The King of Hearts - Jovee Winters Page 0,32
was said they were nearly as good at it as my mother was. Not that I ever really wanted to know that, but gossip was rife on Olympus.
I was relieved at least that Dionysus hadn’t forced them into it. I didn’t keep with rape of any sort. No one should have their will and autonomy stripped of them.
I nodded, lowering my eyes and letting him know without words that I believed him. “Please tell me you’ve learned something, Uncle? I’ve been going half out of my mind with worry tonight. I need to know what she’s got planned. I need to help Psyche.”
Dionysus lifted his brows, gone was the usual smug arrogance, replaced by a studious expression that I couldn’t quite read.
“You look just like her, but you are nothing like her, are you, whelp?”
I knew whom he meant.
But I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing at all.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, no matter. I promised you my aid, and I delivered. Your mother does indeed have a plan to humiliate your princess. It is said that there is another minotaur trapped somewhere upon this isle. She intends to enlist him. He will become your princesses’ intended.”
I clenched my molars, understanding that this was a lot more than mere humiliation she wished to heap upon Psyche’s head. This was more. It was torture. A minotaur might have the upper body of a hairy male, but his lower half was all bull. For him to mate with Psyche, even nonviolently, would literally tear her apart inside.
“She can’t do that.” I looked at my Uncle.
He had his lips pressed tight. “She can and she will, boy. She’s already sent her scouts out to locate this beast. As you know minotaur’s are cursed half breeds, who have never known the lustful touch of another. To be given such a rare chance, I have no doubt that the minotaur—even a kind hearted one—would utterly destroy her in his haste to finally mate. I believe your mother’s ultimate goal is to kill the princess without sullying her own lily white hands in the process.”
Tremors took hold of the muscles in my thighs. I had to lean my full weight against the column behind me. “She’s gone completely mad with power. This can’t happen, Dionysus.”
He shrugged. “Then I suppose the ball is in your court now, my boy. I’ve done all I can do. And now I must return to the revelry before I am missed and she discovers the traitor in her midst.”
“How am I to stop this? What can I possibly do? I am just a god of silly arrows and potions.”
“And she is one of love, yet that has not stopped her from blazing a path of violence and destruction. Find the will, boy. If you love this mortal—”
“I never said this was love. I—”
“I am an old god. You are not the only one who understands the heart, my boy. You and I, we do not lie to one another. I would have truth from you and I vow that you will only ever get that from me as well. If you love her,” he pressed, “you will figure it out. But you haven’t much time. A day at most before her scouts retrieve him to prepare him for the marriage ceremony.”
“I don’t even know where to start looking for him.”
Dionysus grinned and his blue image began to slowly fade. “All the best adventures begin that way, my boy.”
And then he was gone.
I stared with sightless eyes at the world around me in a daze.
“What has you so heavy, my lord?” Startled, I twitched, hoping she hadn’t heard what Dionysus and I had been talking about. I knew the voice anywhere. It was Psyche. She’d been watching me, just as I’d thought. I turned and my heart felt like a brick in my chest all of a sudden. A gentle breeze stirred the perfume on her flesh, and I breathed it in deep into my lungs. Flowers. She always smelled of flowers.
“You call me ‘my lord’, but I am merely a humble serv—”
“Do not lie to me. Not to me,” she said it softly and with a thread of hurt behind it.
I could read her heart so clearly, as though it were my own. So many others around her hurt her. They lied to her on a near daily basis. But she was nobody’s fool and refused to be treated as such. Either I confessed, or she would walk