Page 85 of Curse the Flame

As I let myself into what was once Willow Ackerly’s bedroom—and the mirror that last brought her cousin, Daphne, to the Other to be the bride of Zeus’s son, Apollo—I find Hera standing in front of the glass, watching a scene unfold.

It vanishes once I step over the threshold. Keeping quiet because I don’t want to rile my beloved wife up after she’s done so much to help me with my mission, I move to stand by her side.

Hera lays a possessive hand on my arm. The other reaches for the mirror.

“Wait.”

She quirks her head. “For what?”

In answer, I wave my hand.

It was Hera who gave me the idea. Once I saw who she was watching… it was brilliant. Once we’re back on the other side of the mirror, it’ll be much harder to check in our children and the role they play in keeping the magic alive. Here, though, with the mirror…

I summon an image of Zeus’s daughter, smiling when I find the reborn Artemis and her husband, Orion, running through the woods. It’s clearly a race between two companions who care greatly for each other, though I can’t help the bubble of pride that wells up inside of me when I see that Noelle has a lead on her Hunter.

Of course she does.

Another wave. The mirror shows me her twin, Apollo. Sat on the throne in the sun god’s golden palace, his defiant little nymph curled up on his lap as he plucks the strings of his lyre. With this magic, sound doesn’t travel between realms, and though I can’t hear the song Alex is playing, the look on his Daphne’s face says she’s not impressed—and, yet, she snuggles closer to him regardless.

Another wave. White-winged Eros is soaring through the sky, carrying his pretty soulmate in his arms as though afraid someone will separate them should he loosen his hold. No point in that fear. I made Psyche immortal at Eros’s request, and now that he has found his forever in a ceramicist named Jolie, they finally have their forever.

Deep down, I think, swinging my arm around Hera, tucking her under my arm, that’s all I’ve ever wanted…

Another wave. In the middle of the labyrinth, in the part of the Other that’s two days’ journey from her home in Delphi, I see the half-man, half-bull minotaur. His big, monstrous body with his soft hands and kind eyes has the dainty brunette princess of Crete, Ariadne, resting with her head in his big lap. With wonder on his face, and pure pleasure that he has the right by merit of being her true soulmate to touch her, he’s using his claws to gently comb her dark curls.

I’m glad. Part of Kronos’s power was the ability to shield himself from the one god fated to destroy him. I didn’t know that he was Teddy Thanos, the “mortal” who hired Hades’s human soul to murder so many of us, or that he had taken over the reborn Theseus until it was too late both times. Hades paid for my ignorance the first time; poor Aria nearly paid the second. Convinced she was meant for Theseus until he betrayed her by leaving her to her fate at the hands of the minotaur, Kronos proved that sometimes the Fates trumped his chaos overall.

Because, in this lifetime, the princess was meant for the monster, and the hero is now a shade in the Underworld’s Asphodel Fields until the Fates take pity on him and he’s reborn again.

There was a concession for that. In order to give the befuddled hero a chance to be reborn rather than an unending fate as one of the Unmentionables, the Fates insisted that Ares be allowed the same. The human soul was banished to whatever hell would take him, but the god of war would one day be allowed to return to Olympus.

Balance. It’s all about balance.

But, sometimes, it’s about true love, too.

One final wave.

The mirror returns to the scene that my wife was watching when I first entered the room. It shows a shy beauty with coils of pink hair, a terrible scar down one cheek, and love in her brilliant blue eyes as she swings a hammer alongside her big brute of a husband.

Hephaestus. Hera’s son she once threw off the side of Olympus—and the one that my Elisabeth has always had a soft spot for from the first moment he opened his mouth and she heard the former pirate’s thick Irish brogue.

She sighs. “He loves her.”

“He does.”

“And he’s happy.”

“He is. So is his Venus.”

Venus. Contrary as ever, Hephaestus refused to refer to the reborn Aphrodite by her Greek name. He chose the Roman equivalent, and if you ask him, he’ll say it’s because that version sounds enough like her mortal name: Vanessa. However, Hephaestus was the first of the Twelve I found and brought to this realm. He’s had the longest to grow resentful of the promises that the magic made, never believing that his beauty would want a beast like him… until her.

And he is happy. What’s more astonishing, though, is that his mother is secretly pleased by that fact.

Hera would never feel that way toward her son. But Elisabeth… my wife is more than worthy of my love and devotion. She commands it, and I’m more than pleased with the prospect of returning to our palace mirrorside.

I’ve earned it. I want it.

And, shifting our positions so that I’m clutching Hera to me, I finally get to have it.