G A Y L E
20. the morning after
❝YOU'RE NO FUN." Eros frowns at the goddess before him, crossing his arms over his chest.
Apollo seems like he's finally snapped out of his daze, and his gaze zeroes in on Eros, who grins at him rousingly. "Eros?" His brows knit together in confusion as he turns his head to get a good view of Eros.
Eros nods, his face splitting further into a grin. "You didn't recognize me, old friend!" He exclaims and hops over the bar, submerging Apollo into what seems like the most suffocating hug I've ever had to witness.
Artemis rolls her eyes at the over-excitement on his face as he presses Apollo's head deeper into his chest.
"Okay, alright – that's enough." Apollo's voice is muffled out by Eros' hard, chiseled chest. Even through his shirt, I can see the muscles bulging.
"How long has it been? Two, three centuries? When Adonis told me that you'd been banished to Tartarus, I didn't wanna believe it... but when I went out to Mount Olympus and Ares was the new leader up there..." he explains, violet eyes wandering across the room and settling on something that piques their interest.
Me.
His grin widens as his scrutiny becomes clearer, and he really focuses his purple gaze on me, a flicker of curiosity flashing through his eyes for a moment.
"Care to explain what in the Underworld is going on here?" Though Eros is watching me, Apollo's hard silver gaze is focused on him, with lips pursed into a straight line and a crease forming in the space between his thick brows.
"Enough of this, where is my hunter? And where is the foul demi-god? The one they call Heracles?" Artemis growls, shoving Apollo aside and facing off against Eros, who only grins at the way the goddess growls.
"Questions... questions... you guys are no fun." Eros feigns a frown as he finally returns his gaze to Artemis and Apollo. "Artemis..." he groans with the roll of his eyes, tanned skin glistening in the light of the bar. "I'd hoped that after all those millennia, you'd have removed that stick up your shriveled old arse, turns out I was wrong." He announces nonchalantly, as if he didn't just insult a really powerful goddess.
There are flames dancing in the pupils of Artemis' eyes by the time my eyes dart to her for a retort, she doesn't say anything to him, only clenches her fists and growls like a real animal. "You filthy, disgusting, sorry excuse for a—" Apollo touches her shoulder to calm her, but she shoves it off of her, a flash of red hot anger flickering in those celestially deep pools of brown she calls eyes.
"Fine. I will find her myself." She groans in a low tone and pushes past Eros and out the door, slamming it shut behind her with such power that I momentarily lose my balance.
Now it's just the three of us in the room, and the tension is at an all time high.
"What's this all about, then?" Apollo's cool voice breaks through the barrier of silence we've all created, an unreadable emotion swirling in his silver eyes.
Eros' grin has returned to his chiseled, gorgeous face.
Why do all of these gods have to be so divine?
I vaguely remember my old friend Ariel talking about her greek myths during the lunch breaks we spent in the library with her in high school. Even though I barely heard a word she was saying, the name Eros does stir up many connotations.
Some boring old fable about him falling in love with a woman he was ordered to kill and marrying her instead... blah, blah... she had to prove herself to his mother or something like that.
Look, all I know is that he's a greek god, and in the back of my mind I can hear Ariel's preadolescent voice telling me that he's the greek god of desire.
Desire... desire! The drink he kept shoving down our throats, the purple one, he called it Desire.
Eros sighs, running his fingers delicately over his brows. His playful aura is still there, but is now a little more relaxed. "I heard you were back in town and decided to sprinkle a little excitement back into your life." There's a twinkle in his eyes as they land back on me, and I suddenly feel very small in this large room.
"So, this is her? The dual soul-holder? Fascinating... she looks exactly like Cyrene." His brow arches as he continues to stride towards me.
I frown, pushing my feet back and finally willing myself to say something to him. "How do you know about me and Cyrene?" I ask him, though my heart is hammering against my chest.
Deep within the crevices of my mind, there is this warm fluttering feeling I can't rid myself of, even though right now I am actually a mess talking to Eros.
He grins at my nerve, and even looks mildly impressed by my outburst. "My wife. She's the goddess of souls, sweetheart. This," he motions at me, turning his gaze back to Apollo. "One vessel carrying two souls? It has never happened, so Psyche knows all about you. She's the one who sent me out here in the first place, to bring you to her. Thought I'd have a little fun with the four of you before heading back." He explains, pulling out a chair and casually seating himself on it.
The sardonic chuckle is past Apollo's lips before I can even process everything Eros has just said. "So you've become her errand boy now? She couldn't come out here on her own?" He crosses his arms over his broad chest.
"You haven't heard? Everybody's favourite vanity queen is on the run. Nobody's heard from her but Adonis, and he refuses to talk. You know she and Psyche have bad blood," he shrugs, though now I am thoroughly confused about who they're talking about. "Best my wife stay indoor lest you wanna see her unconscious hanging from the statues of Mount Olympus, naked, again."
Apollo grins at the memory of such a thing happening and shakes his head at the thought, though a glimmer of nostalgia passes through his normally stormy grey eyes. He runs his fingers through his hair as the smirk on his lips begins to fade, and he pulls out another chair to sit down besides Eros.
"You think she did it? Do you believe that Aphrodite would unlock the gates of Tartarus?" Apollo asks Eros and he shrugs.
"Aphrodite has always been wicked, I wouldn't put it past her." He replies sordidly, a glower on his perfectly symmetrical face.
"What? She did this? The goddess of Love?" I'm trying to keep up, but the both of them are speaking way too fast. It also doesn't help that they're both pretending I don't exist. "If she's the goddess of love, wouldn't it kinda be... against her nature to do anything evil?"
"She's the goddess of love and vanity, sometimes the latter outweighs the former and that alone can drive her to do vicious things." Eros replies, answering the first of my one million questions. There is too much unraveling before me at the moment, and I'm having trouble processing it.
I'm not like Ariel, this has never been my world.
Apollo has what seems like disappointment swimming through his eyes, as if Eros was the only one who could tell him it wasn't her. I realise that he must be very attached to her if he's defending her so fervently...
Maybe we're all wrong, maybe she's not the one doing this.
"Okay... but why would she do something like that? From what I've gathered; the titans getting out of that place... Tartarus... that's a bad thing, right?" Eros nods in response to my question and I can tell that he's mildly amused by the effort I'm putting in to understand all this.
"Two reasons, fleshy: the first is politics, you know how it goes, she wants to be queen and for some reason, she thinks that Zeus or Kronos ascending to the thrown will secure her spot or," he glances at Apollo by his side, and shoves him. "Or she wanted to save our sunshiny boy Apollo here." He teases and Apollo rolls his eyes at him, deeply unimpressed.
"I don't know about you, darlings but my money's on the first one." He gets up from his chair, pushing it back harshly and stretches himself. "Hades, Kronos and all the other Titans are free. I hope you're all aware of this. It wasn't an accident. It was premeditated, and now Aphrodite is on the run, though she needs to be tried for treason. All I'm saying is, if she was innocent, and she knew she was innocent, she wouldn't have skipped town."
He's got a point. The disappointed look on Apollo's face surges deeper into his being, bringing his whole demeanor down.
He gets up from his chair as well. "We should go." His eyes finally meet mine for the first time since our delusion came crashing down, and I feel my cheeks heat up, the memory of his lips on mine briefly sinking into my subconscious.
I know it's wrong. He belongs to Cyrene, and once we figure out how to get her out of me and into her own body, he will choose her and he will be with her, but I can't help how right it felt when our lips touched, the fire that was set ablaze inside me, the need for more...
I dust all these thoughts to the back of my mind, but Eros is grinning at me, a knowing look passes through his passionate violet eyes. He arches a brow at me as if reading my thoughts, then shakes his head and tears his gaze from me.
"We can't come with you, Eros. Not yet, but once I've got my powers from the Labyrinth, your palace will be our first stop. We will figure this out, we'll make everything right... and we'll find a way to trap the titans back in Tartarus, even if I have to be dragged down with them."