Chapter Thirty-One
I turn. Eros is standing a few paces away, his dark cloak around him like a shadow. He seems to flicker, growing taller before my eyes. His words hang in the air.
“Go, take care of your dead. Before your generals come looking for you.”
Yiannis just stares with his dark, tortured eyes. That face used to belong to a carefree youth, happy and arrogant and handsome. That boy was all but gone when I met him again; now he is gone forever.
“You heard me.” Eros does not approach, just stands where he is, his voice low and measured. But it seems to take hold. Yiannis backs away, finally disappearing into the shadows.
After he’s gone, Eros pushes back his hood, and his eyes meet mine with a fire I’ve never seen before. The air is still, the kind of stillness that makes my throat ache.
“A priestess,” I force myself to say. “In the vigil house. She’s injured.”
Eros nods. “Her sister tends to her now. She may live, she may not.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. He looks at me.
“And what is that worth to her, or to the dead boy, or his brother?”
I swallow.
“He needed help. I knew you wouldn’t give it to him. It was all I could think of.”
“So you manipulated an evil power to suit your ends.” His voice is hard and flat. “You cannot pretend ignorance, Psyche. You saw what it did, you knew what darkness lay in it. But because you decided you had need of it, none of that mattered.” The fire in his eyes seems to flare. “How easily you judge the gods, how readily you berate them for their arrogance, for their careless disregard. But how are you any better?”
I feel the sharp sting of his judgment. He’s right, painfully right. But he’s wrong, too.
“It wasn’t arrogance,” I say. “It was…” Hope .
“It was a mistake,” is all I manage to get out.
He looks at me with cold eyes. It’s true: my contrition is worth nothing now. I am no god. I have nothing to offer but words.
“The poppy-milk was my brother’s own magic, Psyche. Pray that he did not feel you using it.”
I feel a dullness come over me, something that might be fear if I had the heart to feel it now.
“You mean he can sense it? Sense me?”
“I do not know,” Eros says shortly. “Perhaps. Pray that he cannot.” He turns for the path back to the summit and I hurry to follow. At the top, I see immediately how far the ships have already advanced. We are losing. Poseidon’s forces push the Athenians back ever closer. They will breach the bay , I think dully. They will make landing here, and soon.
Two figures stand with their backs to us, distant at the cliff’s edge. Ares and Nemese. They frown at my approach.
“Eros,” Nemese speaks. “Come with me. We will do what we can for Athena’s ships. Your father will stay here: his men prepare for war, and within the hour, they will be needed on the beaches.”
Ares’s cold gaze drifts toward me. So I am to stay here with him, alone. It is not for me to protest. The gods are needed by their men. And all I can picture is Timon’s body, lifeless in his brother’s arms.
Eros glances at his father, and then at me.
“Do not let her out of your sight,” is the last thing he says before he takes to the air, his black wings searing through the sky.
How is it that those words sound so like a threat?
It’s only then that I realize, he knows nothing of Dimitra’s news: Deimos and the Underworld, the dead guardian and Cerberus’s severed heads. But what does that matter now? Eros is already gone, just a black shape against the grey sky.
*
Ares narrows his gaze on me, and something in me quavers as he approaches. Despite myself, I take a step backward, and feel the rough bark of a tree against my back. I force myself to stand my ground. A few paces from me, with a jangle of breastplate and spear, he halts.
“You’re a distraction,” he says, his eyes boring into mine. “My son is needed, sorely needed, by his men, and yet you distract him.”
I look down. If I could take back this morning, every instant of it. If only I could…
“I heard something this morning,” he says. His voice is hard, even harder than before, removed of every nicety, and his eyes are cool and unblinking.
“From Olympus; from the Hesperides themselves. It seems Hera was in her garden yesterday, and found one of her precious apples lying on the ground, with a bite taken from it.” His eyes don’t leave mine, and I feel a dark, burning sensation; a ringing in my ears.
“She threw it in a pond,” he carries on, “to see what it would show. And a curious vision played out before her. A vision of a god and a mortal woman. Perhaps this means something to you?”
I close my eyes. I don’t know how to answer him. He knows enough. Too much. But does he know more than me?
“Look at me, girl, when I’m speaking to you!”
My eyes pop open, finding his gaze locked on mine. I want to look away, and yet I find I can’t. I’m trapped, eyes watering, unable to even blink. It feels like falling down a well of flame: down and down, into the burning embers of his immortal gaze. My head throbs, and a layer of fire seems to crackle over my skin until it burns like autumn leaves. A hot wind is rifling through my mind, scattering thoughts, memories. He’s in there somehow, looking for something. I feel the force of him like a fire-hot hand, pushing aside the memories he finds, hunting for more. Visions flash up toward me: of my father, lying dead on the rocky ground of Atlantis. Of a small cabin in a valley, me at the doorway, Eros walking the grassy path that leads to our door. My memory of the first time I saw him—that beautiful face that I was never supposed to lay eyes on. All these memories and many others, torn up and thrust aside, as Ares hunts for something else. Something more.
It takes an almost impossible effort to wrench my gaze away.
“Stop it!” I pant. “Stop!”
The burning feeling recedes. I don’t dare look at him head on, but I feel how his eyes narrow, watching me.
“Whose are you?” he spits. “Whose daughter are you?”
Something in me snaps then, and I glare straight at him. “If you know, then tell me.”
His face tightens. He thinks I’m lying.
“You’re his, aren’t you?”
“ Whose ?” I shout back. “I’m telling you, I don’t know!”
Then a great shudder tears through the ground beneath us. The earth vibrates and heaves as though straining to keep itself together, and Ares whips around, his eyes suddenly alert in a different way. I see it in the same moment he does: out by the Athenian fleet, a great, scaled tail whips out of the waves. Then with one swoop, it topples what must be ten or a dozen boats. I stifle a cry.
The spear shakes in Ares’s grip, his other hand balling into a fist. He turns back toward me.
“I’ll return,” he says. “Perhaps this will keep you from trouble while I am gone.”
He drums the spear once against the ground before I have time to question what he means. The next moment, something sinuous and cold is grabbing at my arms. I try to pull away, but it’s no use. The tree I’m standing against—something is pulling me toward it, pinning me in place. Dark roots have burst from the ground. Vines and branches circle my arms, trapping me against the bark.
“You can’t do this!” I pant, but Ares only glances at me, satisfying himself that the bonds will hold.
“Only fools speak such words to a god,” he says. And as other words die in my throat, he takes off into the skies.
I try to calm the pounding in my head and chest. I force myself to breathe. Thoughts spin inside my mind like a dry wind, half sensible and half disjointed. Who does Ares think I am? What will happen if he does not return? The cold vines seem to cinch tighter. If Poseidon really does mean to make a hostage of me and hand me over to Deimos, then it seems Ares has done half the job for him.
I swallow hard, and look out toward the bay. How many lives have been lost there already? How many wounded? How many bodies floating in watery graves, never to receive proper burial? I wonder if there are many among the troops who would prefer surrender; if to be ruled by Poseidon might seem a small price, a remote occurrence, compared to the immediacy, the certain pain, of losing not only their lives, but those of fathers, sons, lovers.
A shadow seems to swoop over me, a flurry of dark motion. Talons and feathers: a bird alights in the tree above me. A vulture.
I shiver: It’s fitting, I suppose. And there have been many dead today, the birds of prey must have their fill. But this bird seems as if it is settling in to roost. Its great wings settle grotesquely onto its back. Its white throat is luminous in the grey light.
Waiting , I hear. A thought that’s not my own; a small, clear voice in my head. It startles me, how clear it sounds. But what is the creature waiting for? Can it tell what’s happening out at sea—that there will soon be bodies washed up on the beach for it to feed on?
Or…am I the prey?
The vulture lifts one foot, resettles itself on the branch. Patience , it thinks.
Though its voice chills me, it also sparks a thought.
Could it work? I don’t know. But Aeolus’s horses were wild creatures, too.
I look up at the bird, willing my thoughts toward the place behind its eyes, doing my best to bore my own thoughts inside.
Listen , I think at it. Listen to me.
The bird bristles, as though flustered. Its black eyes cut sideways, coming to rest on me. It moves one clawed foot, shakes its feathers.
Listen: I need your help. I keep my voice not too aggressive. Not too plaintive. It has to be just right. Persuasive. Your help , I repeat .
It cocks its head, taking me in with its other eye; it ruffles its feathers once more. With a flap it propels itself from the high branch, then wheels back to perch beside me. Its eyes are level with mine now, and I force my breath to stay steady. Beady black eyes slide over mine. I push my voice in behind that liquid stare:
Free me.
It holds my gaze a little longer, then turns its head away. I see its hunched back, its crooked neck. My nerve fails me for a moment as the bird pushes its great beak down toward me. I feel the trail of its feathers against my arm, cold and slick. I hold my breath as I feel its beak near my wrist, hard as bone, sharp as knives, and let out a gasp as a dart of pain runs the length of my hand. But then I feel the vine fall away and my hand is free, just a trickle of blood running down my wrist.
Thank you , I think. But in the same moment, I’m becoming aware of something else.
High overhead in the grey skies, there’s a white spark, a blur of movement. Ares returning? But no—it does not appear to be coming from that direction, and besides, something about the shape is wrong. But its speed…its speed is that of a god.
It’s moving fast, its shape crystallizing before my eyes. A winged horse .
I know that horse; I know that bloody tinge to its long, white wings. And though he is not yet close enough to see, I know its rider: a god with only one wing. The god whose wing I severed in the canyons of Olympus.
Eros said he would come. I hoped he was wrong. I clutch at the Shroud around my neck, but its powers are limited now. It can only hide me from a god’s thoughts, not from his eyes. If Deimos makes landing here, if he sees me…
Foolish , a voice breaks through my panic. Moving. Hold still.
The vines are strong, slippery. The vulture tugs its cruel beak through them, rending them open like the belly of a fish. My other hand is free. Then with a great beat of its wings, the bird darts away through the tree-canopy…and I watch as the winged horse makes landing downhill from here, through the foliage. I sink back further into the shadow of the tree.
So he has come. Perhaps in my bones I knew he would. I glance out at the sea, the ships. At least Eros is not here. But where am I to run now? Deimos and his horse block the path downhill; I cannot make it past him without being seen. And the tree cover up here is sparse, not enough to hide me at close quarters. The vigil house, the scattered temples—all of them are too far away. I’d be exposed before I ever reached their doors.
Up here the only shelter I can see are the three silk pavilions: one for Ares, one for Nemese, one for Eros and me. Surely Deimos will search them. But what choice do I have? There is nowhere else, and he’s already unseating himself from the horse. I cannot stay where I am, and if I am to move, I must move now.