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He laughs gently into my ear.

“Very well, wife.”

Wife. For once the term sounds neither alien nor mocking on his lips.

“Am I really your wife?” I say. “Even if it is not recognized by the gods?”

“They will recognize what it suits them to recognize,” he says. “But you will come to know this about my people, Psyche: the gods are nothing if not inconsistent. They sway like the wind.”

“Even you?” I say, and he looks at me.

“You doubt me?”

I shift a little, turn my gaze back to the vined ceiling. He may be a god, but he fell for me the same way mortal men do—by watching me from afar, and liking the sight of me.

“You of all people should understand,” I say. “Beauty is only a shell, a skin. It means nothing. And I am mortal—whatever beauty I have will fade.”

I’ve lived all my life overshadowed by my own reflection. People see what shimmers on the surface, and all that swims beneath might as well be dead. It’s hard for me to believe thathe—this being of divine beauty, of wild power—could actually seeme as I wish to be seen. That what he feels is more than some passing infatuation, the desire to conquer and move on.

“I am familiar with desire, Psyche,” he says quietly. “There is none who knows its ways better than I. Iamdesire.” He swallows. “So when I tell you that what I feel for you is something else besides, trust me to know of what I speak.”

And I remember, then, that he is also a god of love.

He raises himself on an elbow.

“In fact, if either of us is to doubt the other, it’s I who should doubt you. Didn’t you spurn me, before you saw my face? Wasn’t it the sight of me that converted you?” He gives me a sharp look. “Or was it the knowledge that I was a god?”

I flush, but hold his gaze.

“What I felt took hold before then,” I say. “The difference is, I had every reason to fight it. I had no reason to trust you…”

“You had every reason to trust me,” he interrupts, but his voice is quiet, not angry. Neither of us speaks for a little while, then. He studies me, his eyes on my face as though trying to memorize it.

“I’veseena mortal lose his senses, Psyche. I knew what my face had the power to do, among your kind. I believed myself to be a walking curse among you. And yetyou, you are completely unharmed. Your only madness was to come back to save me.”

I blink; my eyes threaten to betray me.

“But did I? Save you, I mean? Your brother…everything that happened.” We are refugees, branded as traitors. “I feel as though perhaps I…ruined you.”

He roves over me with those eyes.

“Oh, you’ve ruined me,” he says, his voice hoarse as he bends to kiss me. “You’ve ruined me all right, daughter of Sikyon.”

A few more hours of this, I think. A few more hours, to bask in the magic of each other’s bodies. And then, when morning breaks, our real journey will begin.

I reach for him, but as he takes my hand I drop it with a cry.

Pain like a white-hot flash stings my arm.

“What is it?”

I’m cradling my arm, the pain like a bright cord running the length of it.

“Psyche! What is it?”

That’s when I see it: a scorpion, white as pearl, scuttling away into the dark.

Chapter Forty