world so radically different from my own. And a woman who I wished I could have served instead.
“I’d have been honored to have been your right hand there,” I whispered and meant it.
Her lips twitched and she smiled widely. “I would never have used you so, Eros. I am only glad you have decided to give me another chance. And as much as I would love to stay right where we are, I also have seen what your mother did to your bride. This is why you hate me. Why you never gave me a chance, isn’t it?”
I had no words.
She squeezed my hands. “If you will let me be a part of your world, I promise to you that I will never be like she was. Ever. But if you won’t, I understand. However, I also see that we’ve no time to waste. We must find your bride. Now.”
A burst of light exploded from us, and then we were standing, garbed in flesh again.
“Hephy,” she said sweetly, “will you go find Dionysus and Zeus? We will have need of them very soon. We won’t be gone long, my darling.”
Hephaestus was now at her side and he gently leaned over, placing a tender kiss on her cheek. She smiled warmly. Then she in turn kissed him full on the mouth.
I’d seen her truths when I’d slipped into her soul, but to witness her kiss my deformed Uncle, who all of Olympus openly mocked, with such enthusiasm and honesty of affection was mind-blowing to me.
I blinked.
She wasn’t the same, was she…
Hephaestus was suddenly gone and that was when she finally looked at me with a wistful smile. “Take my hand, my boy. We must hurry.”
Eros
I stared at Psyche’s very still form. Acheron had enveloped her, but somehow, she had not sunk. Her skin was pale as milk in moonlight, there was no pulse in her neck and I knew my love was gone to the Underworld, but strangely she did not look dead. Only sleeping.
And she was surrounded by a cloud of butterflies. Radiant electric blue ones. Delicate almost glass-like clear ones and everything else in between.
“She looks peaceful,” Aphrodite said softly. I looked at her, surprised to note melancholy staring back at me. “When I first came here to this time, I had none of the memories of your mother,” she said slowly. I could not understand why your pantheon hated me so, I was well loved in mine. For the most part. Hera never really cared for me much then or now.”
She laughed lightly, but quickly turned serious.
“But weirdly as time has progressed, as I’ve made a home with your uncle, I’ve begun getting glimpses. Now and then. I can’t control them, but moments of intense stress bring them on, I’m not sure.”
“What are you getting at?” I asked her quietly.
The butterfly alter that Psyche rested on was rising slowly into the air and that’s when I realized that Aphrodite was directing them to bring her to us.
Mother had told me that Psyche had fled Olympus, that she’d decided to live a life amongst her mortals. She’d even come to me on the day that Psyche had passed away, ‘to celebrate her rebirth’ she’d said.
I’d tried to see Hades, tried to explain to him that I would not interfere, that I wished merely to ensure she was well, that she was happy in Elysia. She’d been too pure to have been sent to Tartarus.
But he’d refused me and I had to wonder if that had all been mother’s doing too. If somehow, she’d paid off Hades to keep the knowledge from me, that Psyche had not died, but that instead she’d been hidden in plain sight right under my nose all those years.
The pain of that knowledge was almost unbearable.
“I’ve had a flash,” she said slowly.
The butterflies alighted on the beach, even we gods were not exempt from the dark powers of the rivers’ waters.
A giant gust rolled through, drying Psyche’s wet body almost instantly. I looked at Aphrodite and she dipped her head and I knew she was telling me it was now safe to touch her.
I ran the few steps between us to her, and gently cradled her to my body. It’d been many centuries since I’d held Psyche, but I’d never forgotten how to. Psyche had always been the other half of me.
I’d been dead without her. A ghost really. Breathing but not living.
I brushed strands of hair from her eyes and mouth, my heart clenching