I blinked. Mother was no prude, so she must have issue with the fact that it was a nude woman she saw. But… I frowned.
I’d not painted a single nude.
I shook my head. Completely baffled. She walked up to a marble statue I’d sculpted, and snarled. It was of a rose growing up from a skull shaped rock.
“Fucking nudes,” she snapped. “Do not look upon them, Eros. Women are perversions, they will hurt you. They will ruin you.”
“I…I promise,” I said, and meant it. Because I couldn’t see what she was seeing. She turned my rose around and I frowned.
Had Dionysus enchanted this palace so that mother only saw what he wanted her to see? Must have, because mother wasn’t prone to imaginations, and yet I could not see any of what she did. After she’d walked up and down the great hall, covering up the “nudes,” she finally turned to me.
A glowering look of displeasure upon her face. “Well, son. What have you to say for yourself?”
More confused than I’d ever been, I shrugged. Not exactly sure what the right answer to give here was.
Rolling her eyes theatrically, she shook her head. “You’ve kept yourself sealed in shadow for days. I cannot see through your eyes. You promised, how could I have raised such a selfish boy?”
Schooling my features was an automatic thing for me. “I did exactly as bid, mother. I gave her the potion. The men of the village find her repulsive. Uncle’s plan work—”
“Yes,” she snarled, “and now he’s got you set up in his own warded palace. I cannot look upon you from the heavens. What have you two got up to, Eros? What are you hiding from me?” She took a step closer.
I swallowed, heart racing furiously in my chest, but outwardly I was calm as ever. “Nothing,” I said with such complete conviction that I even believed myself for half a moment.
Gods, when had I become such a good liar?
I’d never deceived my mother before. Ever.
She cocked her head. I knew she didn’t believe me, and yet, she had no proof. She looked around the palace again.
“Debauched, bastard,” she muttered beneath her breath.
I almost, almost muttered hypocrite back, but I swallowed it down. The only reason mother was so bothered was because she saw nude females. Females she wanted me to have no part of. And I was finally beginning to have suspicions why. If those were men in the paintings, she’d be actively encouraging me to enjoy them.
Mother knew something.
About me. About Psyche.
She looked at me. “Take me to see her, Eros. Now.”
I stood off to the side, under heavy cover of my shadows. Watching mother, watch her.
I tried to pretend my palms weren’t sweating. That my heart wasn’t racing. That my stomach wasn’t diving with a nest of razor tipped butterflies, and that at any moment I might become sick from the most astounding case of nerves I’d ever felt.
Psyche was sitting alone in her father’s gardens, head bent, reading a book. The moonlight framed her profile, making her look both alien and yet heart achingly familiar.
I’d been watching her many nights roam her gardens relentlessly. Pacing slowly back and forth, her footsteps meandering and nonsensical, but yet she reminded me of a caged beast desperate to be set loose from its captivity.
Maybe it was that part of her I felt must attuned to.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t recognize her beauty. She had it, in spades. With or without the potion she’d drunk, there was no denying that her doe shaped eyes, her button nose, or her rosebud pout weren’t exceptionally crafted. But I’d been around physical beauty my whole life. It wasn’t as titillating to me anymore.
Still, it was shocking how many had forgotten Psyche’s astonishing good looks, if they’d seen her with their hearts and not simply their eyes, they’d never have forgotten who she truly was.
Her fiancé, Arganon, had broken their betrothal several days past. I counted that a win. And so, had she, judging by the secret smile I’d seen play about her lips when her maid had whispered to her that she’d been set aside in favor of her middle sister.
The castle had been in a tizzy with that bit of tittle tattle. But Psyche had held her head high and pretended not to notice.
Psyche was pleased to be rid of the scoundrel, her parents, however, they had not. And their usual indifference to her was starting to take a turn that was worrisome to me. Her father’s moods were becoming more and more prone to violence. At first, he’d simply seemed aloof to her, but as more time passed and more and more avenues of wealth dried up for him, he seemed to take it personally. More as a slight against him as opposed to his daughter who he’d once pretended to cherish.
Now, the beautiful female paced the gardens with the intensity of a prowler. That or, she exhausted herself from hours of self-flagellation that she simply sat and read. Though how much reading she truly did, I wasn’t sure considering she was always on the same page.
I’d not uttered a single word to her since that day on the beach, and yet I knew her. I knew so well, because she was me.
“Pathetic creature,” my mother turned, eyeing the space where my shadow was thickest before skipping past to a spot just to the right of me. Sometimes I wished I could live inside the shadows and never be seen again.
“Where are you boy, do not pretend you’re not here. I feel your wet breath on my neck.”
My lips curled into a grimace of distaste. I would never do something so vile. And she knew it. She also knew how to wound me with her careless words.
Burying my sigh, I banished my shadows. Revealing myself to her again.
Her eyes instantly lit up and her smile became as radiant as the sun.
“There’s my good boy, not like that waste of air back there.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, where Psyche sat. I wanted to look at her again, but I was afraid that if I did with my mother right there, I would not be able to hide my truths any longer.
So, I pretended to agree with my bitch of a mother, hating her just a bit more today than I had yesterday. “Indeed,” I drawled.
Her grin grew wider. “You truly are a lovely boy, my Eros. The very best of me, I think.”
I’d never hated being referred to as her son, because it was the truth, but in this moment, I had a terrible urge to do something violent to her. Something awful and wicked. I swallowed hard. Gods, what was wrong with me?
“You do not find her pretty, do you, my boy?”
“No,” I said instantly, holding my chin high. Giving mother a pompous look of indifference.
I did not find Psyche pretty. Pretty implied she was simply just okay. Nice enough. She was more.
She was becoming everything to me. A terrifying and foreign need was rising up in me. I wanted to guard her. Protect her. I wanted to be hers. Her man. Her lover. Her world. I wanted her to want me as I desperately yearned for her. And not merely because of the skin she wore. But because I knew she would understand me like no other being in the world could. And I would know her just as well.
“Good,” mother said, blue eyes sparkling. I knew that look. It was mischief that rose in her now.
“That is good. Because this bores me. There will be a festival. Held in my honor.”
I frowned. “What?”