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“She will try it again,” I say.

I feel Eros slide close to me. There is a long silence.

“I blame myself for endangering you, Psyche. Name me a place and I will take you there. I will leave you safe, and ride on alone. I will draw my mother’s wrath onto myself.”

I open my eyes again.

“You willnot. You will not leave me behind, not now.”

He smiles at that, just a little. And then he lets me rest. And then, when the night is thickest, he carries me to where Ajax stands waiting, and settles me on his back.

Chapter Forty-One

“It will be all right,” he whispers in my hair, as he climbs up behind me.

I don’t know whether to believe him. But I’m choosing to.

“Remember, while my mother believes you dead, we have the advantage.”

I shiver.While my mother believes you dead.Still, Eros is right. She thinks her work is done. She will not tell her followers to look for me now. It is to our advantage. But just in case, Eros holds the adamantine dagger in his hand, ready for any other creature that may come this way.

The enormity of what we’re doing is not lost on me. Looking up at the pitch-black night only makes it clearer.

“They will never let you back into Olympus, while you are with me. Will they?”

He takes the reins and gives them a brisk shake. His voice is brisk too.

“So I will live in the mortal realm, as you do. We will make our home here.”

I try to imagine that. To live alongside a god—a fallen god—among my own people.

“And how will we live?” I say. “I have my father’s ring to sell, at least.” I glance toward the saddlebags. “I suppose that may get us as far as Atlantis.”

Eros laughs low behind me—the sound is the last thing I expected, but it warms me.

“I may be a weakened god, wife, but I am still a god. Have a little faith.”

And I do. I am learning to live in a world of uncertainty, a world stranger, darker, and more miraculous than any I could have imagined. And I ride with a god by my side.

“You should sleep, Psyche,” he says, as the sun starts to wake over the horizon line. “You have not rested at all tonight—nor for many days, I think.”

“It’s no use,” I tell him. “My mind turns too fast.” I would dearly like to rest, but sleep eludes me.

“If you wish to sleep, I can command it.” From behind me, he brushes a hair back from my face.

I remember the first night I met him. I settle back into his broad chest. I stare around us at the dark plains, the blue glow of the sky over the forests.

“Bewitch me, then,” I say, and I think I hear the smile in his voice as he speaks the word.Skotos: Darkness.The murmur of his voice is soft, like a blindfold made of silk.

And this time, sleep comes as a friend.

*

The villages rise up and fall away, stony outcroppings on shallow hills, wooden shanties in shadowed valleys. I doze and wake, and doze and wake, and whenever I wake I feel Eros’s strong arms around me, girding me at the waist, holding me steady and safe. We don’t talk much, but sometimes he sings, and when he does, he sings the music of the stars. I feel the blood in my body sing back to him, resonating to his pitch like a struck chime.

Two travelers, one an earthbound god, and one…What am I?

I thought I knew, but now I cannot say. I would like to think that in Atlantis, we may find some answers. It is my mother’s homeland, and the home of the mysteries she has left me with.