by Kieran Scott
For anyone who’s ever felt they needed a little help finding love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
True would not exist without the sage advice of my power duo—agent Sarah Burnes and editor Zareen Jaffery—who pushed me to find “the hook.” That hook ended up being the coolest, quirkiest character I’ve ever written, so I thank them endlessly for that inspiration. Huge thanks to Justin Chanda for continuing to believe in me and my ideas, and to Paul Crichton for setting up the events that allow me to go talk to anyone who will listen about how much I love what I do. Thank you to my undying champion, Logan Garrison, who has more patience than anyone I know, and to Julia Maguire, who lets nothing slip by—in a good way. Thank you also to Valerie Shea for her extraordinary attention to detail.
Thank you to the amazing librarians, bookstore owners, bloggers, and fans I’ve met over the past year. You’ve made me laugh, cry, and feel good about my work in a way that I sorely needed. You have no idea how much it has meant to me.
On a more personal note, I must thank my husband, Matt, and our two crazy boys for making my every day brighter, and my mom, who still inspires me each day, even though she’s no longer—technically—here.
Finally, I want to thank the following authors who have been a tremendous help to me without their knowing. Reading their books (some for the second or third time) helped me get through a recent creative crisis, reminding me that our writing can be simple, strong, funny, meaningful, and imaginative, but still true. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Sarah Dessen, Megan McCafferty, Jennifer Weiner, Sophie Kinsella, and the late great Maeve Binchy.
PROLOGUE
“Do you think the Earth will always exist?”
Orion picked a small white wildflower from the grass and plucked one of its delicate petals. He examined it before surrendering it to the warm, late-summer breeze.
“Doubtful,” I replied. “The universe is too random. Sooner or later some asteroid or comet will come along and—blam!” I clapped my hands too hard and the trees behind us shook, sending dozens of birds squawking overhead. “Bye-bye planet.”
Orion glanced around as a couple of startled rabbits bounded by.
“Poetic,” he said with a smirk. “Back in my day Eros had a reputation for subtlety.”
I tore the petals off another flower and blew them toward the sun, where they swirled like a tornado before dispersing to all corners of the globe. “A lot can change in three thousand years.”
Orion rolled onto his side, and I watched his arm and torso muscles flex beneath his white T-shirt. A tanned knee peeked out through a stringy hole in his distressed jeans as he crooked one leg. I smiled in a covetous way. As much justice as the leather vest and loincloth did him back in the day, this boy was born to be dressed by Levi’s. It had taken him a couple of weeks to get used to the denim’s chafing, but trust me, it was well worth it.
“What will happen to us, then?” he asked as he trailed his fingertip along the inside of my arm. “When the world ends?”
I took a deep breath, enjoying the pleasant shivers his gesture sent through me. “I wouldn’t worry about it, since you probably won’t live long enough to see it happen. You are, after all, mortal.”
I was going for lighthearted honesty, but his deep blue eyes darkened and he flopped onto his back again, heaving a sigh.
“Don’t remind me.”
I felt a familiar pang and lifted my head from the ground. My long, unruly black hair tangled and caught in the unkempt grass. Talk about things changing. In the days BCE, Orion would have scoffed at my claim and declared he was going to live forever. But after thousands of years trapped in the heavens, he had new and complicated feelings about mortality. Feelings even he was still trying to sort out.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, not for the first time. “I can always hang you back among the stars if you want me to. Say the word and you can loiter up there forever.”
I held my breath as I awaited his response. What if he did want to go back? What if being here was too much for him, and his love for me not enough reason for him to stay? Not that I was entirely sure I could put him back among the stars anyway. It had been over six months since that fateful Valentine’s night when I’d torn him from the heavens, and I still didn’t know how I’d done it. An irksome, somewhat frightening fact that was one of very few secrets I was keeping from him, even though I’d sworn I’d always tell him everything. If there’s one constant in love, it’s the keeping of the little white secrets. And I should know. It’s kind of my job.
“No. Absolutely not. Don’t even think it.” He clasped his warm hand around my waist, and I released the breath, relieved. “I’d rather spend whatever short time I have here with you than hang among the stars watching life go on without me. Watching you go on without me.”
We looked into each other’s eyes for a long, breathless moment. And then we cracked up laughing.
Orion sat up fully, kneading his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, that was a little over the top, wasn’t it?” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “There’s just so much pressure, trying to be the boyfriend of the Goddess of Love,” he added, turning one palm toward the sky. He tipped his head back and laughed again, enjoying the sun on his face. “What have I gotten myself into?”
I loved watching him laugh. He’d been so pensive for the first few weeks of his new life, it had been difficult to watch. Over the past couple of months, he’d gradually started to stabilize, started to relax, but it was still a relief to see him happy.
“Technically, it’s my mother who’s the Goddess of Love,” I reminded him. “I do her grunt work.”
I was the one who spent countless hours piercing the hearts of mortals with my golden arrows. I was the one who read their souls and matched them with the very partners who would complete them and make them feel whole, safe, and eternally loved. And how did the mortals repay me? By calling me, still, by that awful name the Romans had given me—Cupid—and depicting me as a fat, half-naked male baby.
I tried to find the whole thing amusing, but it was a bit much for a goddess to take. I was Eros, the mighty creator of love on Earth. I deserved a smidgen of respect.
“Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that,” he teased.
“Come on. Being my boyfriend isn’t entirely bad,” I said, nudging him with my knee. “We have fun, don’t we?”
As the words left my tongue I wanted to take them back, half expecting him to object. Lately Orion had been hinting that he wanted to go check out the fishing village nearby, to be among other mortals and try out the new twenty-first-century vocabulary I’d been teaching him. But even though I knew his rejoining society was inevitable, I didn’t want it to happen yet. I wasn’t ready to let him go.
“I suppose,” he joked, looking over his shoulder at me.
“You guess,” I chided. “No one says ‘suppose’ anymore. At least no one under the age of fifty.”
“Yeah, but I’m, like, two thousand seven hundred and fifty,” he said, squinting one eye as he did the math.
“Nice use of the pointless interjection of ‘like’!” I congratulated him. “You’re my prize pupil!”
“Your only pupil,” he said. With the deftness of a panther he flung himself over me, bracing a hand on either side of my body and holding himself up so no part of our bodies touched. The wide neck of his T-shirt hung open so I could see every line of his perfectly toned chest, and the silver necklace I’d brought for him—a perfect arrow its pendant—tickled my collarbone. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead his expression grew sheepish. “I am your only pupil, right?”
I reached up and touched his face, the light stubble rasping my fingertips. “Never ask me that. You
know you are.”
He nodded and looked away, and I wondered what he was thinking. Did he really not trust me, or was it some ancient memory that was darkening his heart? Could he possibly be thinking of his first love, Merope, who had broken off their engagement just days before their wedding? I hoped he didn’t think me as fickle as she.
“Hey,” I said, lightly kicking the inside of his leg with the outside of mine. “Care to have some of that fun right now?”
“You know I would,” he replied with a smile.
“Then catch me.”
And I took off at roughly the speed of light.
Orion laughed and cursed under his breath as he scrambled to his feet and chased after me. I, of course, slowed my pace to make it fair. This was one of our favorite games, pursuing each other over the wild hillsides and meadows of our quaint North American island. I dove through the woods, nimbly avoiding brambles and fallen trees and foxholes, and grabbed my bow and quiver—filled with silver-tipped hunting arrows rather than my magical golden arrows—from the clearing where we’d left them earlier that day after a spirited hunt. Orion must have snatched his as well, because seconds later an arrow sliced so close to my ear I could hear the feathered fletching rustle. It split the bark of a birch tree dead ahead and I whirled on him, even though I knew he’d missed on purpose. Orion was the only being in existence, mortal or immortal, who was a better shot than me. Not that I would ever admit that.
“Are you trying to pierce my ears?” I demanded, shoving his chest as he arrived, heaving for breath, in front of me.
Orion dropped his weapon and pulled me to him with a grin. He tilted my head to the side, smoothing my hair back, and gently rubbed my earlobe between his finger and thumb. “And mar these perfect specimens? Never.”
Then he kissed my neck and wrapped his warm, strong arms around me, enveloping my slim frame against him. I sighed simply, happily, a now-familiar sensation of peace swirling through my heart. Of all the romances I’d had, of all the people and gods and demigods I’d known, of all the realms I’d visited on Earth and in the heavens, the only place that had ever felt like home was right here. Right here in Orion’s arms. I didn’t understand it, would never have believed it a few months or years or millennia ago, but it was true. Orion was my soul mate. Orion, who had bedded Eos and dallied with Artemis and gotten himself killed by her and her awful brother, Apollo. Orion, the notorious egomaniac, the most reckless thrill seeker who’d ever lived, a mortal I was still getting to know. He was, in many ways, my polar opposite, but he was my one and only home.
“Don’t ever leave me,” I said into his shirt. “I’d rather die than live without you.”
“What?”
My eyes popped open. Damn. I had said that aloud, hadn’t I? My heart began to race as I struggled for an explanation. For words that could have been misheard to sound like the words I’d actually said. His fingers tangled in my hair and he tugged my head back gently, but firmly, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were alight with merriment.
“What did you just say?” he asked, amused and maybe a bit intrigued.
“I—I didn’t—I mean, I said—”
A deafening crack of thunder shook the ground beneath our feet, sending us staggering together into the nearest tree trunk. Wind whipped my face and rain pelted my skin. The sky above us darkened so quickly there could be only one cause. Terror seized my gut and forced the breath from my lungs. My fingers curled like a vise around Orion’s forearm, clinging to him for dear life.
He was coming. No. He was already here.
“Run!” I screamed at Orion. “Run!”
Grasping my hand, Orion turned and fled toward the center of the forest, the thickest cover, the spot that would act as shelter from any natural storm. But I knew this tempest was not natural, and after twenty paces, my fears were confirmed. Ares, the God of War, appeared before us in all his fiery glory, his face streaked with mud from the field of battle, a nasty gash oozing blood over one arm, his visage contorted with a blend of fury and hatred I’d never before seen. Orion stepped in front of me as if to shield my body, but it was no use. The god had only to extend his palm and Orion flew off his feet, hurtling forward like a boneless, weightless rag doll. I reached out for him, but managed to grab only his silver chain, which tore from his neck as he flew. He slammed against Ares’s chest, his head snapping back with a crack. Ares flung Orion around to face me, crooked his elbow around my beloved’s neck, and held him fast against his sweat-soaked skin.
“Daddy, no!” I shouted, clutching the tiny silver arrow pendant inside my fist.
He ignored me. He always ignored me.
“How dare you debauch my daughter?” he growled in Orion’s ear. “I should tear your head from your feeble mortal body right here.”
“No!” I screamed. My knees gave out and I hit the ground. Orion struggled, but it was pointless. So very, very pointless. There wasn’t a stronger god on Mounts Olympus or Etna than my father. It was so hypocritical, him taking issue with my having formed a relationship with a human, while he and the other upper gods and goddesses went around bedding whomever they wanted—god, mortal, or beast—like it was their right. “Daddy, please! Please! He hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s my fault. I brought him here. I hid him from you. I’m the one who should be punished.”
My father glanced at me, and I saw his eyes widen. For a moment I thought I glimpsed fear there, confusion, but then it was gone and I knew I had imagined it. Fear was alien to Ares. He instilled fear, but he never entertained it. He wouldn’t know how to feel it if he wanted to.
“I think King Zeus will disagree about that. He doesn’t take kindly to humans who try to mingle with our kind,” he spat, tightening his hold on Orion until his eyes bulged. “Let’s go to him and see, shall we?”
I tried to scream a protest but choked on my own desperation. Throwing Orion on Zeus’s mercy was akin to tossing him to a pack of rabid, starving wolves. If I let my father take him, he was as good as dead. Without thinking, I reached for my weapon, the necklace still clasped inside my fingers. The moment I took aim, I felt a steely calm overcome my heart. With a bow in my hands I never failed. With a bow in my hands I was the purest version of myself. I pulled back and let fly. The hunting arrow zipped through the air, headed directly for its target. Headed for my father’s heart.
At the last second, he lifted his free arm, deflecting the projectile with a dented bronze cuff. My trusted arrow, my last resort, ricocheted to the ground with a pointless plink.
My father leveled a glare that assured me I would be punished for that act of insubordination later. Not that I cared. Not that I mattered one iota in that moment. I would have given anything, my powers, my immortality, my life, to save Orion. But before I could even put those thoughts into words, the God of War disappeared in a fantastic swirl of ashen clouds and hail, taking the love of my life with him.
• • •
“Mother!” I screamed, swirling into consciousness in the center of her bedroom chamber. It was a huge space, made cozy and romantic by the presence of several goose-down mattresses; hundreds of pillows in hues of red, pink, and violet; and the swaths of luxurious silks and furs strategically draped over walls and windows. “Aphrodite! I need you!”
“Eros? What is it?” My sister, Harmonia, appeared next to me, her red hair, exactly the same butt-grazing length as mine, still floating weightlessly around her face from the breeze kicked up by my entrance.
“It’s Ares. He’s taken Orion to Zeus. They’re going to kill him,” I said, grasping her arm, trying to keep my voice steady.
“What?”
My mother, Aphrodite, the original Goddess of Love, stepped into the room from the balcony. She wore a low-cut white robe, a slit up its flowing skirt to expose her long, tanned leg. Her thick blond hair was piled atop her head in a perfectly haphazard bun, with tendrils falling to surround her gorgeous, heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes had often been described as “startlin
g” because of their unnaturally light hue, but to me, they were simply a reflection of my own and Harmonia’s eyes, about the only trait that linked us as family. My brothers Deimos and Phobos had my father’s eyes—dark as the deepest pitch in the underworld.
“He found us. I don’t know how, but he found us,” I said, rushing to my mother and seizing both her arms. “You have to take me to Zeus’s palace, Mother. Now.”
My mother’s perfect brow furrowed. “But I—”
“They’re going to kill him!” I wailed, desperate. Zeus had never been known for his patience or fairness, and when my father was in a rage, he had a tendency to tear people apart one limb at a time, making their death as drawn-out and excruciating as possible. Orion could be suffering that fate right now. He could already be gone forever. “Please, Mother. I can’t go there without you. You know this. Please.”
My mother searched my eyes, and then her mouth formed a grim line. “Fine. We shall go. Bearing in mind Hera’s abhorrence of unannounced visits. Especially when yours truly is involved.”
“I’ll find a way to pay you back,” I swore to her.
“Yes,” she said simply. “You will.”
She took my hand, and I felt the ground begin to spin beneath me. At the last moment, I reached out and grabbed Harmonia’s arm, taking her with us. I felt the telltale sucking sensation in my gut, my mind went green, then gray, and a split second later we arrived on the marble floor of Zeus’s receiving hall. His throne at the top of the room was empty, the colorful favors pinned around the windows fluttering in the breeze. All seemed incongruently peaceful, until I heard Orion scream.
We whirled around and there he was, bound to the marble floor by iron chains, his chest exposed as my father thrust a spear toward his heart, the tip glinting in the sun.
“Nooooo!” I wailed.
My father, nimble as ever, stopped with the sharp point pricking Orion’s skin. He and Zeus both looked up. My father’s chest heaved, as if Orion had put up a struggle, but Zeus was calm. His golden beard curled above the collar of his breastplate, and his blond hair was slicked back from his head. The skin of his face was, as always, ruddy and pocked, but his green eyes were clear. He looked amused, not alarmed, to see us there, and snapped his fingers. Guards flooded the room, wearing the traditional garb of the Roman Empire, which Zeus had appropriated after the fall of the Greeks and favored even after these many years. He held up a hand to stop them from advancing on me, my mother, and my sister. For the moment.