm to the earth. She murmurs something, and the fires start to ebb. By the time she has disappeared through the doors and into the night, the flames are all but gone.
“What is she doing here?” My voice is stilted, raw. Somewhere in this temple lies a dead man—and yet I cannot help focusing on Eros’s former lover. His former wife .
He looks at me. “I told you: My father summoned her too. That is to say, she volunteered to help him.”
I glare at him. “I know who she is. You lied to me.”
He frowns. “Lied to you?”
“You never told me of her!” I snap. “You let me believe—you never breathed a word of her.”
He looks away.
“Nemese and I were consorts once, but it was many, many moons ago. She was my father’s choice for me.” There is bitterness in his voice. “But in those days I still thought she was the wife I needed, to become the god I was supposed to be. I was wrong.” He sighs, looking back at me. “I see that you are unhappy, Psyche, but I have walked these realms a long time. I had a life before you, it’s no good pretending I didn’t. You must understand, this was a long, long time ago.”
“But you did not tell me,” I say, hating how like a child I sound, how the back of my throat tightens, turning my voice into something petulant and small. “You didn’t tell me you had a consort. A goddess .”
“I am sorry it was a shock to you.” His words are stilted, a little short of contrite. “ I had no particular wish to speak of it. But I did not mean to keep it secret from you. Do you mean to say you have never heard of Nemese before now?”
“I’ve heard of her,” I say sulkily. “But she was no goddess of repute in Sikyon, nor in Atlantis. I certainly never heard tell that you and she were…” I trail off. I can’t say lovers . I can’t bring myself to. And none of the other words feel much better.
He sighs. “It has been a very long time, Psyche. Nemese and I dissolved our union many ages ago.”
“Then why does Athena’s great hall show you together still?” I counter. “Why do her tapestries still show some immortal bond between you?”
He frowns, for the first time without a ready response. I feel triumphant, and yet in pain. I want him to have an answer. I want him to have answers for all of this.
“I do not know.”
There is a sound from the doorway. I start, thinking of murderers in the shadows, and then see it’s Nemese returning. She pulls the cape back from her face, letting it drop to reveal the flaming river of hair. I swallow hard. No murdering Messenians, then, but I do not feel much relieved.
“Come. We must go to Ares. He will need to know what happened here.” Nemese scans the temple and its charred floor, and despite myself I hear again that blood-curdling scream.
Eros looks at me, his brows furrowed.
“You’ll have to come with us. This place is not safe, and we need to get you out of here.”
Us ? I stare at him. Now he and Nemese an us ?
“You have chosen quite a time to show up,” Nemese adds, with another quick glance my way. But it doesn’t last long; she’s already moving toward the far corner of the temple, a gilded doorway there. The inner sanctum, I realize. Of course: The sanctum is a threshold, one of the thin places. There, gods may easily pass from a shadow-realm into this one.
Eros looks at me, his eyes troubled.
“There is much I would have liked to speak with you about. But we do not have time—not now.”
I clench my jaw. But I suppose he’s right. This is clearly no place to linger. We follow Nemese through the doorway, and the passage beyond.
“Don’t look,” Eros says, trying to shield me from something on the ground, but it’s too late.
The priest. This is where they killed him. A red line circles his neck like a noose; blood pools beside him. I feel the bile churning in my stomach. Then I notice what’s in his hand. My Shroud. It occurs to me I’m lucky that the killer did not steal it, and an ill feeling passes over me again. If that is luck, then it is an ugly sort of luck. I stare again at the dead man, his parted lips and startled, frozen eyes, while up ahead, Nemese swings open a door.