cupid's curse

08 | THE SONG OF GLORY AND GREED

THE ICHOR SINGS IN HER EARS, that deep viscous gold she revels in from the day Hedone emptied out of her mother's womb, just as The Fates spun her thread—a fibre of crossed stars. The falls of her feet come in thunders against the plush flooring, pursuing the shadow of Lukas Rye as he retreats. Kharis calls for her over the sound of the liquid gold lapping up the goddess' veins, but she does not look back.

She thinks of the yellowing photograph tucked away in an envelope on the dashboard of Angelos' car. A soldier in a war that has long ceased, an existence belonging in a different place, a different time. Heroic monuments like him were not ones cut from cold marble, but of warm gossamer skin that succumbs to the tick of time.

She weaves herself through body after body, the balcony smells of expensive perfume but downstairs is heavy of perspiration. The boy disappears behind a door situated at one of the venue's secluded corners. There standing next to it is a man with a small device attached to his ear. The goddess moves forward and the man holds one hand out,

"Signora mi scusi, the club prohibits regular guests from entering past this point."

He tells her—with a voice corrupted by nicotine, with her veins soaking itself in immortal gold, with the ichor boring through her stinging eyes and into his—they glaze over and his arm slackens.

Hedone looses a breath and the man staggers.

Her eyebrows bunch together and he is lost in a reverie.

In his mind, he is somewhere else beholding poison cherry lips, a set of mean eyes, curves coated in melanin, a woman—nature's masterpiece. In his mind, the stranger of a girl is pressed against him, bittersweet mouth whispering, soft hands roaming—but only so for a minute or two.

The goddess pushes past the door before the glamour fades. She is no regular guest.

The room at the other side is lit too cooly but her eyes do not bother to squint, they only do so when they find him sitting on a bench positioned in between the rows of lockers lining the tiled walls. One leg propped up, his torso bare and bruising. A red-haired girl is slouching over him with a pack of cotton in her hands. Lukas Rye's whirlpool eyes are already on the goddess, swollen and annoyed.

The ichor hesitates, the high is passing.

She does not know what to say, she did not think this through. A mortal would not believe the truth if she ever told him. Lukas Rye would think her insane if she demanded right there and then that he come with her to Olympus. To him, it is a place only existing in pages of books of fantasy. To her, it is wherein lies her heart's salvation.

They stare, taking each other in. Lukas Rye's hair shows off an abnormal hint of iridescence under this lighting. Hedone wonders if he wears that scowl on his busted lip often, like the thin gold chain hanging from his neck. A pendant she has yet to see up close twirling between his fingers.

The goddess searches his face for the wrinkles and fine lines from the several decades he lived through after the war, and yet there are none to see. He remains young underneath the half-cleaned up injuries. Maybe he isn't mortal after all. A demigod perhaps, one that would not find the idea of a court of gods existing up on a mountain's summit so bizarre. Yet she cannot bring herself to ask him at that very moment.

Pity squeezes at her heart, to trade him in for the prize of her heart's desire—she would be selling off the boy's freedom. Mortal or not.

The girl crouching over Lukas Rye is the one to interrupt the troubled silence.

"Excuse me, who are you?" She points the question towards her, one brow raised. The goddess wants to cower.

"Hedone," She answers instantly.

"Okay? And what's your business here? It's members only." The girl presses a cotton ball against Lukas Rye's brow.

He sucks in a breath, "You aren't a member either, Vanessa."

His voice is light when it slips past his tongue, too soft for such a killer face. He sounds like he is half-dreaming and he looks like a dream.

"I wouldn't have had to sneak in and bribe Cholo if you hadn't busted your face up so badly." The girl—Vanessa sighs, "Seriously, stop doing that shit."

He doesn't answer, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

The goddess shifts on her feet, disquiet hangs itself in the air—mocking her as it fills her every inhale and settles in her lungs. She wonders if the girl is his lover, his sister, or his friend. She wonders if she'd miss him when he's gone up. She wonders if she'd claw her way up that mountain to get him down.

"Listen, girl," Vanessa starts,

Hedone almost flinches.

"You can't be here, so if you're finished staring, go see yourself out."

"I am sorry, I was only—"

"Oh my god—leave, or I'm calling the guard."

"No, wait, I—"

"Cholo!"

There is a shuffling of feet on the other side of the door behind her.

"Wait, please, I am here to talk to Lukas Rye."

The curve in the boy's spine unwinds itself in a lone heartbeat, he looks at her now—more intently than before. Her blood is singing again and this time, the melody is ancient and familiar and unfamiliar all the same. Maybe it is true then when they say that it is the ichor that controls the gods, that they bend and sway to its song of glory and greed—a calling that cannot be resisted nor silenced by them. She has seen her father lose himself to its course, captured by that greed. She has seen her mother fall to his feet, and beg for his mercy.

The goddess wonders if she reminds him of her. Every time Hedone laughs or cries or sleeps, when her eyes—the only thing she has of her father—flutter close, when her face is every bit of his Princess Psyche, she wonders if in those moments that her eyelids cover the cobalt blues—if her father lets the hurt and regret write itself on his face, wiping it away before his daughter opens her eyes.

She wonders if he would hate her for taking away someone's beloved—for repeating his mistakes, all for a selfish reward that would satiate her heart's hunger.

When the last syllables of his name roll off her tongue, the pendant snaps off the chain on his neck, his fingers still enclose it as his knuckles turn white. The goddess sees it when a kind of rage starts to curl itself around every muscle in Lukas Rye's body. His voice is no longer soft this time as he speaks through a perfect prison of gritted teeth,

"Get the fuck out."

Hedone flinches, then a heavily muscled arm drags her out the door.