I.

The week before your leaving, you were sitting cross-legged on the sea god’s altar. The marble steps beneath your feet bent at unnatural angles under the candlelight and the avaricious wind swept clean through the temple’s lonely halls.

Offerings had been laid demurely at his feet, among which you were one, and the smell of wine, horse meat, and incense enticed you all. But the admirers that surrounded you did not dare draw near, for your demeanor was brazen enough to call bitter rains from the sky and tridents from the deep.

Instead, they tittered in whispers, too shy to look into your eyes.

“Your Highness, should we make haste and return to the palaces?”

“I heard from the storm-masters that the floods will begin tonight—”

“Your Highness, what if your father’s men find us here again?”

As though the statue had lent the god its ears, a boom shook the temple, setting off shrieks and gasps. At the same time, a brilliant light ignited the ceiling mural’s rolling pink clouds, the deity’s barnacle crown and bearded scowl, your expression that mirrored his.

Very slowly, you raised the wine chalice to your lips and took a long pull. The sea stopped—the silence that followed was louder than the thunder.

You said, “And what if he does? Even from a king, Poseidon does not accept damaged goods.”

At this point, it was the first time your truest devotee spoke for the evening. “My lady, are you not afraid?”

You turned, you with your violent starlight eyes and your bloodstained lips. Like a lamb walking to the slaughter, you smiled. “Afraid? Why?”

II.

The night before your drowning, you walked the beach under the palace where your father could not possibly find you. All was calm, an indrawn breath waiting to be released, except for the patterns your toes disturbed upon the white sand.

Your handmaiden shadowed you; she saw the minute changes in your face. “Are you angry?”

“No.” At once, you stopped. After a thoughtful pause, you schooled your features, straightened your spine, and folded your lineless hands across your abdomen. “Well, Psychia? Do I finally look like the regal goddesses of legend?”

“Lady?” Your maid had never before been confronted with such a question. “No, never.”

She added, with hope if not delusion: “And if you are deemed unfit for him, perhaps the sea will spit you out.”

You laughed. “Or perhaps I will take up a pearl-and-shell dagger from the sirens down below, stab him through the heart, take his place. Then I’ll rise up on a blanket of foam and bring myself to you. There will be kraken, too, and hippocampi as in a horse-drawn chariot. Do you believe me, Psychia?”

“I believe you,” your poor servant swore. She had no other choice.

The sky was serene, the hooked moon long and sweet. In your wake, you left a damp message for no eyes but your own:

Εδώ βρίσκεται οἜρως και η Ψυχή

Here lies Eros and Psyche

III.

The dawn before your wedding, you had gold hanging from your ears, encircling your neck, clamping your wrists. Inlaid with rubies and amethysts, your embellishments seemed never to end, and your gown dragged a long crimson shadow on your father’s floor.

When your handmaiden leaned in to powder your face, you smiled once, a private smile reserved for her, before the saffron veil was flipped over your face and you rose to kiss your death.

Your father walked you down the aisle, the pier that had closed from the storms but would very soon receive the kingdom’s finest ships once more. For once, your chaplet shone brighter than his crown: the gleam of the gems seemed a clear professor of guilt.

Your father, the king, said your vows. He promised peace and prosperity for a century to come; he promised his firstborn daughter. Named directly after Cupid—an arrogance about to bear consequence—you would soon become the love of Poseidon himself, may he quell his heavy hand.

Your wedding guests gave you a moment to collect yourself, to take your final gulps of air. Hidden under the veil, no one could see your eyes that were searching desperately for your mother, who named you without knowing the price, and your handmaiden, who stood so far behind the guests you could not see her face, but who was captivated by yours.

The moment slipped. You stepped off the pier and disappeared beneath the waves.

IV.

The day after your killing, the winds turned kind. The sky was cloudless and the tides surged no higher than the ghost of the writing in the sand. There was no blanket of foam, no kraken, no hippocampi. You had broken your promise—you were forever gone.

Your mother shut herself in her rooms and refused to speak to anyone. At odd hours during the day, her ladies-in-waiting were seen leaving the hall carrying ripped linens, shattered plates, and her complete collection of ornamental blades. It was a sorry sight.

Your handmaiden was in many ways worse: with her charge gone, she was assigned to your mother—and what a pair they were, a master who could not speak and a maid who did nothing but cry. It was the third day after your death when she dried her eyes and decided her salvation.

In the depths of your mother’s closet, she kept her best robes and gowns which she would not be wearing anymore. Her crowns, necklaces, and jewels were stashed in a similar vein by ladies who worried that she would sabotage her own finery. This was lucky for your handmaiden, who spent secret hours in the noontime to pick out her favorites.

By evening, she had put on a deep velvet dress, no plainer than yours, and a suffocating veil that did not match. Thin gold chains hung from her neck and forearms, and when she walked to the edge of the pier that night, she made no sound.

In her final moments, your handmaiden unfurled her fist around a stolen silver ring, the crux of your wedding, forgotten, as it did not help you sink. Your handmaiden appraised it in the moonlight and, for she wanted it to be the last thing the fish would eat, she put it on her tongue and swallowed it whole.

She jumped.

Was this improper, lady? Did it cross the line of presumption, for a common maid to dream of meeting you anew in folds of red? But if men are equal only in death and a princess could join hands with that of a god, perhaps your handmaiden could hope to be your bride—for you were her goddess, her angel with wet, ruined wings, and she was here to retrieve you.

V.

The torrents tasted her and found her unsavory; Psychia dropped deeper into the cold until her limbs could not move. She parted her lips, letting her last breath bubble above her and drinking in the saltwater that tasted like a god’s tears. Psychia prepared to open her eyes, and she prayed for the first thing she saw to be Eros’ face. She died—

Her feet touched the bottom. Her body was gently buoyed upright, and she opened her eyes to find not her lady, but the ocean’s undergrowth aglow.

Dull grass set a carpet trampled by pink-and-orange corals. Curious butterflyfish brushed against her arm, triggerfish swarmed her until she was lost within their school, and they parted to reveal the lanternfish arranged in a line, waiting politely for her to follow.

Psychia put a tentative foot forward, and she began to walk the ocean floor.

The manta rays escorted her with their great white wings. For a brief moment, a herd of scaled stallions crossed her, and she let the last of their opaline tails pass the reefs before continuing on her way. A black shadow fell and Psychia looked up to find a milky sun-sized eye inspecting her. The giant squid took notice of her fright: it slid elegantly back into the water’s fog.

A spiked tower rose into view and soon the rest of the castle followed, its fluted pillars and algae-grown walls standing like a foregone shipwreck. Psychia scarcely had time to admire the whale bones that flanked the path before the sirens and mermen emerged from the ivory orchard.

Instead of bearing tridents and spears, their taloned hands cupped around strings of pearls and shark tooth pins. They replaced the gold that dragged her down, touched the red silk appreciatively with their claws, and unpinned the veil to free her sight so that when she reached the green-stained gates, she could see the revelry within.

Coral sprouted from cracks in the stone. There were fish, as before, but there were also serpents, isopods, whales, and the one who ruled them all watched from the seashell throne far above.

With misted eyes, Psychia followed the figure’s descent. She looked at the violet skirts, the high collar inset with narwhal horns, the deepwater court that parted and bowed, and for a moment she feared that the nereid queen was not her lady.

But then the goddess touched her hand and she shuddered, realizing that the ring she had buried inside her now wound around her finger. And her Eros cried: “Psychia, you came.”