Only Everything (12 page)

Telling her would put Orion’s life on the line. I’d seen him die once before, when I didn’t know what he would one day mean to me, and I couldn’t do it again. . . .

•  •  •

“Eros? Have you heard?”

My brother Deimos burst into my chambers as I was about to pierce the heart of a young handmaiden who had caught the eye of a handsome goatherd. I miss-shot and hit one of the goats instead. That would make an interesting pair.

“Deimos!” I shouted, whirling on him. “I’ve told you countless times never to surprise me like that!”

Deimos shrank back in fear as if he believed I was about to beat him with my bow. I took a deep breath and raised a calming hand. Sometimes I forgot how skittish he could be.

“I’m not going to hurt you, brother,” I said. “What news do you bring?”

He stood up straight, his eyes wild. But then, they were always wild. My poor brother was born the God of Fear and spent his days either instilling irrational dread in the people of Earth or developing new phobias himself. He was terrified of thunder, of spiders, of our father. I’d once seen him run and hide at the sight of his own shadow. Before long he would divine a white-walled fortress for himself and never come out again.

“It’s Artemis! She’s killed her love!” Deimos cried.

My heart dropped. “Orion? Orion is dead?”

He nodded eagerly, as if my reaction buoyed his spirits. “Killed by her own arrow. Come! They all gather in the moor.”

I grasped my brother’s hand and together we whirled into Nyx’s Moor, a bleak, rocky plain north of Gaia’s Wood, which bordered the Bay of Circe, our access to the Mediterranean Sea. Lightning flashed and a driving rain flattened the brown grass. The sky was a heavy, mottled gray, but I could make out a group of gods and goddesses huddled near shore. Deimos clung to my hand, bent almost in submission as thunder growled around us. Even over the howling wind and raging weather, I could hear Artemis’s anguished wails.

“Eros!”

I saw Harmonia rise to her feet, her red hair matted and dark with rain. My sister’s role, as always, was to be there for everyone, no matter what, as she was now there for Artemis, even though we couldn’t stand the goddess on a normal day.

I trudged toward the huddled mass, dragging my brother with me. On mud-slicked rocks near the water’s edge lay Orion, an awful wound torn open in his temple, oozing blood and brains into the sludge. Orion, who had been so virile in life, so cocky and sure and full of swagger, was now reduced to a carcass, and an unpleasantly scented one at that. Artemis was bent over him, her handsome bow and leather quiver tossed aside, her slim frame racked with awful sobs. Her twin brother Apollo knelt nearby, catatonic, his face an utter blank. Hephaestus was there too, his skin as black as the night, glowering at Apollo, his hand on the intricate hilt of his sword.

“What’s happened?” I demanded.

“It was him!” Artemis sobbed. She pointed across the body at her brother, who was both her best friend and worst tormentor. “He tricked me! He challenged me to hit a moving target on the lake, but it was Orion! I didn’t know!”

She bent her face into her hands and wept awful tears. I gaped at Apollo. He was known for his cruelty. For his games. But even though he and Artemis fought almost constantly, I couldn’t imagine why he would do this to her. Why steal her one true love? It had been months since I had matched the two of them, and I thought that Apollo had finally accepted Orion’s role in his sister’s life. Clearly something had changed.

Artemis tipped her head back and raged at the heavens. Suddenly the storm quieted and the clouds parted, revealing a star-blanketed sky.

“What are you doing?” Harmonia asked her.

I was surprised too. Artemis was so self-involved it wouldn’t have shocked me if she’d kept the rain going for months on end while she mourned, making the rest of us miserable right along with her.

“I can’t take it. I can’t look at him anymore,” Artemis cried, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes, across her temples and into her soaked brown hair. She touched her fingertips to Orion’s pale cheeks and shook like a spiderweb in a windstorm as she leaned in to touch her lips to his. Then, with a shuddering wail that trembled the very ground beneath our feet, she flung her arm toward the sky. Orion vanished into a swirl of sparkling dust. The cloud that was once human flesh floated to the heavens, where it exploded into seven pinpricks of light. Seven stars forming shoulders, legs, and a bright, shining belt—a memorial to Artemis’s beloved.

It was quite touching, actually. And very out of character.

“Let him hang there for eternity,” Artemis said, “so that I might be reminded of my folly in listening to you,” she spat at Apollo, rising to her feet. “So that you might be reminded of the cruelty you visited on your own sister.”

Apollo never shifted, never blinked. He hardly seemed to breathe. Artemis turned on her heel and, whipping her leather cape around her, disappeared, leaving her prized bow and quiver behind. Hephaestus stood. He took two steps toward Apollo, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. There was something awful brewing inside his eyes. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear. I wasn’t sure. Harmonia reached out and touched his arm. He stared into her eyes for a long moment, and there was the slightest softening in his features. Something passed between them, a communication I couldn’t begin to decipher, and in a blink he, too, was gone.

I dropped to my knees in front of Apollo. He and I had once been friends, he the god of poetry, of music, of light—elements that were so closely linked to love. But we’d grown apart as he had begun to enjoy toying with mortals, with other gods, even with his own sister.

“What were you thinking, Apollo?” I whispered, trying to look into his blank eyes. “I know I matched them as a bit of a lark myself, but they were truly in love. Your sister was truly happy. Why take that from her? What did she do to deserve this punishment?”

His eyes sparked to life, and the force of his ire as he glared at me chilled me to the core. I rose, flicking one of my iron arrows—the ones I only rarely used—from my quiver and taking aim at his heart. The iron ones bred hatred instead of love, not that Apollo needed any more reason to hate anyone. But while it wouldn’t kill him, it would slow him down and cause him a lot of pain.

Apollo blinked at the arrow and laughed. He laughed so hard he keeled over, bracing one strong hand on the rocks beneath him. He laughed like a madman, like a god unhinged. He laughed as if he would never stop. And then, suddenly, he whirled into nothing.

I lowered my bow and stepped closer to Harmonia, shivering from head to toe. Only when everyone else was gone did Deimos finally rise to his full height, though he reached out to cling to Harmonia’s gown like a nervous child. Together, the three of us stared up at the stars. Three shining points in a row marked Orion’s belt. She had tossed him up next to the Scorpion, I noticed. The beast she had slain a few days prior, as it traveled the lands in search of her love.

“Why would she do that?” I whispered. “Why set him up there to be chased by that monster forever?”

“Because she wanted to punish him too,” Deimos said. “As much as she wished she could save him.”

“But why?” I asked, agape.

Harmonia looked at me, her blue eyes full. “She punishes him,” she said, “for leaving her.”

•  •  •

Outside the window, headlights flashed. Slowly I walked over to my bed, carefully removed my new sneakers, and slid under the
covers, trying to shake that memory of Orion—the sight of him drained, pale, lifeless. Curling the bottle of wine toward my chest, I settled in for the night.

“I’m coming for you, Orion,” I said, touching the arrow pendant against my chest. I stared at the pencil, imagined him alive, well, and happy, and smiled. “I’ll be there soon.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

True

I couldn’t open my eyes. They were welded shut. I tried to move my arms, but they didn’t budge. It was as if they had the weight of the gods on them. I brought my hands to my face, but of course, that did nothing, so I took a breath and tasted bile and wine. It was so potent it stung the back of my nose.

What new torture was this?

Concentrating, I rolled onto my side. My hands hit a cool, dry pillow. Still in bed. That was something. At least I hadn’t been transported to the underworld in my sleep. I focused and forced my eyes to open. They were as dry as the sands of the Sahara and the bright sun sliced through my retinas, sending a bolt of pain sizzling through my skull. Tears squeezed out, dripping down my face.

I groaned. “Bad idea. Opening eyes, bad idea.”

But the sun continued its assault, turning the insides of my eyelids a bright, blinding pink. I shoved myself out of bed. My head weighed five million pounds. No. Five trillion. I pried one eyelid open, staggered toward the window, and somehow found the string for the blinds. With a yank, they mercifully fell shut. I turned, tripped, and went sprawling onto the cold, hard floor.

My stomach clenched, sending an awful, heaving feeling up my airway. A sour, burning sensation filled my throat. My head still ached. So much for my mother’s suggestion that wine would solve that problem.

Wine. The very thought made me heave all over again.

On the street a horn honked, and I heard the school bus’s air brakes release. My eyes darted open, and I blearily found the clock on my nightstand. It was eight fifteen, Tuesday morning. My second day as a mortal. And I had fifteen minutes to get to school.

Another groan escaped as I sat back against the side of my bed. My foot hit one of the wine bottles and it rolled toward the window, clinking against the second, which I’d removed from the basement around midnight and finished at about two a.m. More than anything I wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep. Sleep was the only escape from this headache, not to mention these new and disgusting symptoms. Did humans feel this way all the time? How did any of them function? Perhaps I had underestimated their fortitude.

I pushed myself up, and the whole room tilted, including the evil sand timer, which continued to run. Apparently, Charlie and Stacey had yet to find love, but was there really anything I could do about that today? No. Not in this state. Bed. I was going back to bed. I flopped onto my stomach, and Orion’s arrow pierced my skin.

My heart all but stopped, and I sat up again.

Orion.

I had a job to do. I had to save him. Maybe I couldn’t make Stacey and Charlie move any faster, but I could start trying to find a second couple to match.

I slipped to the floor and tried to stand, but the room and its many colors and lights and shapes spun around me. The floor
seemed the safer route. I crawled into the closet and closed the door. The mirror on the back of the door startled me. I sat there and stared.

This could not be my reflection. The hair in tangles, the gray swipes of color under the eyes, the red nose with its skin peeling along its bridge. I leaned forward, horrified. Was that a pimple on my chin?

“No!” I cried, the tears flowing freely now. “This was not part of our deal! No one said I was going to deteriorate!”

Back home, my skin had never been marred by anything—not a blemish, not a wrinkle, not a scar, and certainly not this awful burning sensation. And I didn’t have to do anything to keep it that way. I was simply beautiful, every moment of every day and night. As were my mother and my sister and every other female on Mount Olympus. It was who we were. Goddesses. Unless an upper god chose to take my beauty, that was the way I was to be. Always. But here on Earth . . . here on Earth I was turning into a Harpy.

I lay down on the floor and cried, clutching Orion’s necklace. If he saw me right now, I was sure he’d turn away in disgust. Imagining his face at the sight of my own made the sobs turn to convulsions. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go out there like this. I was going to fail him. I was going to fail us.

Eros, stop this now. This is not about you.

I took in a broken breath. Harmonia’s voice surrounded me.

“Sister?” I said, my voice cracking.

This is not about your vanity,
she said.
This is about saving your love. It’s about proving yourself. It’s about being the goddess I know you to be.

“But how?” I whimpered, pulling my knees up under my chin as another awful wave of discomfort hit me. “I can hardly lift my head.”

Find your strength, Eros. Pick yourself up. Focus on your mission. You only have a short time to complete it.

I opened the door a crack and peeked out at the sand timer. Still running. Taking a deep, broken breath, I dried my eyes with the backs of my hands. I wasn’t sure whether Harmonia had found a way to communicate with me, or whether I was deluding myself, but either way the voice in my head was right. This was no time for self-pity. I pulled on a pair of baggy jeans, shoved my aching feet into white socks and the blue-and-white sneakers, and tugged on a flowing white top. When I touched my hair, I winced. It even smelled awful. If only Harmonia were really here to brush and braid it. Instead I wrapped it into a bun as best I could and found a red baseball cap, which I jammed down over the mess.

On my way down the hall, I passed the bathroom. The bathroom. Of course. A bath. That was what I needed. I had always enjoyed baths in hot springs and cool lakes as a matter of pleasure, but here they were a clear necessity. I eyed the faucet longingly, but there was no time.

Bathing would have to wait. Right now, I had to find my next lucky couple. I teetered to the top of the stairs, clung to the railing, and somehow found my way out the door.