Destined. Part 19

I couldn't answer him. I didn't even want to admit to myself what I'd planned, how could I tell him?

Eros grabbed my face with both his hands, forcing my eyes to meet his. "Tell me what you were doing," he hissed. "All of our secrets are out now, right?"

I shuddered under his cold stare, but tried to explain as best I could. "I was falling for you, just like the prophecy said, and it felt so right," I started.

"Save it for a night when I haven't caught you slinking around with a knife."

Jerking my head out of his grasp, I hissed, "Do you want my answer or not?"

He was silent.

"Okay, just hear me out. I didn't believe my sister at first. She said you were going to fatten me up to eat or something." I snorted. Of all the ridiculous ideas. How had I even thought that?

He was looking away now, and I needed him to believe I was being sincere. Although it was Eros and not Aris, if he'd been telling me the truth about everything else, he deserved to know what was going on. I slipped my hands into his. His touch still sent blissful s.h.i.+vers rippling over my skin even though we were fighting.

"I knew you'd never hurt me. I felt that." I squeezed harder. "But after everything that happened with Al-"

He cut me off, dropping my hands and stepping away as he did. "How many times was I supposed to say I loved you before you believed it?" I looked down guiltily. "Before you'd stop planning my murder?"

"You're making this way worse than it needs to me." I blinked and a wave of tears spilled down my face. "Can we talk about this please? I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry." Swallowing back the lump rising in my throat, I breathed, "I think I could've loved you."

Eros looked down into my eyes. Studying me, reading me. "I think you could've too."

His eyes moistened.

"You'll never know how much this pains me," he said. "Goodbye, Psyche."

His words were worse than having a spear run through my chest. That was it? After all the promises he made to love me forever and now he was telling me goodbye? The agony in my heart told me right then that what we'd had was more than a chance at love - we'd actually had it.

And I'd literally been too blind to see anything but my own fear.

I opened my eyes to the sounds of his wings carrying him toward the window. I couldn't let him leave like this. This was not how things were supposed to end between us.

With a swiftness I never knew I had, I lunged from the bed and grabbed hold of his ankle. "You're not leaving," I told him. "Not like this."

Reaching down, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me up until I was crushed against his chest. His eyes were hard as we crossed the window threshold and floated into the garden.

"You're right. I can't leave you like this, can I?"

A tiny wave of hope swelled in me. Until he continued.

"Too much evidence." He dropped me into the dew-soaked gra.s.s and quickly soared out of reach.

"What?" I stammered.

"I'm sorry, Psyche, but you need to get away from the palace. Now."

And then the earth began to shake. The foundation to the palace buckled and gave way; the roof collapsed. A choking dust rose around me as I watched everything I'd come to know, to think of as my life in these past few days, reduced to rubble.

The sound of his heavy wing beats faded into the distance.

Chapter 37 - Psyche.

As I looked off into the darkness, searching for Eros, I heard a familiar voice behind me.

"What happened?" Alexa wailed.

"Oh Alexa, you've got to help me!"

"What did you do?" she asked.

I looked down, unable to meet the eyes I knew were boring into my head. "I believed her..." my voice trailed off. I hoped that would tell Alexa enough of what she needed to know. How could I admit to more?

"And what? I've got to know how bad this is if I'm going to fix it."

I looked over her shoulder to the ruined palace. Nodding my head in that direction, I said, "It's bad." I gave a heavy sigh before I continued. "I didn't believe her at first. My sister said he was a monster but I didn't believe her. Not really. Until I saw you talking to Chara. And you were laughing at me." My voice had fallen into a tiny whisper.

I heard her suck in a sharp breath. "Psyche, I'm so sorry. You were never supposed to see me. It's horrible luck for you to have seen me. I mean really, really horrible."

"Then why? Why did my sister get to see you?"

"Because I was trying to give her bad luck. She was so awful while she was here, I thought she deserved it. And we - well, me - I wasn't laughing at you, sweetie. I had to give her some reason why you couldn't see me and she could." By now, Alexa was hugging me tightly and rocking me back and forth slowly, comfortingly.

"I'm so glad you made it out okay." I shuddered. "The palace crumbled so fast."

"He's got his mother's temper, but I don't think he'll hold a grudge against you for long." Alexa tried to sound a.s.suring, but I heard plenty of doubt weighing in her voice. "You've got to show him you're sorry, and I'm sure he'll forgive you." She held me at arms-length. "What did you say to make him so mad anyway?"

"It's not so much what I said, as what I did."

Alexa was silent, meaning I had to continue.

"I thought he was going to kill me." I rushed through the rest of my tale hoping if I spat the words out quickly enough, the impact wouldn't be as bad. "So I got a knife and a lantern, and I looked at him, and I was going to stab him, but then I saw him, and I knew my sister was wrong and I panicked, and I dropped the knife and spilled hot oil on him and he woke up and saw what was going on and we fought and now he hates me."

"c.r.a.p," Alexa said, standing and letting go of my shoulders. "This is going to be very hard to fix. Not impossible, but close. I'll try to think of something, but you need to try to find him. Don't stop searching."

"Wait! Where are you going? You can't leave me too," I howled at her.

"I have no choice. He's calling me. I can't refuse."

Panic welled up from my chest. "Where do I go? I don't even know where to look."

"Ask the other G.o.ds for help where you can." Her voice sounded further away. "Follow the stream through the forest to get out of this valley."

"Will I see you again?"

"I hope so." Alexa was now so far away that she was yelling so I could hear her. "And take these. They started the trouble, maybe they can help somehow." From out of the rubble of the palace, the knife and lantern floated to my feet.

"Come back," I screamed. "I need you."

There was no answer. Alexa was gone.

For a while I indulged in my typical reaction to bad news - I cried. Hysterical, hiccup-inducing sobs. But when the initial flood of tears washed through me, I knew there was no point in sitting there bawling. It was time to start my search.

I tried not to think about the impossibility of that task. He was probably back on Mount Olympus by now and I had no way of getting there on my own. But Alexa had told me to search and I had nothing else to go on. So I tucked the knife into my belt, grabbed the lantern, and started walking.

To get to the brook as Alexa said, I had to pa.s.s through the gardens. I'd spent so many hours out here the past few days, loving the flowers and sculptures and babble of the fountains. Now they were a shadow of their former selves, looking utterly ruined in the early morning light. The flowers were dried and drooping. The sculptures were as crumbled as if Hephestus had taken his tools and chiseled away the beautiful features. And the garden was eerily silent, like every living insect and bird had met extinction there.

Beyond the dying hedges of the garden maze I found the stream Alexa had told me to follow. When I reached the tree line that marked the beginning of the dense forest, I turned to look back at my ruined home. The palace was gone. Not even the rubble remained. The cracked and broken sculptures had vanished. Not a single petal from the gardens survived. Nothing was left from my brief former life but an empty clearing sitting between the base of a jagged cliff and the entrance to this dark forest.

Sucking in a calming breath, I stepped into the trees and wound my way through the tangle of limbs. By the time the sun began to set, my feet ached as badly as my heart, and my stomach was close behind. When my legs literally wouldn't carry me another step, I sunk down into some cus.h.i.+ony moss at the base of a laurel tree. With my back against the trunk, I looked up into the leaves and watched the last rays of the sun trickle through the canopy.

I figured I must be having some sort of exhaustion-induced hallucination when the limbs of the tree slowly wrapped themselves around me in a p.r.i.c.kly embrace. And then the tree spoke to me.

"Poor Psyche," the tree murmured in a voice barely louder than the breeze rustling her leaves. "Another of Eros's victims."

I was too tired to be afraid. My heart leapt into my throat for another reason. "Victim? Was I meant to be his target then?"

"Not like you mean. But he's careless. I am victim too."

"Will you tell me?" I asked.

Wind stirred through the leaves, almost like the laurel was sighing through her branches. "I was a nymph. Daphne. Apollo loved me. I didn't feel the same." The tinkling whisper seemed to take great effort for the tree. "Apollo would've accepted my decision. But Eros stung him with an arrow. Apollo persisted; I ran. Father changed me to this tree. And Apollo still loves me. Eros's fault."

Turning onto my hip, I wrapped my arms around the base of the tree and hugged her back. The tree's embrace tightened as she hushed, "Sleep, Psyche. Sleep safe." And I did.

I didn't wake up until late the next morning. The tree's branches were no longer cradling me. In fact, this tree looked like all of the others in the forest: immobile. Had I dreamt the whole thing? If so, that was unquestionably the weirdest dream of my entire life.

I stared up at the tree. More to myself than to her, I said, "I'm sorry, Daphne. You deserved better."

As I turned to go down to the stream to get a drink before I set out for the day, she spoke again. "Almost home. You'll know my grove."

Home? I forgot about getting a drink and ignored the ache in my legs as I set off running. I knew of only one laurel grove and it was near my parents' palace. The grove I had visited with my sister when we made laurel crowns together as kids. Could I really be that close?

As I wound down the stream, it suddenly flowed into a river and hooked to the right. This had to be the Selinous River near my house.

As I followed its path, the land became treacherous. I was forced away from the sand-colored boulders and pale grey rocks that made up the steep banks. The river picked up speed as I pressed on, gurgling and spitting as it pounded against even more boulders and dropped down tiny rapids. I had no choice but to pick my way through the dense pines. The needles stabbed at my feet and tore at my already-battered dress. And yet I continued trying to run, hoping that each new bend in the river would lead me to the laurel grove.

By mid-afternoon, with the sun burning into my skin and my legs threatening to give way beneath me, the grove finally appeared. I was so relieved that my knees went weak. It wasn't much farther. I could make it.

With strength and speed a starving person shouldn't have had, I raced up the hill to my parents' palace. At first the guards blocked my way with their spears.

I looked from one to the other. "Belen, Demos, it's me, Psyche." I was instantly glad I'd taken the time - unlike my sister - to learn the names of the palace servants.

"You've escaped the beast!" cried Demos.

"Come inside, quickly," urged Belen.

Once I was inside my parents' home, it exploded in excitement. I was pushed and pulled from the embrace of this and that person until I landed with Maia. Like a calm inside the storm, Maia's arms brought familiar comfort and s.h.i.+elded me from the prying arms of the other staff.

Maia's eyes were full to the brim with tears, but she was smiling broadly. "Child, you've escaped," she said as she looked me over. "We were all so worried when Chara reported that you really were in the house of a monster." When Maia mentioned my sister, she nodded her head at the hallway behind me. I spun around and saw Chara standing. And staring.

If looks could kill, she would've been a crumpled pile of bones on the marble floor. "He was no monster," I told Maia, still staring down Chara with my most icy glare. I was about to unleash my pent-up anger on her when my mother and father bounded into the room.

"Psyche!" Mother yelled between hysterical sobs. "You're home. My baby's really home." She and Father nearly strangled me in a consuming embrace.

"I am." I pulled loose from her and turned to my father. "Are you okay? I've been so worried."

"Me? I'm fine. Had a touch of a stomach bug these past couple days, but I feel fine now."

A relieved sigh escaped my lips as Mother wiped at her tears and hugged me again. "I'm sorry," she bawled, "I can't help it. I never thought we'd see you again."

"I'm okay. Well, I was okay." I lowered my eyes to the floor as I felt everyone's stares settle on me. "I'm not so sure anymore."

"I don't understand," my father cut in. "You got free from the monster."

"You've got it all wrong," I protested. "He's not a monster." I pulled in a deep breath to steady myself, but the words still came out barely more than a whisper. "He's Eros."

I heard everyone in the room suck in astonished gasps.

Finally, Father stammered, "Well, what happened to you then? You look like you've been through battle."

"I haven't eaten in two days. Do you mind if we talk over an early dinner?"

The staff who'd been gathered around me immediately scurried like ants. I looked down at my tattered clothes and filthy body.

"A bath is probably in order too," I said to no one in particular.

"I'll get the water," offered Maia, and she too rushed off.

Maia was kind enough to bring me some cheese to snack on while I bathed, but I still hurried through the bath and quickly dressed to get down to dinner. As I ate, I gave the whole account of how I'd nearly murdered the G.o.d of Love and, in the process, lost what I now realized was probably the love of my life.

When I was finished, everyone just sat in silence. No one had any suggestions or advice for how to win back the love of an immortal. This was unchartered territory.

"So," I concluded, "I plan to start searching again just as soon as my strength is back. I don't see what other choice I have."

Chara snorted. "What, you think you can just walk up to Mount Olympus and knock on Eros's door?" she asked.

"Do you have a better idea?" I snapped.

"Yeah. Maybe you should let it go. You screwed up. Move on with your life."

"I screwed up?" I yelled her. "Me? This never would've happened if it weren't for you. You're the one who convinced me to kill him in the first place."