“Are you dating one of them?” Blythe asks Zemira.
“Uh, no. They’re not my type,” Zemira says skimming the clothes hanging above my head. “But Aaiden, him I could take a bite out of.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Blythe chirps then freezes.
All of us girls zero in on her. I kind of had a feeling Blythe had a thing for Aaiden, but I didn’t want to say anything because back in the day, Aaiden had a thing for Fiona and now he seems to have a thing for just about any girl.
“Oh really,” Fiona says accusingly.
Blythe’s face turns beet red.
“Hey, if you’re claiming him, I’ll back off,” Zemira says. “I’m sure I can scrounge up some tasty morsel around here.”
“You know, it really worries me when you talk like that, Zemira,” I say finally finding the tub I was looking for.
“I don’t mean to eat,” she says playfully, “I just mean to have a good time with. It’s been three years since I’ve been on a date. I blame you for that.” She pouts.
I laugh at her.
“So, Blythe, are you making a claim?” Fiona asks. Her attention hasn’t moved from her friend.
“Don’t you all have some sort of pact banning you from dating each other?” I ask.
“Ooh, we have that too. Honestly, I think Zaphyra has had feelings for Phelix for forever, but after the Alex incident, and with Zaphyra’s past, we all decided it was safest not to date one another.” Zemira pulls pair of jeans out that tie up the sides. “Finally, I didn’t think you’d have any clothes I could borrow. Girl, we gotta take you shopping.”
“What incident?” I ask Zemira, my attention fully piqued.
“I wanna hear from Blythe,” Fiona says still hard.
“Fine, okay, I like him. But not like, like him. I know the rules. Oy!” She puts her hands up.
“Ask him out then,” Fiona tells her.
“What?”
“Ask him out, dummy. I don’t care. In the past, none of us wanted to be the third wheel if two of us dated. But now we have Violet back and all of these guys. I won’t be hurt or left out. Just ask him, because I’ve seen him checking you out more often than he checks out the wonder twins. You might want to hurry though; he could be making out with Zaphyra as we speak.” Fiona shrugs.
“You mean it?” Blythe’s face lights up.
“Yeah, yeah, follow your heart-mones!” Fiona chokes out the last word because Blythe squeals and hugs her.
“Oh no, but what if he likes Zaphyra now?”
“Don’t worry about her. We’re all not allowed to date each other, but really, Zaphyra is not allowed to date at all.” Zemira smirks. “Go get your guy.”
Blythe doesn’t wait, she takes off out of the room.
“She’s got it bad,” I say. I still want to grill Zemira about the Alex incident, but maybe I should ask him instead. I don’t know the protocol here. Are we even dating? Can I date him? I doubt I want to ask Zemira that.
“Love is in the air. It’s the heat, it makes us all go a little crazy,” Zemira says.
“It’s your turn to spill now,” Fiona says to Zemira.
“I already told you, I haven’t dated in three years.”
“I mean about your sister. Why can’t she date?”
Zemira sighs. “It’s a really sad story.”
“And we are here for it.” Fiona claps.
Zemira looks to me, and I nod. I grab my extra fuzzy socks. “Alright, I’m going to change in the bathroom, but I’m leaving the door cracked, so talk.” I walk into the bathroom attached to my room.
“Long ago, when we were still full demons, my sisters and I were trouble. That’s putting it mildly. The title ‘sisters of chaos’ wasn’t a brand we gave ourselves; the world gave it to us. You have to know we’re not proud of who we were, the things we did, it’s just a truth we have to live with. I won’t hide from that dark truth because facing it is the only way to find our way back to the light. We were young, headstrong, charged up, and brimming with hellfire, and all three of us were more than a little boy crazy. Zaphyra and I didn’t view humans the way we do now. They were just playthings. We had harems of boys for every occasion. Meggie was the youngest, she was obsessed with power and industry. She liked to watch them build monuments in her name, wage wars, and fight each other. She viewed humans as slaves, beneath her. She dated gargoyles exclusively. In hindsight it’s clear that Megara herself was always secretly just a bomb building itself in anticipation of exploding right when it could cause the most damage.
“Zaphyra, our middle sister, is complete love. Both when it’s laced with toxicity and in its purest form, love can be such a dangerous thing. I think out of all of us she feels the most. She wanted to be loved so much. She enraptured men and though she had a thousand crying out her name, more than she could ever need, she didn’t like to share them. Jealousy became an issue often. You may even have heard stories of her, only the ancient Greeks called her by another name.
“As for me, I am a bit theatrical at times, but as the oldest, it’s always been my job to hold us together. I’ve always had a desire for a little bit of everything. A love of power, of love, of lust, of invention. I get bored easily of one and move on to the next. So when I dated, it was hot but burnt out fast. I didn’t want too many feelings involved. I crave freedom. I save all of my real love for my sisters and my duty to protect them, but that also means I crushed hearts when I got bored, metaphorically and in the literal sense alike.
“When we became cursed, Meggie longed for her power back, Zaphyra for her version of love, and I for my freedom. With time, Zaphyra and I wanted to change; we felt sick over all we had done in the past. We thought Meggie did too. She didn’t. The entire time she was pretending to change like the rest of us, she was setting up a long elaborate trap to try to make us all turn back to evil. It caused the death of a well-known human royal family and in turn almost got us exposed. Because of this, our zoana at the time had to magically break Megara’s bond with our clan and contain her in a pyxis. It was an ugly battle and she’s long gone now. Losing our sister broke Zaphyra and I more than the others. Zaphyra fell off the wagon as they say. She had struggled so hard to contain her nature and it came back in full force. By the time we found her, she was holed up on an island in a mansion with every man she could possibly enchant and kidnap on her way there. There’s a lot more unpleasantness that I’ll leave out of your young minds, but it took a lot of work to get them all back mostly in one piece. Let’s just say the legend of the succubus was born during that era. Zaphyra was grounded from any relationships by our zoana. I was tortured with the knowledge that I had failed both of my sisters.
“With Zaphyra’s feelings being so extreme, she has to work hard every day not to fall in love. We all keep an eye on her, but for her, all-consuming passion and the deep desire to be not only loved but worshipped and become one with another is the hardest drug for her to kick. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. She keeps the brightest outlook on life because all she has to live for is a hope that the sun will bring her the true happiness she can’t find here in the dark, in her longing. So, she’s perky and annoying, and wonderfully obtuse, because that is her armor keeping her safe from herself. Zaphyra, in the end, is the strongest one out of the three of us. And I’ll always be chained down to the knowledge I failed them both. I keep all of my paramours away from her, and I never talk about it with her.” Zemira stares out the window towards the park.