Chapter Thirty
“There was a mutiny,” he says, his voice cracking. “Timon was one of the guards. They put a knife in his chest when they ran.”
I feel a darkness squeezing in my chest. The Messenians. Timon was one of the guards injured in their escape. My stomach turns. I feel tainted, filthy with the wrongness of it all. Eros said it was some Spartan generals who were hurt. Timon is no general. He’s not Spartan. Not Messenian. He’s just a boy.
Yiannis looks down at the pale face cradled against his arm. I hear a rattle in the boy’s breath as he struggles to breathe.
Biting back a sob, Yiannis cuts the leather strips tying Timon’s breastplate and lets it tumble to the ground. He strokes a hand over his brother’s chest, as though wishing his own breath into it.
“He’s wounded,” he says. “He’s dying. Mortal nurses will not save him.” He looks at me. “I wasn’t with him. If I had been with him…if he had been with me…”
If he had had that promotion .
In another world, Timon would have been dining with the wealthy sons of Sparta, the cavalrymen and their kind; sleeping under a warm blanket, not standing guard in the cold night over men with nothing left to lose.
Is his death, too, to be on my hands? Yiannis’s eyes seem to say so. They lock on mine, refusing to turn away.
“You have to help me. He needs help.”
I look to the priestesses but they only glare back at me, spears at the ready, their grey robes wind-tossed. He wants me to help him past them: to find Athena, to lay his brother at her feet and beg for intervention.
I look at him helplessly. Tears gather in my throat. If I only could…
But he knows as well as I: “The gods do not reverse death, Yiannis.”
“I’m not asking them to reverse it,” he snaps. His face is streaked with blood and dirt; his voice is as wild as his eyes. “I’m asking them to stop it. Now. He doesn’t have much time.”
I know his desperation as if it were my own. It is my own: it’s the desperation of all mortals, generation after generation, loved ones torn from us like pieces of our hearts.
Those whom Hades claims, cannot return . It’s what my father used to say when I was young, when I asked about my mother. But now the words ring hollow. Why should Hades’s claims be worth so much? What about our claims—the claims of flesh and blood, of love and friendship? What is this boy to Hades but another number, another name on an endless list?
To Yiannis, he is everything.
“Hades has no claim on him yet,” Yiannis says, as though reading my mind. “Not until his soul leaves this realm. He is no one’s property, Psyche. Not even a god’s.”
Grief pinches at me. The boy gasps, a shuddering breath that’s painful to hear. I turn to the priestesses.
“Please—let us take him inside the vigil house and lay him down there.”
The younger one looks to her companion; the older one fixes me with her steely gaze, but I stand tall and meet it with my own.
“May your conscience bring you no peace this night or any night, if you let this boy perish on your doorstep.”
She stares at me a moment longer, then steps aside.
*
Timon’s head rests, cushioned, on my rolled-up cloak. He will die here , I think to myself. If he opens his eyes, the painted ceilings of the vigil house will be the last thing he sees.
I thought Yiannis would be harder to persuade than the temple guardians; that he would refuse to stop before he had reached the feet of Athena herself. But now he paces the floors of this small space, his restless eyes moving from his brother to me. He thinks I have some actual power, I realize. Some plan, or better yet, some gift that will help to reverse all this. I glance outside, toward the path that leads to the high summit and to the gods. If I ran there now; if Eros is there still, if I made my appeal…
“Psyche.”
Timon’s parched lips crack open. His voice is a hollow husk. I had thought him past speaking. His mouth curls, the remnants of a smile. “You’re here again.”
“Hush,” I say gently. “Save your breath.”
“Let him speak, if it brings him some relief.” The priestess draws near. I glance up at her flat eyes. He’s going to die anyway , they say. “You have nothing to fear, child,” she addresses Timon. “You will die a hero. In the afterlife, you will walk the Elysian Fields.”
I see the tears cloud his eyes.
“I don’t want to walk the Elysian Fields,” he says. “I want to be where my parents are.”
His parents were killed in the earthquake that razed Sikyon. Victims, not heroes. So according to lore, they will spend their afterlife in a different place: Asphodel, a place for ordinary mortals, neither punishment nor reward. And what kind of justice is that—to divide a boy from the parents who loved him? What kind of justice is any of this? To send this boy out of this life and into the next, before his beard has yet grown in?
Yiannis is right: I need to do something . I could run to the summit, though Timon may die before I return. Maybe Eros will be there. Maybe he will come with me…
Outside, lightning bolts across the sky, powerful enough to light up the temple, turning us all bone-white. I know what that means: the battle is raging, more intense than ever. The awareness sears through me, showing my foolish hopes for what they are. What was I thinking? That Eros, or Athena, or any of the other gods would leave their post now, to come and tend to one single soldier? In Sikyon we spoke of Athena as a god of the North, and of Ares as a warmongering fool. What do either of them care about the life of this one boy from a forgotten town? And Eros: He would not grant the boy a horse to save his life. Even if I could find him now, he will not grant Timon divine magic.
Divine magic .
The thought darts through me like an arrow.
The priestesses have withdrawn now to a dark corner; they are praying, I suppose. Their eyes are safely turned away from me as I feel in the folds of my chiton, and draw out the swatch of fabric and unfold it. I have saved it these past days, hardly knowing why I did. Something morbid in me, perhaps, or some desire to better understand its power. By now the petals have turned the color of old, dry blood and they fall away at once, leaving just the pod.
It brings an unnatural vitality…it floods the body with a strange and savage energy .
I look back at Timon, laid out on the cold floor. Could it really work? I remember the men in Nafplion—the fever of zealots, the strength of wild beasts. It is an unholy state, but not a permanent one. And if it could give him what he needs…a quick jolt, like a spur to a horse. Just enough energy to pull him back from the doors of death. I stare at the pod in my hand. It’s worth a try. It might not work. It likely will not. But I have failed this boy once before; I will not fail again, not for lack of trying.
I slide my thumb down the seam of the pod, then dig my nail in, prise it open. I don’t look up but I can feel Yiannis’s presence across the room, the way he’s watching me. Counting on me. I take a deep breath. The pod peels back and the smell of milky sap is strong and potent. That is good; it is not yet dry.
“Timon, I have something for you,” I say. My voice is gentle, quiet enough that the priestesses won’t hear. “Some medicine.”
Even if the priestesses were to turn and see, surely they will think it no more than ordinary poppy-milk, something to ease the pain of a dying boy. And at worst, I remind myself, it will be that.
“Can you open your mouth, Timon?” I ask. He blinks. His lips crack open.
I give myself no more time to think. He is on the brink, if not already past it. To hesitate is its own decision—a decision to let him die. I lean over him, and coax the milky sap onto his tongue.
“There,” I say. Across the room, Yiannis is walking toward us. The priestess glances over. I suppose she thinks Timon’s time has come; she thinks we are getting ready to say the parting-words. But then a great, heaving gasp fills the room.
*
I look down into Timon’s staring eyes. They’re wide open, but unseeing. He gasps again, his face contorted and flushed, like he can’t breathe.
“Timon! It’s all right.” I grasp his hand in mine. He squeezes it, and his grip is no longer weak, but hard as a vise. “Breathe, Timon. It’s all right.”
His eyes seem to sharpen, to focus briefly on me. And then the moment of clarity is gone, and his gaze not dull but cloudy; veiled somehow.
“Timon?”
The priestess hurries over. She stares at Timon on the ground, and then her eyes snap toward me. “What is this? What have you done?”
Timon draws in another great, shuddering breath, as though he could suck all the air from the room.
“Timon?” Yiannis steps forward, his voice tentative, not knowing yet whether to rejoice.
Some fear lodges in me now. The grip in the boy’s hand is strong. He’s stirring, sitting up. But his eyes stay misted white, and his nostrils flare like a wild animal’s.
He pushes himself to stand. Yiannis makes a startled noise.
“Timon!” I scramble to my feet beside him, lay a hand on his arm. It’s too fast. He needs rest…
He shakes me off with one quick movement, not looking at me. He does not even see me. The priestess falters.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?”
He takes a step forward, but it is as though he moves in his sleep.
“Timon!”
Does he even hear us call his name?
“Lie down, child. You are not well.” The priestess pulls at his arm but Timon shakes her off with a growl and reaches for his belt, where his short-sword is still strapped.
“Timon, no!” I cry out. Yiannis steps forward, grabbing his brother’s arm.
“Peace, Timon,” I plead. “We mean no harm.” But I know he does not hear me. Only Yiannis’s eyes find mine, with a look that is equal parts fear and betrayal.
What have you done? The voices ring in my head.
“Heathen!” the priestess spits. “You would raise your weapon against a priestess of Athena, in her own temple?”
She grabs her own spear, holding it before her, right under Timon’s throat.
“Please!” I say, but Timon’s eyes flash as they land on the spear. In an instant his sword is in his hand.
“No!” I cry, trying to hold his arm, but it’s too late. The sword buries itself in the priestess’s chest, just below her collarbone. I scream as blood starts to flow. She wheezes, staring at me in disbelief, as the other priestess races toward us with her spear already in her hand. Timon raises his sword-arm again, but the priestess is quicker. She flings her spear like a javelin, and it catches Timon in the chest. I gasp, and hear Yiannis choke behind me. Timon, though, doesn’t make so much as a murmur. His milky eyes close once, twice, as though puzzled by some new sensation. Blood pools down his front. He doesn’t stagger, doesn’t move. He just crumples to the ground.
The priestess pulls the spear from his chest, then points it at us. “Leave this place. Now .”
Yiannis doesn’t seem to hear her. He takes another step toward Timon’s crumpled body.
“I said go ,” the priestess hisses. I can see in her eyes that she’s afraid as well as angry. She won’t hesitate to use the spear again, but even so, Yiannis is deaf to her. I thrust myself in front of him, and the bloody spear-tip stares me in the face. I don’t have time to think about what just happened. I can’t afford to look at Timon’s face. I just know we need to get him out of here. He needs us. He needs a proper burial.
“Let us take the boy,” I say. “Please.”
Her nostrils flare; she steps back from Timon and the bloody puddle on the floor. As though he were a monster.
“Take him then,” she snarls. “Take him before your bodies lie alongside his.”
I bend over Timon’s crumpled body. I brush the hair back from his forehead. His blank gaze slides over me. His eyes are filmed over now not with madness, but with simple death. Softly, I push his eyelids shut.
I unfold his heavy limbs and try to lever my arms under them to bear the weight. Yiannis, in some kind of daze, lets me heave Timon into his arms, and we stumble outside into the grey afternoon light. Beside me, Yiannis makes a gasping sound, and I realize he’s weeping—a terrible, wet, choking.
“What did you do to him?” His lips tremble almost too hard for him to get the words out—tremors of grief, hatred, and rage. Spittle catches me in the face. “Everything they said about your mother, about you, it was true. Witch. Soul-eater!”
Timon’s lifeless body dangles in his arms.
“I—I didn’t know,” I say. “He was dying…”
But I did know, didn’t I? I knew what that sap could do. I knew there was darkness in it. I just thought…
“Get away from me,” Yiannis hisses. But whatever I’ve done, I can’t leave him now; I can’t leave Timon. Not like this. Instinctively I take a step toward him, a hard grief in my chest.
“Get away!” His voice rises, and I see then that his own knife is loose from his belt. Still gripping Timon to him, he points it at me. Then a low, sharp voice sounds from the path behind us.
“Do not dare, boy.”