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She gives me a serious look.
“Your god is…much diminished. A god’s temple is his place of strength. A container for his energy, his power. Eros’s temple is broken, and that has weakened him.”
I swallow.
“His temple at Sikyon, you mean? Did I make that happen?” But I am sure I already know the answer.
Her unblinking eyes are fixed on me, making the hairs on my neck stand up.
“To break a god’s vow, in the god’s own temple…it creates a deep rupture in the fabric of things. An unraveling. It is like a tremor in the earth—one that the gods may sense.”
“So itismy fault.”
“Blame is irrelevant,” she says. “What was fated came to pass.”
Fate.That slippery word that I am coming to hate.
“The rupture you spoke of,” I swallow. “Was that what brought the goddess to him?”
I remember that shadowy form taking shape in the corner of the room. Eros’s doomed expression. He knew she was coming; that something had alerted her.
The oracle nods.
“Aphrodite’s third son is her great pride. The one made in her image: a god of love, whose beauty can transfix the eye. Since his boyhood she has made a companion of him, and bound him to her with oaths of loyalty. She is a doting and jealous mother. Eros thought to defy her wishes and keep his defiance a secret, but he was found out. To the goddess, his actions were a betrayal of the worst order.”
My stomach turns over. It’s nothing I didn’t already know, but hearing her speak it aloud fills me with dread.
The oracle shoots me a curious look.
“Her pride in him was so great that when he was still a boy, the goddess boasted that no human could look upon him without being driven mad by his beauty. Whether she meant it as a prophecy I do not know, but a prophecy it became. The boy could not roam freely like the other gods—not without causing pain and destruction. When he left Olympus, he learned to cloak his face.”
She adjusts her seat, leans closer.
“And yet you do not seem mad,” she says.
My heart flutters.
“I do not feel it. Perhaps—perhaps the madness is just a legend,” I say.
The oracle merely raises her eyebrows.
“Perhaps.”
Her gaze comes to rest then on something over my shoulder.
“You are armed, I see.” She reaches out a hand. “May I?”
I hesitate, then realize what she’s talking about, and pass her the quiver of arrows. She slides one out and examines it. The arrows are of two different colors, I notice for the first time. Halfare made with a dark wood, cedarwood perhaps; the other half are almost white, like birch.
“Love and death,” the oracle nods. “You must be careful which you choose.”
“I—I’m not sure I understand,” I stammer.
She gives me a patient look, as though she knows that deep down, Idoknow.
“This one,” she points to the birch wood, “has the effect of a love spell—an infatuation, if you like. The other, instant death. To mortal creatures, that is.” She fingers one of the cedarwood arrows, then drops it back into the quiver. “Eros may be a love-god, but he is the son of Ares, too. Be careful. They need only pierce the skin to take effect.”
She hands the quiver back to me. I hesitate.
