How easy it would be to lean in and steal another kiss and ruin everything.
No, Cupid wouldn’t do that. Instead, he grabbed Pan’s wrist and gave it a tug. “Dance with me.”
Pan set his empty glass down on the bar and let Cupid drag him into the crowd. The two were instantly absorbed by the writhing mob: a cute boy for Cupid, a muscle man for Pan, one behind, another in front, hands everywhere. It felt good to be hard from raw desire and not some hideous curse. Mostly, Cupid was happy because Pan was enjoying himself and, from the looks of things, getting exactly what he needed right now.
The melody shifted, but the bass pounded on. A strobe light kicked on, throwing the whole place into a giant, slow motion, black-and-white circus where nothing felt real. Fists punched up through the crowd. Heads whipped side to side, throwing off ropes of sweat. Strippers gyrated in floating cages, making love to invisible partners, inspiring a hundred fantasies. Anything was possible.
The stranger behind him yanked Cupid’s T-shirt out of his jeans and slid the fabric up over his belly and chest. Greedy for the skin-on-skin, Cupid raised his arms to help the shirt off when he was seized by a terrible, crushing pressure inside his ribcage. He doubled over in agony.
Pan rushed to his side, thrashing away the bodies in his path. “What happened? Did that guy hurt you? I will rip his fucking nuts off.”
“No.” Cupid clutched at his chest though he knew it wouldn’t help. “It’s my heart.”
“Fuck. Now?”
Cupid moaned.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
Pan practically carried him off the dance floor. With a menacing glare, Pan emptied the nearest bar stool and gently lowered Cupid onto it.
“You guys all right?” asked the bartender. “Someone having a bad trip? Should I call security?”
“We’re fine,” Pan answered gruffly. “My friend needs a glass of water and a little air.”
Pan squatted and placed his hand on Cupid’s knee. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Throbbing. Starting again.”
“Wow, they sure didn’t give you much time to recover. Sorry for asking, but is it Mia again?”
“No, not Mia.” Huh, the name didn’t feel like razor blades on Cupid’s tongue this time.
“Okay, that’s good, I guess.” Pan passed him the water. “Here. Drink up. Breathe.”
Cupid sipped at the water, then brought the cool glass to his chest. It offered absolutely no relief. “I’m sorry, Pan.”
“What? Stop that. Wait”—Pan slapped a hand over his heart—“it’s not me this time, is it?”
“No. It’s not you. I just really wanted us to have fun tonight.”
“I did, Q. I had a fucking blast. Now stop worrying about me.”
Cupid groaned again. “This feels worse than last time.”
“Yeah, they tend to ratchet things up. The important thing is, you know what you need to do.”
Oh yes, Cupid knew. As soon as he could breathe again, all he had to do was follow the tracker in his chest straight to the truest love his heart had ever known.
Cast of Divine Characters
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The primary name (all uppercase) for each divine is consistent with the narrative of the “Great Syncretism,” an invented departure from Greco-Roman mythology. The character snippets offered here are based on canon; where multiple stories exist within the classical sources, I have chosen my favorite version.
APHRODITE (Venus): Goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. Rose fully formed out of the foam (aphros) floating around Uranus’s castrated genitals. Married to Hephaestus, bore four children to Ares, including Cupid.
APOLLO: God of light, music, prophecy, and medicine. Twin brother of Artemis.
ARES (Mars): God of War. Son of Zeus and Hera, brother of Hephaestus, “biological” father of Cupid.
ARTEMIS (Diana): Goddess of the hunt, protector of new brides. Twin sister of Apollo.
ATROPOS: One of the three Fates (“allotters”) responsible for spinning men’s fate. Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines its length, and Atropos cuts the thread with her shears.
CERBERUS: The vicious three-headed hound of Hades, guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving.
CLOTHO: One of the three Fates (with Atropos and Lachesis), Clotho spins the thread of life.
CUPID (Eros): God of erotic love. Illegitimate son of Aphrodite and Ares.
DIONYSUS (Bacchus): God of wine and ecstasy.
HADES (Pluto): Ruler of the Underworld. Brother of Zeus and Poseidon.
HELIOS: God of the sun. Crowned with the aureole of the sun, he emerges each dawn driving a chariot drawn by four winged steeds and descends in the far West at each day’s end into a golden cup that bore him back to the East.
HEPHAESTUS (Vulcan): God of fire and forge. Blacksmith and divine craftsman. Son of Zeus and Hera. Married to Aphrodite, stepfather to Cupid.
HERA (Juno): Queen of the Gods. Sister and wife of Zeus. Famous for her ill temper.
HYPNOS: God of sleep. Rises into the sky each night in the train of his mother Nyx.
LACHESIS: One of the three Fates (with Atropos and Clotho), Lachesis determines the length of the thread of life.
MERCURY (Hermes): The gods’ messenger. Father of Pan.
PAN (Faunus): Demi-god of the wild, protector of the herd. Satyr (half man, half goat). Son of Mercury (and in one version, Penelope, wife of Odysseus).
ZEUS (Jupiter): Ruler of the gods. Married to Hera, yet father of many, by many—divines and mortals alike.
To get your free, full-color, downloadable guide to the mythology of the Cupid’s Fall series, visit:
www.bethcgreenberg.com/mythology-guide
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Publishing a book is a daunting enterprise I never could have undertaken on my own. I am grateful to so many people for sharing their wisdom, talent, and enthusiastic support.
It all began with a certain fandom (you know who you are) for giving me the bright idea that my wild imaginings might be worth writing down and sharing. To my worldwide network of fandom friends, thank you for enabling, encouraging, and loyally following my writing journey here. To my First Quiver beta readers—Jean, Veronica, Adèle, Lisa, Qwen, and Shelley—thank you for bravely taking the earliest looks at this story. To Susan Atlas, my ever-editor, “last eyes,” and true partner in words, thank you for lending your wisdom and your warmth to the editing process; I so appreciate that the rules are always only our starting point. To the crazy-talented Betti Gefecht, thank you for putting your whole heart and soul into drawing this gorgeous cover with your very own loving hands, for injecting the process of creative collaboration with pure joy and (almost) never saying no, and especially for gifting me with the title “Lady Pestershire,” which I will cherish always. To Maria, some day we will meet, and you will show me your beautiful country; meanwhile, thank you for helping me sort out Cupid’s Greek-speak. To Shay Savage, Melanie Moreland, and K Evan Coles, thank you for going first and so generously sharing your lessons learned from the publishing world. To Kate, thank you for inspiring Mia, my fierce Mama Bear, and allowing me to borrow from your love story. To Jayme and Sandy, I miss you both and so wish you were here for this journey. To Cupid’s Street Team, thank you for helping to spread the word and cheering me every step of the way. To all who hung out in a certain pumpkin patch in the ether and read my words when I was just beginning to find them, thank you so much. You might never know how much you mean to me.
To the community of writers I discovered through flash fiction writing, thank you for teaching me so much about story and critique and sending words out into the world. Mostly, thank you for modeling high standards, positivity, and dogged determination. Carrie, thank you for your encouragement but even more than that, your honesty. Di, thanks
for always answering the call for help and teaching me just enough to be truly dangerous.
Thank you to Henri Lazaridis for an insightful manuscript consult in the early drafting and to GrubStreet instructor Kate Racculia for an extremely useful novel revision course after round two. To Brad and Lauren, thank you for reading and sharing your honest feedback. Thank you to Dominic Wakeford for your copyedits and reassurance and to Domini Dragoone for the book’s beautiful interior design.
To my mother, thank you nurturing my love of books with a million trips to the Children’s Room at the Akron Public Library and for your steadfast encouragement and pride in all my writing endeavors. Dad, I wish you were still here to see that I kept on doing what I was doing. Guess what—it’s done! To my book group (of 23 years!), thank you for keeping that interest in good stories burning bright and for hosting my first “live” author appearance. To playgroup, the original Group Therapy, thanks for helping me celebrate every milestone along the way. To Rachel, thank you for always making time to ask and listen and care.
To my miraculous daughter, Lindsay, thank you for modeling the act of fearlessly sharing your story. You are my hero every day. To Jeffrey, my beautiful son who surprised me one day with a completed manuscript of your own, your title is now stamped on the spine of my books: Isotopia Publishing. I miss you every day, and I can feel you cheering me on from above.
Last and never least, to my amazing husband Larry, who is always the best part of every character I write, thank you for taking Cupid into your heart.
About the author
BETH C. GREENBERG earned an accounting degree at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which she is putting to excellent use writing modern-day mythology. She lives outside of Boston, where she and her husband are occasionally visited by their daughter and grand-dog Slim. First Quiver is her debut novel and book one of the four-book CUPID’S FALL series.
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Coming SPRING 2021,
from Isotopia Publishing:
INTO THE QUIET
Book 2 of the Cupid’s Fall series
Read on for a preview...
The second time Cupid’s heart revved up should have been easier, and in some ways, it was. He recognized the stabbing pain in his chest right away, and he had a general sense of what was expected of him.
But Cupid wasn’t particularly eager to relive the Mia experience—except for that one exceptionally nice part just before he blurted out he loved her, then realized there was no echo beat and vomited up his dinner. Also troubling, this signal was already stronger than the first, more of a piercing throb even through Cupid’s drunken haze. The gods proving, yet again, they weren’t messing around.
Cupid forced himself off the bar stool. His knees buckled, sending him floorward. Pan’s firm hand closed around his arm, steadying Cupid as he’d been doing in one way or another for the past ten days.
“Easy,” Pan said, his voice raspy with concern.
Cupid dragged in a deep yoga breath, exhaled slowly, and nodded gratefully at Pan. “Okay, I’m ready.” He sure hoped he sounded braver than he felt.
“Don’t you think you better put your shirt on first?”
Cupid’s gaze dropped to his bare chest. Right. That pretty boy he’d been dancing with had tugged it off him. Cupid turned toward the dance floor, one giant, tangled organism pulsating under the purple lights. “It’s buried in there somewhere.”
Pan tapped his nose. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
Cupid had nearly wrapped his head around the here-we-go-again when his shirt came flying at his face. “Thanks,” he said, pushing his arms through the sleeves.
“Lead on,” said Pan.
“You’re coming?”
“Of course. My ass is on the line, too, or have you forgotten already?” Truthfully, Cupid’s Worthy-tracking system left little room for distractions, despite how hard Cupid had been working to put Pan’s ass out of his mind before his awful motor started up again.
“Fine. This way.” Off they went, Cupid’s relentless heart-compass guiding the way and Pan trailing tight on his heels. Judging by the intensity of the churning in his chest, whatever Cupid was meant to find was right here in this club.
So intent was Cupid on following his heart, he nearly crashed into a raised platform that placed a dancer’s gold-covered bulge exactly at eye-level. An impressive set of white feathered wings fanned out from the dancer’s shoulders and somehow fluttered gracefully while the lower half of his body popped and gyrated at his audience.
Pan licked his lips and stared, mouth agape. “Wow.”
“He’s all yours,” Cupid replied. “He’s not the Worthy.”
But Cupid was close; he could feel it. The signal pulled him along the edge of the stage and into a flock of wild women, screaming and stuffing money into the dancer’s pouch. Not this one, nope, nope . . . boom! Cupid stopped short, and Pan—distracted by the slicked-up, writhing angel on stage—slammed into Cupid’s back, ramming him into the new love of his life just as she was tucking a bill inside the dancer’s thong.
The woman grasped at the fabric to regain her balance, but the measly garment was no match for her downward velocity. The pouch gave way, spilling money and genitals, before Cupid could manage to grab the falling woman around the waist. A collective gasp went up around them—with Pan’s enthusiastic, “Oh hell, yeah!” loudest of all—before the angel could tuck himself and his tips back inside.
“Oh gods, I’m sorry,” Cupid said, relaxing his grip around the goddess in his arms as she regained her footing. “Are you okay?”
She blinked up at him with a shocked pair of hazel eyes set into a deep blush. “I . . . I honestly don’t know.” She rattled her head, shaking a tendril of spun gold across her cheek.
Without thinking, Cupid reached in and gingerly tucked the loose hair behind her ear. The two sets of eyes locked, and neither would let go of the other, dazzle-ee meeting dazzle-er and vice-versa. She melted his insides with every shaky breath passing between her lips.
“Take your time,” Cupid said, finding himself in no rush to go anywhere or do anything except exactly this. “I won’t let go until you’re steady.” Until you know how much you want me, too.
Racing pulse, dilated pupils, dry mouth. Need poured off this woman in hot, dangerous waves—waves that had already pulled Cupid under.
She raised her hand to wipe the beads of sweat from her brow. Two rings dwarfed her left hand: a diamond the size of a robin’s egg with a solid band below. Married.
“Hey, what’s—” Pan stopped cold. “Oh boy. Q, we need to talk. Now.”
Barely registering Pan’s presence, Cupid answered him with a dismissive, “Call me.” About to hoist his precious love into his arms, carry her to bed, and pleasure her for the rest of his days, Cupid remembered his circumstances and the horrible ordeal he’d gone through with Mia. Distilling his beloved’s heartbeat from all the rest, Cupid listened with all his strength. Try as he might, even placing an ear to her chest, he could find no echo beat to match his own.
In that terrible moment, Cupid understood. The goddess in his grasp was not his Right Love after all; she was his next torment.
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