and cold as they weren’t on the outside. Still didn’t make any of this right. And I wanted to say so, but I knew no one would listen to me.
They never did.
“I love it!” She squealed with true rapturous delight. I hated my mother in that moment. I was ashamed of her. Embarrassed to be associated with her.
But my will had never been my own. If mother told me to go, I would. Because my uncle was right, I was and always would be her good little soldier.
“Eros,” my mother cried out and it was all I could do not to grimace.
“Mother,” I said neutrally.
“You will do as your uncle has said.” She rolled her wrist, and suddenly sitting on her palm was a glowing glass shaped heart that rolled with a mercurial pink glittering substance within. “This is the potion. You will make her drink it. Do you hear me, my boy? Do not disappoint me.”
“I never do,” I said and meant it, hating myself more than anything I’d ever hated in my life.
I was about to single handedly destroy someone, and all because the gods were capricious, fickle demons.
“Now make yourself ugly,” she said.
I had the power to alter my appearance. Normally I would just go invisible when I dwelled in the land of men, but this time I knew I could not do that. I snapped my fingers and imagined myself as the type of man mother would automatically cringe away from.
I gave myself a soft belly. Hunched my shoulders a bit. Thinned my hair. Added a few pockmarks to my face and gave myself a hooked nose. I was not actually ugly. I kept my eyes kind. And my mouth pleasing. Because I wanted to draw the poor woman in and what mother did not understand was that outward beauty could only get one so far. It was the inner beauty, the soul, that actually created eternal bonds. I wanted the poor human to like me.
Which was stupid. And silly.
I knew.
Mother cringed. “Gods, if I didn’t know better. You are positively hideous, my boy.”
I clipped a nod at her. Heartsick and disillusioned by my life.
She walked toward me, holding out the potion. “Find the girl. Make her take this. And then I want you to report back to me in a fortnight. I will watch through your eyes, see what you’ve seen. I am proud of you.” She tenderly gripped my chin in her hand. “My son.”
I hated that my heart trembled when she said it, and that for just a moment I really, really did want that from her. But not because of something like this. Not because I was about to be the cause of one woman’s ruination. It was a cruel fate. And if I were a better man, I would not do it.
I squeezed my eyes shut and muttered words I wasn’t sure I really meant. “Thank you, mother. That means a lot to me.”
“Now go. Destroy her happiness, my child.”
Gripping the damned potion tight in my fist, I turned. Snow white wings suddenly exploded from my back and though I was not outwardly as beautiful as I normally was, the gasps of delight ran through the crowd.
I did not look back at them, I did not wish them farewell. I sailed into the sky, racing like a fiery meteor toward the land of men. A lone tear slid down my cheek.
I was dead inside.
And I wasn’t sure I would ever come back to life again. Not after this.
Psyche
My sisters were laughing. They had their skirts hiked up around their knees and they were skipping away from the water’s edge as yet another, much larger wave crashed toward the sandy shore.
The gaggle of men around them were only too happy to play along with my skipping sisters.
The gods had seen fit to bless us all with great and exceptional beauty.
I knew that. And they did too.
But I’d seen a dark side to beauty, long ago, and I’d never forgotten the lesson that my sisters had. Beauty always came with a cost. A price. All my life I’d been waiting for my lien to come due.
While my sisters pranced about, I kept to myself. I dressed in their rags, which were anything but rags to most anyone else. But to my parents, I heaped coals of shame on their heads that I didn’t own a single “new” dress. My parents hated how unwilling I was to flaunt, and I quote, “the body the