Born in Beauty

by Melody Rose

  Neither of the Olympic Officials said anything just then. Instead, they shared a look that I couldn’t interpret. I had to say something to save my skin, but my mind grasped at straws as it searched for some sort of defense.

  “Look, it’s still Eros’s formula, right?” I asked, begging for an honest response out of them.

  “It looks that way, yes,” Fiona replied.

  “I’d recognize that formula anywhere,” Tené said, almost absently, but it was the confirmation I needed.

  “Right, so I don’t know Eros,” I continued, trying for anything to convince them. “I know nothing about the magic behind his bow and arrow. Sure, I might be able to make you a hell of a bow and arrow, but as to what to put on it to make people go all crazy like this, I’ve got nothing.”

  “Your father made Eros his bow and arrow,” Tené commented with a suspicious look in her eye.

  “Yeah, and it’s Eros that enchanted them with the power to make people fall in love,” I replied, throwing the myth right back at her. “My father may have provided the tool, but once it was in Eros’s hands, it was his responsibility.”

  “You have the same philosophy with your weapons,” Fiona said out of nowhere, turning the conversation on its head.

  “Yeah, I do,” I confirmed, my defenses going up even higher now that we were talking about my work. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Did anyone ask you to make a bow and arrow for them?” Tené asked.

  I scoffed and leaned back in the chair. “No. And even if they did, there wouldn’t have been time. These symptoms started the night school started. I didn’t get into the forge until the next day.”

  “You could have made it over the summer,” Tené reasoned as though she were trying to force a square peg in a round hole, anything to make her theory work.

  “I don’t have a forge at home,” I said plainly, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice. “I didn’t touch a piece of metal all summer. It nearly killed me.” I said, growing quiet on the last confession. I meant what I said, but I added that last bit in the hopes they would see my vulnerability and my honesty.

  Fiona and Tené shared another one of those all-knowing looks. Tené licked her lips before continuing, which didn’t ease the eels swirling in my stomach one bit.

  “I still don’t understand why you would be immune to this,” she said sternly. “Even in mythology, Hephaestus has no power or ability to resist love.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “He had, like, sixteen kids, with at least seven different women.”

  Tené looked at me pointedly. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “I thought we didn’t really think about that stuff here.” I gestured to Tené and myself. “Otherwise, we’d be like half-siblings or something like that, and that’s weird.”

  “Step siblings,” Tené corrected.

  “Still weird,” I said unshaken.

  “Cheyenne,” Fiona said with a tone to indicate that she wanted to get back to the matter at hand. She leaned forward on his desk and stared at me in the eye. “If you didn’t start this, then who do you think did?”

  I paused and considered his question as much as I did my answer. “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because you are one of the few people on campus that can think sensibly at the moment,” Tené explained. “And that is an asset we can’t afford to waste.”

  “I really think it was Eros,” I answered plainly. “Or one of his children. They’re the only ones powerful enough to produce or recreate his love formula. I don’t care about why he did it. I’m way more concerned with fixing it.”

  “So are we, do not mistake that,” Fiona assured me though I was skeptical. I still think they wanted someone they could punish, publically make an example of. The General would have loved that.

  Suddenly a thought occurred to me. I looked around the room with punched eyebrows and ruminated on my discovery.

  “What is it?” Tené asked eagerly. “You look as though you just thought of something.”

  “I did,” I replied honestly, though my voice was soft, “but not about Love Struck.”

  “Love Struck?” Fiona asked in the exact tone I had used with Ansel earlier.

  “Yeah, apparently, that’s this thing’s nickname.” I waved off the question, focusing on my epiphany. “Where are the other Olympian Officials?”

  “Excuse me?” Tené wondered, though her face grew stony.

  “You both just accused me of starting this whole mess,” I said as I twirled my finger around the room as though the disease were in the air. “Wouldn’t that be something you bring to the whole group of twelve rather than just Fiona’s private office?”

  Fiona and Tené remained silent at my question, refusing to answer. My lips curled into a triumphant smile.

  “They don’t know about my immunity, do they?” I asked the pair of officials in front of me. “Why?”

  “It would seem…” Tené sighed and relented.

  “Tené,” Fiona warned as she held out her hand to stop Tené, but she jerked her colleague off.

  “It would seem,” Tené started over, more confident now, “that when we mean that everyone has a trace, we mean everyone.”

  “Including the Olympic Officials,” I translated. A bark of astonished laughter escaped my lips, but I didn’t hold it back. “And you can’t trust them to think clearly right now. Wow. That’s really interesting.”

  “Cheyenne,” Fiona said my name in a warning tone. “That is not public knowledge, nor is it your responsibility to share it.”

  “I understand, but I also understand why you need my help now,” I deciphered. “Because if any of the other Olympic Officials are out of commission, it’s going to make it really hard to devise a plan and find a cure.”

  “There is no cure,” Fiona said defeatedly. “We are hoping that the infatuation will wear out over time, but none of our healers have been able to rid the demigods of the… Love Struck.”

  I smiled at Fiona as she tried out the nickname. It didn’t sound right in her mouth, but at least the disease had some sort of title now. However, I wasn’t paying attention to Fiona. My eyes trained on Tené. The powerful and intimidating woman for moments ago shrunk into herself and leaned against the wall like she wanted to crawl inside it.

  “You know something, but you’re not saying,” I accused Tené, feeling emboldened with my newfound power and respect from the Olympic Officials.

  Fiona’s head whirled around to look at her colleague. “Tené,” he said, his voice weak. “What do you know?”

  Tené sighed dramatically and released her hands from their tense place across her chest. “There’s only one way to reverse the effects of Eros’s bow and arrow. Once you're struck, you stay in love--”

  “Unless you’re struck again,” I finished for her. “So, we need the bow and arrow.”

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Fiona asked, her eyes still on her fellow official.

  “Because I was hoping you and your healers had a way,” Tené said. She shook her head. “I knew it was foolish, but do you know how hard it’s going to be to get Eros’s bow and arrow?”

  “Could we get a team of soldiers to go out and steal it?” Fiona suggested, thinking like the officer she was.

  “Eros never lets that thing out of his sight.” Tené was clearly appalled, as though Fiona has suggested an insurmountable task. “And you’re suggesting stealing from a god? Really?”

  “That’s never gone over well,” I said, the wheel of myths turning in my head from all of the catastrophic instances. Prometheus stealing the fire from Zeus led to him getting his liver eaten by an eagle for all eternity. Typhon taking Zeus’s weapons led him to being banished to Tartarus. Hermes stealing Apollo’s cows led him to losing his lyre and Apollo becoming the god of music instead of Hermes.

  Needless to say, it was a bad idea to steal from the gods.

  “What if we could get Eros to com
e to us?” I ventured the question as more of a guess than anything else.

  “If you haven’t noticed, Cheyenne, the gods don’t just pop up at the Academy,” Tené said with a disproportionate amount of sass. “It’s not as though we can summon him.”

  “We can always pray to him, offer him something, and then he might come,” Fiona suggested. “That’s how we get the gods to come to graduation.”

  “He still has the right of refusal,” Tené said as she shook her head. “You can’t ever force a god to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  “But you can trick him,” I said. The words seemed to come out of my mouth of their own accord. “It’s the only way for mortals to get gods to do what they want.”

  “You think stealing didn’t work out well for people,” Tené said as she put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, sticking her neck out at me. “Tricking the gods is basically a death sentence.”

  “Archenne, Sysphis, Hercules,” Fiona ticked the culprits off her fingers. “Telemachus, Io. The list goes on and on.”

  “I know, I know,” I said as I stood up from my chair and paced around the small office. “But hear me out. If we can get Eros here on campus, then we can trick him into helping us cure everyone.”

  “How do you expect to do that?” Tené said skeptically.

  “Calm down Tené and hear her out,” Fiona said, defending me. “This is the most progress we’ve had in a while, so let’s see where it goes.”

  I gulped at Fiona’s notion. If the Olympic Officials were so shortchanged for ideas that they were turning to me, then the campus might be in more trouble than I thought.

  “Well, I don’t necessarily know how we might trick him,” I started, and when Tené scoffed, I added quickly, “Yet. I don’t know yet, but you might be able to help me with that. But I know how we can get him here.”

  “How?” Fiona wondered, genuine interest in her eyes.

  “Eros is the god of lust,” I said, even though they both knew this, and Tené’s eyes urged me to hurry up. “In the myths, he can never resist a good party, specifically one filled with lust and love.”

  Tené caught up to me. I could tell when her eyes grew wide in horror. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

  “A school dance?” I said at the same time she said, “An orgy?”

  Fiona’s expression grew baffled at the pair of us while Tené and I stared at one another curiously. We both looked like fish as we opened and closed our mouths a couple of times. It amused me to see her cheeks grow red from embarrassment.

  “In all honesty,” Fiona interrupted our awkward moment with a cough. “There’s not much difference between the two.”

  “To a certain degree, yes,” I said as flashes of memories from my high school proms and homecomings came to mind. “But I think we create an environment that Eros simply can’t refuse.”

  Tené looked ready to protest, but Fiona laid a hand on her arm. This time, she shut up, and Fiona opened his hand, permitting me to continue.

  “I think we erase all of the no relations rules,” I said with a deep exhale, all of the words coming out in a rush. The idea formed in my mind, and it seemed so clear and solid that I had to share it. Even if it was absurd and ridiculous, something like this might be the only chance to make Benji and the rest of campus regain their senses.

  “They pretty much already are,” Tené relented.

  “I know, but do it officially. Get the General or whomever,” I clarified as I noticed the tense glint in Tené’s eye when I mentioned the head of the school, “to make an official announcement. Dating is allowed between anyone. Schoolwork and training are going to suffer, but I bet that if you let couples be together as much as possible, in class, in their rooms, in the cafeteria, then they’ll engage and actually get things done.” I tilted my head back and forth, unsure of this one, but I thought it was worth a try. “Especially if we tell them about the dance. They need to complete their classes and training in order to go. Couples need things to do together, and with that incentive of the party, they’ll do it.”

  “This is sounding more and more ridiculous by the minute,” Tené grumbled.

  I barrelled on, ignoring her doubts and my own at this moment, because realistically, what else did we have to go on?

  “The campus will be sexually charged leading up to the dance, and that will be an explosion of love, lust, sex, and all things Eros.” I spread my arms wide, nearly reaching either end of the office walls. “Then he’ll have to come and see what all of the fuss is about.”

  Tené put her face in her hand and shook it slowly. Fiona looked at me with one raised eyebrow. I had no idea what either of them was going to say. A sinking suspicion told me that they were going to shoot me down in one fell swoop. They would usher me out, say they were wrong to trust me, and they, the adults, would figure something out.

  But then, Fiona surprised the shit out of me when she said, “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “What?” I balked just as Tené said, “You do?”

  “I do,” Fiona answered her colleague. “At the very least, it will get Eros here, and we can ask him what the hell is going on.”

  “If we do this…” Tené began, and a surge of hope flared in my chest. She must have noticed my reaction because she held up a finger and emphasized her point. “If we do this, we might attract the attention of other gods too.”

  “You mean like the other love gods?” I asked. “The Erotes? Anteros, Himeros, Hedylogos, Hymenaios, Hermaphroditus, and Pothos?”

  Tené’s mouth hung open, looking the most unattractive I had ever seen her. Fiona whistled, clearly impressed with my knowledge. I squinted, and my face grew tense.

  “I did it again, didn’t I?” I winced. “That thing where I spit out too much random-ass Greek knowledge. Sorry.”

  “Do not be sorry for that,” Fiona scolded me. “It is impressive, and a talent like that should be rewarded, not diminished.”

  “You…” Tené blabbered. “You even pronounced them correctly.”

  “Yeah…” I pushed through words through a cheeky smile.

  “Originally, I meant Aphrodite,” Tené clarified, “but absolutely, you’re right. We might attract the Erotes as well.”

  “So then we do, and maybe one of them will lead us to Eros,” I reasoned, trying to push past the awkward moment. “Either way, this is the best idea we’ve got. And even if it weren’t literally our only viable option, I still think it’s a good one.”

  “Do you think we can convince the others?” Fiona looked up at Tené, who still stood in the room, while she’d remained in her office chair during the whole conversation.

  Tené shrugged. “I think we can. Especially if we let them know they can fuck whoever they want.”

  I blinked at the daughter of Tené’s crassness, though part of me figured I should have been all that surprised. When Tené caught my face, she offered me a second shrug.

  “When should we have this school dance?”

  “Halloween,” I offered, not having to think about it. “It can be a masquerade.”

  “Wow, that’s so Hollywood of us,” Tené commented snobbishly.

  “But you can’t tell me that everyone won’t love it,” I argued.

  “That gives you about six weeks to plan it,” Tené said.

  “Wait, me?” I asked, completely shocked. Once again, I seemed to forget my name and pointed to my chest. “Why me?”

  “You’re the only one with some sense, remember?” Tené reasoned. “Even Fiona and I have some traces of being Love Struck. It hasn’t manifested yet, but it might. You should head up the party.”

  “You have our permission to get whatever you might need,” Fiona said as she took a pad of paper from off her desk. She crouched over it as though she were writing me a prescription. “We’ll pitch it to the other officials and then get started on announcing it to campus.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I protested. “I can’t possi
bly do this all by myself. There’s no way!”

  “You can form a committee if you want,” Tené offered. “We’ll be your advisors, but make sure you choose wisely. We need you to keep that clear and sensible head on your shoulders.”

  “No pressure,” I grumbled, suddenly not excited about my brilliant idea at all, considering the amount of work it was going to be.

  “In fact,” Fiona held up her pen, a lightbulb going off over her head as he had an idea. “I have just the person you should ask.” Fiona scribbled another thing down on the pad of paper. Then she ripped it off with a crisp and efficient pull and held it out to me.

  I took it apprehensively, as if it were a bomb rather than a piece of paper. I read the nearly illegible scrawl on it. “Oliver Patel. Who is Oliver Patel?”

  “Oh gods, Fiona, really?” Tené rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “He’s the perfect party planner. You’ll definitely want him on your committee,” Fiona said as her eyebrows waggled up and down suggestively.

  “Why?” I wondered.

  “Because he’s the son of Dionysus,” Fiona smiled like she just offered me the biggest gift in the world. “You’re welcome.”

  Something told me that this son of Dionysus was going to be more of a hindrance than a help when it came to planning this masquerade dance. Still, I was way in over my head, and I still wasn’t quite sure how I’d gotten there.

  16

  “Have you heard?” Violet asked with a squeal as she collapsed onto the bench the next morning. Her face was wide with a smile and her eyes bright, like amethysts in a cave. Her energy was so intense that Darren and I picked up our blue trays off the table to avoid spilling anything.

  “If you’re talking about the dance,” Darren said with a growl in his voice, “then yes. We’ve heard.”

  Tené and Fiona worked faster than I thought they would. By the evening the day I got tested, there were notices up everywhere, announcing the masquerade ball. It was set for Halloween evening at sunset in the main quad, just as we had planned.

  Also, on the notice, it mentioned the temporary allowance of relations between students and guards. Even non-Love-Struck demigods were excited, though their jobs of finding dates would be a lot harder. Love Struck couples already were asking one another and discussing what they planned to wear.