She barely misses a beat. “Psyche? How lovely to hear from you. I’ll admit I’m surprised you’ve reached out.”
Damn it, I need this to move faster. I take a loud inhale. “I want out. You want me out. This serves both of us.”
“And here I thought you were in a love match with my son.” Her words drip acid.
“You know better.”
Aphrodite laughs. “Yes, I do. You bit off more than you can chew with Eros, but that’s neither here nor there. What are you proposing?”
“Meet me at… I don’t know, the gardens in the university district? If you can smuggle me out on the next shipment from the docks, you’ll never see me again.” The quiver in my voice gets stronger. “I didn’t sign on for this. I don’t want to die.”
“Of course not, sweet girl. No one wants to die.” She’s silent as she seems to consider this. “I was under the impression that you had no plans to leave the city.”
“It’s not exactly easy to leave Olympus,” I snap.
“Mm-hmm, that’s true enough.” Another pause. “I’ll get you out. Meet me in the gardens tonight.”
“No!” I realize I was too loud and silently curse myself. “Eros went out to run an errand. It has to be now. If I don’t leave before he gets back, he’ll keep me here.”
Aphrodite sighs. “Yes, my son is rather tenacious when he’s got his mind set on something. I suppose I can shift my plans for the day. I’ll meet you in the gardens in an hour.”
Barely long enough for me to get there with time to spare. I’m already moving to the door and yanking on my coat. “Okay. Thank you, Aphrodite.”
I can hear the evil smile in her voice. “Not a problem, dear. Mother knows best, after all.”
31
Eros
I’m not sure what someone is supposed to feel when they’re on their way to threaten and possibly kill their own mother. I feel nothing at all. Instead, I keep getting flashes of memories I thought long buried.
At eight, finding my mother crying on the couch. How she sobbed and told me the entire city was out to get her. I promised her that I would always protect her.
At thirteen, being able to perfectly detail all of my mother’s enemies, the ones she told me wanted her dead. I parroted their personal details and supposed sins back to her, and she smiled at me as if I was her favorite person in the world.
At seventeen, when my mother asked me to do her a favor, just a tiny little thing. It was so godsdamn easy to ask the right questions that led to the truth about Apollo and Daphne. And then she showered her attention on me like the summer sun.
At eighteen, the first time I told her I wouldn’t do what she asked. How quickly she withdrew her attention, her very presence, from me. How ruthlessly she punished me by withholding herself for days, weeks, until I finally buckled and did as she asked. My mother might be a monster, but she’s the only family I have. I wasn’t strong enough to withstand her icing me out. I had no one else.
At twenty-one, when I realized the lesson I should have years earlier: she doesn’t really love me. I doubt she’s actually capable of it. She sees me as a convenient tool to pick up and set down as the situation calls for it. All the soft moments, the tears, the hurt feelings, they were all weapons she wielded against me. Understanding that killed something in me, something I didn’t think I’d ever reclaim, not until I met Psyche.
After that, Aphrodite resorted to stronger measures to bring me back in line whenever I pushed back against her.
Even with all the years of love and resentment that slid right into hate, the truth is that she’s been the one constant in my life. Foil or guiding light, she’s always been there. It never really occurred to me that one day she wouldn’t be.
That one day mine would be the hand that brought her demise.
It takes me forty minutes to make it to her building. Though my mother spends most of her time in the area around Dodona Tower, she actually lives in the outskirts of the theater district. I’ve never been able to figure out if she actually likes the theater or if she just likes being a patron and muse to performers. Either way, it was her dragging me out to shows that eventually led to me finding the Bacchae.
She lives in a town house rather than one of the many skyscrapers that litter Olympus. It even has a small, fenced yard, and that’s how I enter the property, letting myself in through the gate that borders the back alley. There should be security people watching over the space—at my insistence—but it seems she’s dismissed them again. She hates having an entourage of armed people, and so she slips them off every chance she gets. It used to frustrate me to unspeakable levels.
Now, it works in my favor.
I pause in the yard. In the spring, it’s an explosion of color and flowers, all perfectly curated and picture-ready. I never understood that. Aphrodite entertains endlessly, but she rarely does it in her home. She barely posts pictures of this space, either. It’s almost as if all this beauty is just for her, but I can’t think about that now.
I use my key to unlock the back door and slip inside without announcing myself. It’s Sunday, so she should be home. Aphrodite ascribes to no church, and she likes lazy Sundays where she’s not on display to the public.
Except the house feels strangely empty.
I wander from room to room, hating the cascade of memories each one brings. This was my childhood home, and if that childhood was often devoid of softness and safety, it wasn’t all bad. I pause in the doorway to my old room. It’s a relic from the past, exactly the way I left it when I moved out at eighteen, desperate to put some space between myself and my mother. A king-sized bed, ridiculously high-thread-count sheets, exactly one pillow occupying the great expanse of mattress.
Despite myself, I step into the room and look around. There are no posters on the walls, but I do have two framed paintings that my mother gifted me during a particularly angsty stage. Their artist’s moniker is Death, which felt particularly apt at the time, and they show close-ups of battered hands drenched in color, giving the impression of violence just committed.
My desk holds a scattering of papers and pictures and random bullshit that teenagers accumulate. Notes from Helen. Old school assignments that I never got around to tossing. Notebooks filled with comments and insight gained during my first fledgling attempts at surveillance.
I open my closet and eye the gun safe tucked within. That’s something I’d wager most teenagers don’t accumulate. I crouch down and key in the combination more through force of habit than anything else. While I keep various weapons and poisons in my penthouse, using the stash Aphrodite keeps under her roof is better for this scenario. My mother won’t feel a thing; she’ll just get sleepy and then know nothing at all.
I can’t think about the fact that it’s the same poison I intended to use on Psyche.
There are a lot of things I can’t think about right now.
I open the safe and frown. “What the fuck?”
One of the guns is missing. I hover my hand over the empty space. It was here two weeks ago when Aphrodite required my presence for dinner. Where the fuck is it now?
The small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Something’s very wrong. I’ve let my emotions get the best of me, and they’ve clouded the one thing I should be thinking about. Or, rather, the question I should be asking.
Where the fuck is Aphrodite?
My phone buzzes in my pocket as I push to my feet. I fish it out, see Helen’s name, and reject the call. I’ll talk to her later. Except my phone starts vibrating before I can put it back in my pocket. Helen again. I frown and answer. “I’m busy.”
“Eros, I think Psyche is in trouble. Or maybe your mother is. I’m honestly not really sure, but something’s going on and you need to know about it.”