Excerpt from The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In short, she'd fallen for her target.

She could not yoke her to a despicable man.

Gruff laughter rippled around her, the result of some ribald joke among the men. She wanted to cut them down for it, and that urge brought danger into sharp relief. She'd come here with a mission that she now had to betray. She wanted the impossible. She had to think. She had to devise the trick that could make the impossible true.

I could still shoot, she thought, get her to fall for me—but no. She did not want to enchant her way into Psyche's heart. That was too easy, too incomplete. She felt the weight of ages inside her, what she'd lost, what she'd given up. No. No arrows: the girl must come to her in her own way, spurred by her own strange and mortal spirit. Either she'd earn the girl's love honestly, or she wouldn't earn it at all.

Meanwhile, here was the arrow she'd brought for her mission. If she wanted to deceive her mother, she shouldn't bring it home.

She nocked the arrow, raised her bow, drew. Aimed at an arrogant young nobleman and fired. She caught him perfectly, just as he was idly gazing over at a bent old merchant in the crowd. There it went, his face, the nobleman's face, melting into tenderness and hunger. When the merchant caught him looking, he was befuddled at first, then curious. Good. Let those two men tangle their stories and bodies and lives, let them revel or weep, let them soar or let them burn. That was up to them. She turned away, finished with their destinies, mind elsewhere. Up into the air she launched, scheming as she flew home.

She had to love this girl.

She had to save her.

She had to find a way to hide.

It was the only way to defy the gods and carve a space for herself and her beloved from the cold rock of the world.

And so she'd done it.

She'd set it all up and now it was ready.

She was proud of herself, why deny it?

She, Eros, known to be a trickster, had devised the most elaborate trick of her life. Nothing in the past compared to the complexity and ambition of this plan. So many twists and turns, dead ends and portals: the message sent down through the Oracle, transmitted to the father at a slant by a frightened and strategically inebriated priest; the mysterious instructions to leave Psyche at the rock as a lone bride; the transport of wind down into a ravine concealed from the roads and whims of mortal men; the glory of what waited in the ravine, just for them. Brilliant. If she'd been vain, she might have had to boast of her accomplishment, the way Odysseus did after besting the Cyclops, breaking his own anonymity and baring himself to Poseidon's long revenge. A dumb mistake. A mortal man's mistake. She would not make it. She wrapped her plan in utmost silence: nobody would know, least of all her mother, who was usually her closest confidante but in this case would be deadly if she saw.

From a distance, she felt Psyche rise from the rock, borne aloft, held and carried by the wind. Cradled in a nest of air. She longed to approach her, to trace her arc against the sky, but she pulled her sight away. Not yet. For the magic that surrounded Psyche's destination was no ordinary shielding spell, the kind you pulled around your own body to hide from fellow gods; this magic encompassed a whole valley. A dazzling scope. It had required extra powers. Eros had stretched her skills and was proud of what she'd done. She had integrated a layer of dark to keep the magic securely in place, shrouding the palace from divine eyes. Genius, really—but now darkness had to be her mantle. For the spell to work, for her to go unseen, Eros could not visit in the light.

She would wait.

Still, she felt an electricity move through her, a bright vertigo. It begins.

Excerpted from The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis. Copyright © 2024 by Caro De Robertis. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.