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Lia didn’t faint, though she wished she could.
The woman, Aphrodite, came back down to her feet with a smile.
“Do you want to check me for wires?” she asked.
Her voice tinkled like wind chimes in a spring breeze.
“No,” Lia said. “That’s fine.” She was backing away, backing...backing...until she could back away no farther. Her back was to the door.
“You’re having a bad day. I’m sorry, darling,” the woman said.
“You...you said you’re Aphrodite.”
“Yes.” She smiled bright as the evening star.
“And you’re...August’s mother.”
“Obviously.”
“So August is...”
“You know exactly who he is.” She snorted a very ungoddess-like laugh. “August Bowman. The august bowman? The exalted archer?”
And Lia did. At once. It all made sense, though none of it made sense.
“Eros.”
Aphrodite nodded. “Well, he hasn’t been Eros for about, oh, thirteen years? That’s when he had a massive strop and quit. Retired his wings and his arrows, gave up the immortal life on Olympus and came here to play human for a bit.”
“He told me you all kicked him out of the family because he wouldn’t submit to getting married.”
“He wouldn’t submit to tea and cake,” Aphrodite said. “All right, so the truth is, he gave me one sleepless night too many. He was always shooting people with his arrows—making kings fall in love with commoners, handsome vain men fall in love with poor plain girls. He shot Zeus with an arrow and made him fall in love with a cloud. A cloud! I still don’t know what ever became of that poor cloud. Probably traumatized for life.”
“I’m sure it found love again,” Lia said.
“His father and I finally had enough after Eros did the cruelest thing ever.”
“What was that?”
“He made us fall in love with each other.”
“That’s bad?”
“You haven’t met my son’s father. I don’t recommend it.”
Ares. Mars, to the Romans. God of war.
No, Lia didn’t have any desire to meet August’s father.
“We had to teach our son to behave. Mortal parents take away the television and video games. We stripped him of his immortality and his powers. We thought after a day or two, a week or two at most, he’d repent and come to heel. But no...turns out he liked being a mortal. Took to it like a fish to water. When he was Eros, he looked about twenty years old, if that. Now he looks, I don’t know, eighty?”
“He looks thirty,” Lia said. “Thirty-three tops.”
The goddess shuddered. “He’s always been a difficult child. Prince of Mischief, we call him. He’s his father’s son. More war than love. Not happy unless he’s causing trouble and making everyone miserable. Ungrateful child, after all we’ve done for him.”
“He was very kind to me,” Lia said. “And I would appreciate it if you kept your opinions about him to yourself.”
She couldn’t quite believe she’d said that to a goddess.
