"F-FREE HER, MORTAL!"
The man grumbles before his grip on the goddess' arm loosens, then it is non-existent altogether.
Hedone's breaths are broken and sharp, her vision projects a watery image of Kharis' worried face. This place smells of festering things, but it is not the scent that's making the girl cry.
"Are you alright, goddess? Why are you leaking?"
"I am crying, Kharis."
The Grace's eyebrows stitch, "Crying?"
Tears only graze the flushed faces of soil-born men and not of the cold cut faces of gods. Gods do not weep, not as they reign in their wrath, nor when they bow to their sorrows. Gods do not weep, yet here is the daughter of Eros sprawled across her throne of cobble and dirt, tears kissing marble-honed cheeks.
Her father says it comes from the remnants of her mother's mortal blood, Hedone thinks it is the Curse. That it is slowly thinning the ichor in her veins, millennia after millennia, until the blood is plain crimson and she is mortal—like those fallen gods. She blames many things on her crossed stars these decades.
Hedone lifts herself off the damp jagged floor. Kharis looks paler when they take in their surroundings.
They stand in a dirty groove between two buildings, there are no lights on either end—if there ever are any. The dark clothes the egresses so well, the alleyway looks like it could run on endlessly. A lone wall light attached right next to the club's backdoor—the one she had been dragged out of—is all that illuminates their faces. Hedone wonders where the moon has gone off to at this time of the night.
The man who had hauled her out has long gone.
Lukas Rye and his whirpool eyes are gone too.
"Come on, let's go." Hedone takes Kharis by one soft hand, the other wiping those ungodly tears away. Kharis does not ask or say a word, she only watches Hedone's back as it trembles with such faintness beneath her now soiled jacket.
Hedone does not have many things she fears, but maybe at that moment when Lukas Rye's body had rippled with that unwonted wrath, when the storm broke in his eyes, she had found one more thing to fear.
A creak and a bang resounds throughout the narrow street a minute later, disturbing the silence. Both girls flinch, bodies already veiled in the darkness when they look behind their heavy shoulders.
A boy stands there, a hoodie now covering the bruises on his torso. He does not notice either of the girls several steps from the end of the street. Instead, with his back facing the club exit, his tilts his silver head to the pitch black above. He must be wondering where the moon had gone too, and the stars. The stars—maybe his hair is made of them, sliced into threads and into silky strands: a crown of silvery iridescence. He runs his slender fingers through them, but they are quick and frustrated.
The goddess' heart stutters, she wonders if he'd kill her with those hands.
No, it's the fear that wonders such an exaggeration, not her.
What she does wonder is what he was born from, not of soil she was sure. Maybe of—
"Is that him?" Kharis' voice is a whisper into the curtain of shadows separating them from the boy but he hears it. Lukas Rye's bruised eyes find hers even in the dark, angry and. . .so, so tired.
His eyes do not hold hers long enough for her to confirm his supposed immortality. He merely disappears into the opposite alley, consumed by a starless night.
The inky heavens broke that same evening, quick splatters of ponderous rain thrumming against the Chrysler's windows. Angelos stirs right and they are spat into another thin strip of road lying ahead of them. He had found the two in the alleyway, not too long after Lukas Rye bolted. The demigod had poured out that exit door, wide-eyed and panting. Then he'd muttered something about getting them phones before he led them back to the car.
Hedone had told him about the encounter with Lukas Rye, not forgetting the coiling anger, the beauty of a face unbothered by time, and the sense of peculiarity in his eyes.
"Not mortal?" Angelos' brows had lowered with his bottom lip caught by perfect teeth, thinking: "Weird. Guess your grandma was wrong then. . ." He pauses, "Gods, that's even weirder."
The goddess had considered the mortal man Adonis before asking: "But is it possible? To reincarnate mortal souls in immortal bodies?"
"There have been instances, very rare though." Angelos did not unlatch his bottom lip for the rest of the ride.
Now they sit in storm-filled silence in the car as it weaves through unknown streets, empty and shadowed. Above, lightning crackles and fizzes—like scratches bleeding with starlight, scarring the watery skies.
Hedone's eyes bolt left and right, searching despite the absence of moonlight and street lamps, but she sees no boy and no crown of pale stars.
"We should head back to the hotel. He must be indoors by now. We'll have better luck finding him under daylight." Angelos says from the driver's seat.
Hedone nods, sighing for the infinite time.
YOU ARE READING
cupid's curse
Romance❝the endings are always disastrous.❞ an accursed g o d d e s s bound to a never-ending cycle of unreturned love. a charming m o r t a l suffering through the unwanted attention from the many women whom he has at his every whim. © fiona | 2016
