Page 46

I think of the giggles and stares, the comments. The one they call Klaia was friendly enough, I suppose, but…

“Not much.” Why should he expect me to like such creatures? “They’re…sopurposeless.Do they really live whole aeons like this, just gossiping and sniping and tending to their beauty?”

“Well,” he seems to consider the question. “Sometimes they swim.”

I glare. He thinks everything I say is soamusing.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” I snap. “What has an immortal to do with time except waste it? I can see it is quite foreign to you, the idea that a person shouldusetheir time. Thatthere is more to life than disporting oneself. That in the time we have, we might want to do somethingreal.”

I feel him looking at me. I hear the smarting anger in my voice.

“You may think it is a petty thing, a mortal life. Awoman’slife. But it is what I have.”

What I had.

“This again?” He sounds disgusted. “You ride a high horse,wife. You wish me to congratulate you on being mortal; on being a member of such a miserable, murderous race? Very well: I congratulate you.” His chair screeches as he pushes it back from the table, and in a few sweeping strides, black cloak flowing behind him, he’s gone from the room.

And my letter remains on the table.

Chapter Eighteen

“Hello, pretty ones,” I say softly.

I have found my way back to the bird-room today. They are extraordinary creatures, and the longer I watch them, the more I marvel at them. Some have long legs that fold up underneath them like dancers; others, enormous bills that drape down toward the ground; others still, extraordinary tails that unfurl like wings as I watch.

They do not seem unhappy here. Green shrubs fill the corners of the room, tricking my eye into imagining I’m outdoors, and perhaps it tricks the birds, too. And yet…one yellow-breasted bird cocks its head at me, looking at me with bright black eyes that remind me of Dimitra. They are intelligent creatures—intelligent enough, I believe, to know they are captives. They may seem tame, but I believe the instinct to be a wild thing lives inside us all. I think even if I lived in this palace for a thousand years, I would still have that instinct etched deep in my soul, the knowledge of what it is to live free. And deep down, I feel sure these birds are the same.

I woke today to find my letter gone from the table. The demon had taken it after all. Whether he means to deliver it or not, I cannot say.

The yellow bird hops over to the side of the cage and tilts its head at me, looking at me with curious black eyes. I smile at it, but I don’t reach out to it.

Pretty things can bite you.

What you trust can turn on you.

I know that now.

I curl my hands into fists, then uncurl them. Perhaps Father and Dimitra are reading my letter even now. Was I right to send it? Should I have tried to tell them more of the truth?

Do not give me up for lost, I think, as if my thoughts could travel to them and speak themselves aloud.

I wander like a shade around the palace for the rest of the day, impatient for the demon to return. Eventually I retire to my bedroom and gaze out of the window—today it shows a lush forest—and wait for the sound of his footstep. When it comes at last, I hurry though the door.

“Psyche.” He greets me with surprise, and I flush.

“You took the letter,” I say. And then, though it sticks in my throat a little: “Thank you.”

But even as I say it, I observe his air of heaviness, of distraction. The way he stands by that chair, his hand clenching the back of it.

“I was not able to deliver it,” he says curtly. “I am sorry.”

I stare at him.

“Not able? For what reason?”

Distrust surges in me. Perhaps he didn’t even try to deliver it; perhaps he never intended to.

“Your family—they are no longer in Sikyon,” he says. My ears ring. Does he think me a fool, that I cannot hear the hesitation in his words?