Chapter 3 - Psyche

When the door was closed, I spun around, eager to see who Aphrodite had brought with her.

I was two steps into my room when they changed. Expecting a goddess, I couldn’t have been more stunned by the additional visitor.

Or wrong.

Those soft blonde curls and piercing blue eyes didn’t belong to any goddess. Only the most amazing guy - god? - I’d ever laid eyes on.

My heart took off at a sprint and the blood rushed to my cheeks. He shot me a coy smirk that made my stomach slush with uneasy delight. So when a pair of pristine white wings unfurled from his back, my knees almost buckled. And here I’d thought he couldn’t be any more magnificent. No doubt about it, this guy was divine.

Aphrodite threw her arms wide, demanding I place my attention on her. “So, are you surprised?” she asked.

Although she’d never hugged me before, I knew it was what she wanted me to do. To sweep myself into her embrace and prove myself grateful of my new role as her mortal daughter.

“Surprised isn’t the half of it,” I mumbled, stepping into an awkward hug.

Her arms tightened around me as she rocked me side to side. “This is so exciting for you. And for me.” She pushed me back at arms-length and stared at my face, her eyes searching mine. “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for. I can just tell.”

Beside her, the boy’s wings ruffled. “You’ve had your little mother-daughter reunion. Can we go now?”

Still keeping one arm draped over my shoulder, Aphrodite wrapped the boy up with her other arm. We were so close I could almost smell him, just a hint of rugged sunshine. “Don’t be silly, Eros. We all have much to discuss.”

Eros? Like the god-of-love, shoots-everyone-with-magic-arrows, son-of-Aphrodite Eros?

“Do we have to do it here?” His gaze swept my room and obvious distaste curled down the edges of his lips, wiping away that delicious smirk. “It’s so... pedestrian.”

What’s that supposed to mean? My temptation to bite his head off was tempered only by my need to stay on topic.

“Aphrodite --” I started. “I’m not supposed to call you ‘mom’ now or anything, am I?”

That infamous smile of hers pulled her lips tight and a perfect dimple flared on her right cheek. “Not yet, sweetie. Soon,” she shot a knowing look at Eros, “but not yet.”

I felt like I needed to sit down. Was the room spinning?

Rubbing at my temples, I tried again. “Okay. I’m sure I don’t understand most of what’s going on today, but we really need to talk. Because what my parents are planning makes no sense either.” Aphrodite perched on the edge of my vanity and cocked her head like she was waiting for me to continue. “See, here’s the thing. My parents are really happy.”

“They should be,” Eros half-coughed into his fist.

I shot him a glare before continuing on my rambling speech. “But, they think you’ll want me to get married right away. Which is just insane, right? I mean, you said I’d help you promote the worship of beauty, but we never talked about your other ... well, attributes. And so anyway, my parents are sending out requests for suitors, and my sister is going to get married off too, and this is all just ... wrong. Please tell me this is wrong.”

“Completely wrong,” Aphrodite confirmed with a wave of her hand. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been squeezing my fingers until I let them go and the blood rushed back.

“Well, maybe not the part about your sister, but definitely about marrying you off.” She gave this throaty chuckle that erased all the insta-relief I’d had just a second ago. “Your parents don’t get to pick your husband. I do.”

Eros snorted and dropped onto a tripod stool on the other side of my room. “Yeah, and we all know how well that turned out last time.”

Aphrodite rose and paced toward her son. “What do you know about Helen?” Her voice fell an octave as she whisper-hissed. “You weren’t even born yet, you ungrateful little twit.”

Eros flicked his eyes to his mother. When he finally responded, his voice was level. “I know you started the worst war in the history of Greece and it all revolved around a pretty face.” He turned his stare on me and nodded. “So now you’ve found another one. Bravo, mother. What’ll it be this time. Can you use her to start a ten-year plague? Famine maybe?”

Aphrodite raised her hand like she was going to slap him, but then stopped. Her fist clenched, she lowered her arm and slowly turned to me. Her permagrin could’ve frozen lava in the summer.

“I’m sorry, Psyche. Had I known my son would be so... ill-mannered, I might’ve told you this news privately.”

My eyes darted from Aphrodite to Eros and back. She cleared her throat as she reached out and clasped my hand between hers. “Psyche, darling, you knew there’d be a time when I would need something from you? A small service?”

I nodded. Here it comes.

She raised my hand up near her heart. “I would consider it a personal favor if you would do me the honor of marrying my son.”

My jaw fell slack and I tried to back away, but Aphrodite had a death grip on my hand. Eros, on the other hand, had no such restraint. His sudden jump to his feet upended the tripod.

“Are you kidding me?” His wings spread wide behind him as he puffed himself up like a giant peacock and stormed his mother. “You think I’m going to marry her?”

“Yes, actually, I do.” Aphrodite twisted her mouth into a smiling snarl. “Or the next time Zeus wants to strip you of your arrows, I won’t stop him.” She finally released my hand to pat Eros on the cheek.

His lips pressed together so tightly they looked in danger of disappearing altogether. “A mortal or my arrows? That’s my choice?”

Aphrodite sighed, long and heavy. “I know she looks like the last one, but Psyche’s far prettier, don’t you think?” She turned to me and drenched me in a motherly smile. “And this one won’t break your heart.”

A muscle in Eros’ cheek twitched and I had the sudden feeling he was about to give in. Not that I felt the least bit sorry for him, but I had less than no interest in spending the rest of my life with the biggest jerk I’d ever met. Considering some of the Senators who’d come through our palace, that was saying something.

Before I could stop myself, the words tumbled out of my mouth. “Maybe we can figure something out.” Both of their blue-eyed stares nailed me to the ground.

“I mean, I’m not ready to get married yet. And really, Eros and I just met, and well, I’m not sure we’re the best match -- no offense.” Crap. That came out totally wrong. Did I just tell the goddess of match making that she sucked it up on this one? “I’m sure we’d look really good together and everything, but maybe our personalities don’t exactly mesh.” I was trying to smile but it felt way more like a grimace.

“Speak for yourself. No god looks good toting around mortal baggage.”

Had he really just said that to me?

Aphrodite’s tongue was quicker than mine to respond. “And I suppose that’s why you use your arrows to make Zeus fawn all over those mortal girls. Or why you fell in love with one yourself. Because they’re baggage?” She reached out and clenched my upper arm before thrusting me at her son. “I found you the most beautiful girl in all of Greece and this is how you thank me?”

Eros threw up his hands. “You want me to thank you?” He looked me up and down, his eyes slowly raking over my body from head to toe. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Snatching my arm free from Aphrodite, I bore down on Eros. Instictively, my finger poked him in the chest like I was reprimanding a child. “Now you listen to me. I don’t give a crap who you are. Your mother has been nothing but good to me and you can not talk to her that way in my house.”

Eros’s fingers clasped around my wrist, sending a tiny charge racing through my body. When his eyes briefly widened, I was sure he felt it too. Our stares locked, only inches apart. I could even feel his breath tickle across my lips as he worked to slow his breathing.

As quickly as the moment came, it was gone. Eros threw down my arm and shot a glare at his mother. “Really? You think I’m going to marry this?”

Ugh. I had so had it with him. My palms hit his chest hard enough to rock him back a step. “I would never, ever, marry you. So don’t even think you can reject me, you pompous, arrogant... creep. Because I reject you. You hear me? Get out of my room.”

The initial look of shock on Eros’ face was washed away by pure delight. His eyes sparkled and danced like embers soaring over a bonfire. “With pleasure.” He took a sweeping bow, then turned to his mother. “I think that about settles things here, don’t you?”

Before she could answer, he morphed into a dove and fluttered through the cracked opening in the shutters.

I’d thought all the tension would’ve left the room on those wings, but I found myself working solo with a goddess whose usually-procelin face was now visibly red. Sure, she’d come to me before, huffing about slights or infractions. Like the time some farmer referred to her in a prayer as ox-eyed, when everyone knows that’s Hera’s moniker. But right now, she could put a steamed lobster to shame and I had a really bad feeling I was about to take the brunt of her anger.

“One thing. All I ask of you is one, little thing and you won’t do it?”

“He started it.” Way to be mature. I gave myself a mental eye roll and forged ahead. “Besides, you were supposed to ask me to do something related to beauty, not love or sex or those other things.”

“What made you think that? My terms were always left open. You accepted my advice, rose in fame, filled your family’s coffers.” She gestured wildly at my window, shaking her whole body enough to rattle the golden seashell necklaces draped around her neck. “It’s not like I’ve asked you to be a whore in my temple. You’d be married to a god.”

When she said it like that, she had a point. Still... I needed to think and her glare was halting my brain. Slowly, I took a step back toward my bedroom door. Maybe I could ease my way out. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t follow me in her actual body and she clearly needed some cooling off time. “I’m sorr--” I began.

“I made you my daughter.” Her voice echoed like thunder off the mosaic walls of my room. “And then you refuse my son? A child of my actual blood?”

I continued my backpeddle and tried to think of a way to stall. “Just, give me a little time, okay? I said I was sorry.” Behind me, my hand found the door knob and turned it. “He can’t say those things to you. It’s not okay.”

“It was not your place.” Her screech followed me down the hall as I tore out of my room for the second time that day.

Chapter end