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I exhale so hard my knees tremble a little. I will sleep alone after all. He must see the relief flooding through me.

“I told you that I would ask nothing of you, other than obedience.” He pauses. “The latter, I’ll grant you, needs some work.” He mocks me again. “But understand, Psyche, I will take nothing from you by force. I have never entered a woman’s bed I was not invited into. I will not enter yours without your invitation.”

I’m almost as breathless now as I was before. Myinvitation? Can he really think I’ll ever invite him to share my bed, of my own volition?

He laughs quietly.

“Are you so revolted? I should have thought I was rather pleasing—for a demon.”

His footsteps echo as he moves toward the door, and the wood-scent of him dwindles.

“Good night, Psyche. Rest well.”

Chapter Twelve

My sleep is troubled and fitful; all night I toss and turn as though on a boat. And when I wake my stomach grumbles fiercely. I think if I were to see that peach on the table this morning, I would take it. I know I cannot keep this fasting up forever. Sooner or later, I will have to eat.

I wince, and roll over to the sight of a new landscape outside the window: a wide meadow, dotted with black opium-poppies under a wind-tossed sky.

The sound of voices in the room outside rouses me from bed, and takes me to the doorway. I open it just a crack, enough to peer through. They are speaking in low voices, the demon and Aletheia, over by what I take to be the kitchen door. Or at least,heis speaking, his black cloak shimmering around him as before, while Aletheia listens, looking nonplussed. Then her gaze turns, and although my door is only the minutest bit ajar, her dark eyes fix on me, I am sure of it. I tell myself that I will not be the first to look away, but her gaze burns hot, and I drop my eyes.

“Psyche, will you not join us?”

He turns around, the hood low over his face, and it occurs to me that if he has bothered with the cloak at all, it is because he suspected I would spy on them like this.

I clear my throat, and inch out of the bedroom.

“I trust you slept well?”

“I slept,” I say shortly. “But not well.”

He inclines his head.

“That is regrettable.”

His words suggest sympathy, but his tone does not. I can’t help thinking back to last night, and my unanswered questions. Whydidhe save me from that monster; what’s in this for him? No mortal bridegroom would have waited an hour before taking his new wife to the bedchamber. I wonder suddenly if demons find mortals repellent, as well as the other way around. Perhaps everything about me that the boys of Sikyon found so appealing, he can barely stand.

If so, that is my good fortune. I clear my throat.

“I thought you said you were absent from this place during the day?”

“And so I am. Only this morning, I had some instructions for Aletheia.”

“About me?” I say, guarded.

The black cloth shimmers slightly as he nods. The fabric seems to hold the light, even though it’s the color of midnight. There’s something mesmerizing about it, and the small movements beneath its surface.

Aletheia shoots a last glance my way before disappearing through the kitchen door.

“I said to let you roam as you wished until I arrive home,” the demon says. “And to prepare you a lunch at noon.”

I’m about to tell him I have no need of it, even though my stomach growls at the very prospect, but I hold my tongue. I don’t want to antagonize him: I have a question I want answered instead. I keep my gaze on the black hood, holding steady.

“Have there been others?” I say. “Have other mortals come here before me?”

He doesn’t answer at first; I have the sense he doesn’t wish to.

“You are the first.”