Page 104

Can it be real?

“Are you doing this?” I say, and Eros shakes his head.

“I do not have that power.”

The blue has receded down to my arm now, just a little above my elbow. But now the advancing pink slows, seems to hesitate. It is as though two forces have reached a standstill, a battle neither side can win.

“You can do it,” Eros whispers.

“I’m not doing it,” I say, but then, if I’m not doing it, who is? I can feel the glow of it, the surge struggling through my body, life trying to push through. Maybe Iamdoing this.

I close my eyes. The pain is back, worse than before. The numbness was shielding me from it but now it’s like a thousand tiny stings, like picks of ice darting in and out of my flesh. Perhaps there’s no point fighting it. What can I hope to win back, when a goddess herself wants me dead? If she doesn’t kill me today, she’ll kill me tomorrow. I open my eyes again, and for a moment the blue patch quivers and spreads, regaining ground. I grit my teeth and close my eyes again.

I am doing this,I think to myself.

Iwilldo this.

“Fight, Psyche.”

His voice sounds like a stranger’s.

When I open my eyes again, the blue glow has faded further. And as I watch, it fades further still. It shrinks—slowly, painfully—until it’s the size of a handprint, then just a thumbprint, a vivid blue circle, glowing and throbbing. At the center of the circle I see the mark of the scorpion, a small dark wound in the flesh. Around it, the blue glows brightly, as though all the poison has been concentrated in that one spot. I close my eyes; I’m bathed in sweat.

“Fight it,” Eros murmurs.

I screw my eyes tight and push with whatever energy is left in me. But I can’t force the poison out of me. I open my eyes.

“I can’t get it out,” I pant.

He grabs my hand, and puts his mouth to the wound again. And this time I feel it, the warmth of his mouth on me, and a dark thing, dense as lead, black as tar, whispering with evil as it leaves my body.

He spits onto the ground and wipes his mouth.

And when I look at my arm again…

There’s a tiny puncture wound, barely visible against the skin, and my forearm is flushed a little pink. But that’s the only sign of what just happened. Eros crouches over me. He cradles my arm, turns it this way and that, staring, wondering. Then he lays it back gently over my stomach. When I look into his eyes, they’re searching mine for answers. Answers I don’t have.

We sit and stare at each other. I feel the cold sweat drying on my bare skin.

“Psyche,” he says. “What you just did—what your body did. That is no mortal gift.”

I shake my head.

“I felt it,” I tell him. “It was like a hand trying to close around my heart. And I felt something in my own body fight back.” I don’t tell him that at its worst, I thought I heard voices. That itseemed to me the poison itself was speaking, in a voice that saidkill her, kill the mortal, kill.

“Psyche, did you hear me?” He’s staring at me. “What you did,” he says. “That is not something an ordinary mortal can do.”

I wipe my face. I feel like he’s accusing me of something.

“Well, maybe I’m not an ordinary mortal.”

“You’re far from ordinary. And now I think…” He’s staring at me as though he’s trying to make me understand. “Psyche, I think perhaps you are not fully mortal, either. I think you’re part mortal. Part mortal, and part something else.”

I close my eyes again. This is all too much. All these words. All this confusion. What just happened doesn’t make sense, but his words don’t make sense either. I suppose it’s the shock, but tears are forming under my eyelids, and now they’re sliding down my face. We lie in silence a little while. Slowly I let his words sink in, and the more I do, the more I have to admit it. What just happened was impossible.

I open my eyes and stare into his amber gaze.

“How can I be anythingbutmortal? I have no powers. No special gifts.” I shake my head. “My parents were mortals.”