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.