She didn’t try to remember her mother kissing her. She had no memory of that happening. Ever.
Aphrodite remembered when she was eight and had put on her first two-piece swimsuit. It’d been white and yellow, dotted with daisies. She’d run out to their pool where her mother had been sunning to show off her “big girl suit,” as young Aphrodite had called it. Her mother had given her a disdainful sideways glance and said, “If you’re old enough to wear a two-piece suit, you’re old enough to start holding in that gut of yours.”
She’d been eight. She hadn’t been fat, or even chubby. But from that day forward she’d worried about her weight and skipped meals.
Aphrodite remembered when she was eleven. A boy from down the street had stopped by to ask if she could play kickball with him and some of the other neighborhood kids. Her mother had said no and told their maid to close the door in his face. Aphrodite had cried. Her mother had slapped her. Hard. And called her a little slut.
She hadn’t known what slut meant until that day. She’d googled it, but had still not really understood. She’d never even kissed a boy—never even held a boy’s hand. But her mother had told her she was a slut. So, she believed it. How could she not?
Over and over the memories deluged her, and as they played across her mind’s eye, her tears dried. Her sobs quieted to hiccups. She lifted her face from the marble floor and sat, looking up at the serene goddess, and it was as if the scales fell from her eyes, her mind, her heart—and she was finally able to understand the truth.
“I’m not the problem.”
Aphrodite spoke to the statue of her goddess. At first her voice was trembly, choked with tears and emotion, but as she kept speaking, kept reasoning through a past that had kept her shackled to self-loathing, her words became clearer, stronger, and wiser. Much, much wiser.
“It’s not that I’m not good enough for my mother to love. No one—no child, no husband, no job—would ever be good enough for her because she wasn’t ever good enough for herself. Her life disappointed her over and over again, because it was broken. It was broken because she was broken. She is broken.” Aphrodite brushed her damp hair from her face and wiped her nose. “I can’t fix her. I can’t make her love me. I can only fix myself—love myself. And I have to let Mother go, and let the pain she created in my life go with her, or I will become her. I have to let her go.”
She put her face in her hands and began to weep again, but this time her tears were an outpouring of relief and release because it was at that moment Aphrodite LaFont truly began to live her own life.
“Daughter, I have been waiting to see if you would choose healing or self-destruction. I am infinitely pleased that you have chosen wisely.”
Aphrodite lifted her head from her hands to look up at the statue—which was no more. Instead of a marble replica of Nyx, the goddess herself stood before her, wrapped in gossamer silver and gold. Her dark hair cascaded around her waist, and over it was Nyx’s headdress of stars that glistened so brightly Aphrodite had to lower her eyes, which she did immediately, pressing her forehead to the cool marble in supplication.
“Forgive me, Nyx. I’ve been vain and selfish and cruel—to myself and to the people who love me. I don’t deserve it, but please forgive me.”
Aphrodite felt the goddess’ touch on her head and she was filled with love so complete, so unconditional, that she gasped aloud.
“I do not require your supplication, daughter. I understand you. I’ve understood you from the moment you were Marked. I was simply waiting for you to understand yourself. Rise, Prophetess! Behold your future!”
At Nyx’s command a bolt of pain splintered Aphrodite’s forehead sending shards of white-hot agony across her face. But in the span of a breath, the pain was gone.
Aphrodite lifted her head to see the goddess smiling down on her. Nyx made a graceful, sweeping motion with her hand, and a silver-framed mirror appeared before her, catching Aphrodite’s reflection. Feeling as if she was moving through a fantastical dream, Aphrodite lifted her hand. With trembling fingers she watched her reflection trace the incredibly beautiful tattoo pattern of exploding blue and red fireworks that framed her eyes in a perfect mask.
“W-what is this? I don’t understand.” Her voice trembled with so much emotion she could hardly speak.
“This is the part of my prophetic gift to you that had to wait until you were wise enough to wield it.”
“Forgive me, Nyx, but I still don’t understand.”
“Daughter, you have no need to continue to ask for my forgiveness. You have no way of understanding without my explanation.”
Aphrodite pulled her gaze from her incredibly changed reflection to look into the eyes of her goddess. “What am I?”
Nyx’s smile was sunlight and moonlight married in one harmonious blaze of joy. “Just as Zoey Redbird bridges two worlds—the ancient one of the first of my children, and today’s hectic, mad, modern world—so, too, do you bridge worlds.” The goddess flicked her wrist and the mirror disappeared.
“Worlds? You mean the human and the vampyre worlds?”
“No, daughter. I mean the worlds of my red and blue Marked children. From the moment you sacrificed a piece of your humanity to save Stevie Rae and my children Marked in red, you have been on this path. I hoped that you would be strong enough to heal your past and wise enough to seek a new future—my hope has come to fruition today.”
“So, I’m a bridge?” she said, sounding more like herself.
Nyx laughed and the stars in her headdress twinkled with impossible brilliance. “Yes, but you are also truly a vampyre—fully Changed.”
Aphrodite pressed her hand against her mouth. She felt so filled with happiness that she thought she might explode. The goddess waited with seemingly infinite patience while she sifted through her emotions, savoring a sense of peace and fulfillment that she had never before known. Finally, when she was able to speak again, she lifted her face to her goddess once more.
“Thank you. Those two words aren’t enough, but they are all I have. Thank you, Nyx. I won’t let you down. I won’t be my mother, and I won’t let her hurt me anymore.”
“I know you won’t, Daughter. But do you not wish to know the extent of your prophetess gifts?”
“There’s more than this gorgeous Mark and those visions I get?” Aphrodite gave the goddess a cheeky grin. “Please tell me you took away the bloody tears, pain, and blindness that goes with them.”
“No, Daughter. I cannot tell you that, for with every gift comes a price, and the price for your visions is pain. There is a price for your new gift, too, though I believe you will find it more and less painful than your visions.”