The Greek Gods of Romance Collection

by Winters, Jovee

  I shrugged, wishing to stop speaking of things that hurt me so very deeply and did not at all matter when it came to recovering my friends’ memories.

  “That is neither here nor there. The only thing that matters is making Hades and Calypso remember one another.”

  “Well.” She took a deep breath. “I wish I could say that you were right, but being the goddess of love, it is a very dangerous thing for you to lose faith in it. So don’t let yourself become compromised in that way. If you want your friends to remember, Aphrodite, then you must be their staunchest advocate. That means there can be no room in you to lose faith in who you really are.”

  I glanced down at my fire dress, feeling silly all of a sudden. And very, very hopeless.

  “I’ve tried for weeks to awaken Hades’ memories of her. Even of me. But he is so different from the male he once was. Even in the previous world, before he met and fell madly for his queen, he wasn’t so closed off and cold. I simply don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, lucky for you, Love, I do.”

  My head whipped up, and I stared at her half in dread and half in hope. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the reason you can’t reach him is because he has no heart.”

  I snorted, leaning back on the throne and kicking my leg out. “And here I thought you were wise. He has a heart. Of course he does. Of all of us, it is Hades that has always felt the deepest and the most.”

  She rolled her eyes, reminding me a lot of a parent exasperated by a child. I thinned my lips.

  “I mean in the most literal sense, Aphrodite. He literally has no heart in him. Neither he nor Calypso do. They bound themselves to each other, and he has hidden their hearts away in a place not even I can see.” Crossing her arms, she glowered down at her sandaled feet, looking put out.

  Glad to see I wasn’t the only one confounded by this strange new world, I couldn’t help but smirk.

  “And suddenly, a lot of things are becoming clear. It is no wonder I couldn’t reach him. The fool tore his heart from his chest. What was he thinking? What were they thinking? The seed of control, of our destruction, is in the ownership of our hearts. What would make them do such a reckless and foolhardy…” But as I said it, I already knew the answer.

  Love.

  Love of the deepest, fullest kind. Love so powerful that the loss of it cut deeper than even the loss of their hearts. This was their fail-safe, how they’d planned to find one another again.

  I pursed my lips.

  “Now you get it. The key to unlocking all the rest of the happily ever afters destroyed by this monstrous curse rests in them. I think somewhere deep down, they knew that. They are not foolish, Love. They are—”

  “Idiots.” I sighed. “But they’re my idiots, I suppose.”

  “Hmm.” Time sniffed and nodded.

  “And as the goddess of love, I also wager that they banked on the fact that, one way or another, I would help them to rediscover that which they’d lost.”

  “I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”

  “There’s only one problem. If you don’t know where they’ve hidden their hearts, and neither of them remembers doing it, how exactly am I to help them unlock this mystery? I am love, not omniscience.”

  She tipped the vial in her hand. “That is where this potion comes in. I was given this recipe many lifetimes ago, it seems. I was told that someday you would come to me, and that when you did, you were to drink from it. That by doing so, this potion would guide you to where it all began for them. Or rather, where it ended.”

  “And who told you this?” I asked, curious.

  She grinned for several long seconds, but did not answer. And when I realized she had no intention of answering, I asked a different question.

  “And there is where I’ll find their hearts?”

  “Oh no. No. No.” She shook her head, causing the star wreath upon her head to shimmer and shine. “Hades hid their hearts deliberately, ensuring that not even we Fates would know where to find them. My hope is that this will be the genesis to unlocking his memories, or at least the ones that are relevant.”

  “Why him? Why not Caly? Perhaps she is the key to unlocking—”

  “She is not, and well you know it. She is water now and thinks only as such. It will take her many weeks yet before she can take the form of a woman, let alone reason like one. Wherever this guides you, it will be to unlock him and restore his memories, at least partially. Hades was always a divine chess player.”

  I grinned. “You played chess with Hades? Why did I not know this?”

  She shrugged and grinned back at me. “I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, Love. I needed to find something to fill the space, and well… perhaps he wasn’t the only one setting the chess pieces in play for a time such as this. I earned his trust, and in that other world, he gave me this—the first piece of the puzzle to give to you.”

  Warmth stole through me. No, they’d not told of me the destruction of the world we had all come to love, but Hades had trusted me after all.

  He’d trusted that I would save him. And so I would. I would follow this guiding potion to wherever it might lead, and I hoped that when it was all said and done, at least one of us could rediscover our happily ever after.

  I took the bottle carefully from her hands and unstoppered it. A whiff of the potion reached my nose. It smelled faintly of roses and lemons.

  I wet my lips and looked at Lachesis.

  “What payment do I owe to you? You never did say.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Not this time. Believe it or not, sometimes a gift can be given with no thought of reward in return. Just save them.”

  I frowned. “I don’t wish to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  She snorted, and I grinned, realizing my inadvertent reference.

  “But why are you doing this? The Fates give nothing without expecting something in return.”

  “Sometimes people can surprise you, goddess. Now go. Go and save him. Save us all.”

  “Bottoms up, then.” And with a nod of thanks and farewell, I tipped the vial back and drank it all down.

  Chapter 22

  Aphrodite

  When I opened my eyes again, I was in hell.

  Literally.

  Magma fields bubbled up from the desiccated ground, burbling and hissing, making me cringe as I felt the intolerable heat blast against me with such strength and ferocity that had I been anything other than a goddess, merely breathing in this sulfuric-tainted air would have suffocated me instantly. As it was, my skin felt dry, void of any kind of moisture and even my tongue felt like sandpaper on the roof of my mouth.

  Glancing up, I noted the bright-red sun hanging in the sky, giving off minimal heat. But it didn’t need to give off any. What radiated up from the ground was more than enough to make me know I wanted nothing more to do with this place.

  Whatever this place was.

  Frowning, I twirled in a slow circle, studying the landscape. Oddly enough, there was landscape. And not just a sea of boiling lava, like I’d first imagined. I stood in the center of a trail made up of dried lava rock. To either side of me were boiling fields of magma, but interspersed throughout were enormous trees with bark that crackled and sparked like orange flame, with massive boughs made up of thousands of burning blue leaves.

  Above me, I heard the shrill cry of a bird, but when I looked up, it was to spy a flaming streak of red and white—fire in the shape of a bird. Or rather, a phoenix, legendary creatures born from within the heart of flame. The powerful-looking bird wheeled through the air right above me, letting me know with its constant shrill crying that it saw me.

  I frowned, realizing I actually did know this place, though I’d never personally been here.

  This was Fyre. And also Fiera’s domain. The primordial goddess of the eternal spark, she was also one of Caly’s sisters. But where Caly had been connected to water, Fiera had forged her connection to something much hotter.
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  Hardening all my flesh, including my eyeballs, until all of me shone like a polished diamond, I took small, measured breaths. I no longer felt as though I was a dried out husk. But I also looked like a walking disco ball, which was probably as ridiculous looking as it sounded. Still, I didn’t want to melt into a swampy puddle. I began to walk down the path slowly, hoping it would lead me to wherever Fiera was. Surely, she had to know I was here, which meant she was watching me, taking my measure to see what I was up to.

  The primordials weren’t exactly known for being gregarious like us Olympians were. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they were extremely private and secretive at the best of times. Still, Fiera had been a part of our love games, unlike her and Caly’s other two sisters, who could have cared less whether we lived or died. Fiera, like Caly, was a little more curious about the outside world than the rest of their clan.

  Still, Caly and Fiera weren’t exactly the closest of siblings, so I couldn’t figure out why Lachesis’s potion had brought me here. She’d said that the key would be found here.

  And if that was the case, then Hades had come here before me. Did that possibly mean then that Fiera was trustworthy? I wished I knew more about Caly’s sibling. The only thing I actually knew was that their relationship was not only strained but contentious.

  As I was mulling things over, I spied a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. When I turned to look at it full on, I spied a horribly ugly little monster staring back at me. I frowned, realizing that though the name currently escaped me, I had knowledge of this thing. I’d known it before, but not well, for I could no longer remember its name. But certainly I’d seen it before.

  It had hair of flaming-blue on its head, and its body was twisted and covered in wrinkles. Its face looked hideously old, but its mannerisms made me imagine something more akin to that of a curious child the way it peeked out from around the massive tree trunk and studied me.

  It smiled broadly. With its bald head and liver spotting, I couldn’t make out whether I looked upon a boy or a girl. Though it wore no clothes, its skin was so loose that not even that could help me determine sex. The prettiest thing about it was its eyes. They were a glittering shade of lavender so clear that it reminded me of sea glass.

  Its smile grew wider, revealing two menacing rows of fangs. It was a carnivore for sure. But I was not afraid of it, because I suddenly recalled where I’d seen it before.

  I knelt, and my hair, which was no longer soft and supple but ropes of glittering gold, poofed around my form like a bellowing skirt. I used all my powers to make myself as attractive as possible.

  In truth, one of my greatest strengths was my beauty. Few people—gods or mortals—ever wished to bring harm to those they deemed beautiful. You could have the ugliest heart imaginable, but if you were beautiful, many men and women would willingly lay down their lives to keep you from harm’s way. There were times I wished I’d been gifted the powers of intellect or kindness, something other than a quality as superficial as mine. But there were moments where it definitely came in handy to be so attractive to others.

  “Hello,” I said softly, keeping my voice dulcet and hypnotic.

  He cocked his little head, blinking large eyes back at me. I grinned. He’d not changed a bit, and I was surprised that I’d actually forgotten who he was. I’d rather liked Pea Brain when last we’d met, though it felt like many lifetimes ago now, which I guessed it actually was.

  “Pretty rock,” he whispered in his gritty voice, the sound high-pitched and innocent sounding.

  Fire imps were Fiera’s protectors in this realm, and though they looked like something straight out of a nightmare, they were also quite innocent in many ways. Intellectually, they could be compared, at peak maturity, to that of a seven- or eight-year-old human child. Pea Brain was several centuries older than that, but he would never lose his child-like innocence.

  I grinned and stretched out my arm to him. He reached for me with a long, black clawed hand and ooh’d and aah’d as he trailed that wickedly curved claw along my diamond skin.

  He giggled, blinking rapidly as he looked at me, making me think of a shark, with its double eyelids, right before its attack on the unwary.

  “Do you remember me, boy?” I asked him sweetly.

  Fire imps were demonically sweet, which was quite the contradiction, but it was true. If they did not know you and suspected you to be invading their mama’s home, they would turn into the stuff of nightmares, attacking you in a vicious wave of teeth and claws before they made quick work of… well… eating you was about a nice a way of putting it as any. But if they liked you, it was really quite the treasure.

  Pea Brain circled me slowly, cocking his head and tapping his gnarled finger against his chin several times before saying, “I thoughts you’d all forgotten Pea Brain. But you remember.” He got back to the front of me and nodded. “You remember Pea Brain!”

  I was not prepared for his attack. He jumped me, spindly arms and legs wrapping around my neck and waist as he began sobbing and squeezing me tight in the mother of all hugs.

  “Pea Brain remembers everything, Beautiful One. All of it. But Mama don’t remember me hardly at all,” he said between trembly sniffs and buckets of tears.

  “Oh, Pea Brain. Shhh. Wee one, shhh now,” I murmured tenderly, cradling his small frame in my arms like he was naught but a babe.

  Shivers wracked his near-skeletal frame, breaking my heart and moving me to sympathy for him. I too knew what it was to remember when all those around me had forgotten.

  So I held him for as long as he needed me to hold him, merely letting him get it out. He cried for several more minutes, until finally he began to shudder and quiet down and he was merely stuttering his breaths. He buried his nose in the crook of my neck, and I cringed as I felt the mix of tears and sludge slide down my back.

  But still I held on.

  After what felt like an hour, he was calm enough to disentangle from my arms and look at me full on. His beautiful eyes were bloodshot, but he no longer seemed as pensive or heavy.

  I grinned, and he patted my cheek almost lovingly between his palms. “Beautiful One wishes to see Mama, yes?”

  I nodded. “Yes, little Pea Brain. I have matters of great urgency to speak with your mother about.”

  My voice cracked at the end as I wondered whether this would be yet another letdown in a long string of them for me lately. I was trying so bloody hard to keep myself together, but everything—and I meant literally everything—in my life worth having hinged on Hades remembering all. And unless Lachesis’ potion actually worked for that, I was at the very bitter end of what I could do for either of my friends.

  Pea Brain, who’d always been able to suss out my true emotions, even back in the games before the curse had felled our worlds, cocked his head. “Beautiful One is sad,” he said simply and with childlike honesty.

  I smiled, but I knew the light of it didn’t reach my eyes.

  “You were always so good at seeing right through me, imp,” I said seriously, but noting the bright shimmer in his eyes again, I grinned broadly and tickled him just beneath the chin.

  He chuckled, swatting my hand away with his own clawed one. His laughter was infectious, and soon my attempt at levity was actually real.

  He and I shared a moment of true bonding and laughter, and I hugged him tight.

  “You do not understand what you have done for me, little Pea Brain, but I thank you most sincerely.”

  His grin was as genuine as my own. “Pea Brain likes Beautiful One.”

  “And Beautiful One likes Pea Brain too,” I said with a quick flick to the tip of his nose, which appeared more like a melted stick of wax.

  “Come then,” he urged, hopping down from my arms. “Come with me.”

  I allowed him to guide me, and he was very careful to keep me off the path that would suddenly open up with great big pools of magma bubbling up from deep underground. In fact, he took us off the tr
ail completely, guiding me through the fire forest, and looking back at me every so often to assure himself that Beautiful One was safe.

  “Always safe. Safe, safe, safe,” he murmured. And soon enough, he proved his words truthful.

  We crested a hill, and I finally spotted the fiery, glittering beauty that was Fiera’s castle. It was not made of stone or brick or any other traditional building material, but of fire so hot and so dense that it was the blue of hottest flame and as dense as a dwarf star.

  As we neared the drawbridge, I expected the heat from it to brush against me and make me want to weep in misery.

  But wee Pea Brain kept muttering, “Safe, safe.” And he was right. There was little to no residual heat emanating from it. Either he was protecting me somehow, or the land understood my intentions here were pure.

  I expected to meet Fiera inside her castle, in some elaborate chamber fit for a primordial goddess of old. But instead, she was kneeling and working the soil of a garden, dressed in simple frock of buttery-yellow, like the sun. She had a kerchief tied around her long hair, which incidentally, was also made of flame and the green of the rolling hills of Olympus.

  She was digging in the rocky soil with a spade when she finally noticed us and immediately sat up with a frown marring her pretty face. My heart squeezed in my chest so tightly that I almost lost my breath.

  I’d forgotten just how much she and Caly looked alike. In mannerism, they were nothing alike, and when she had her green fire hair hanging long and loose, it was easy not to see it.

  But looking at her now, standing and dusting off her skirts with her dirt-smudged hands and her face cleared of make-up, she looked eternally youthful, just like all her other sisters. But where Aria and Tiera had features to match their surroundings, Fiera didn’t at all. Looking at her was like looking at a ghost. I swallowed hard and curled my hand into a fist.

  “Pea Brain?” she asked softly, with a hint of confusion in her words.