Painted Blind

by Michelle Hansen

  “Aeas?” I said. “He hardly seems like a bodyguard.”

  “He’s not.” Titus gave me a crooked smile. “Eros needs a babysitter more than a bodyguard.”

  His arrogance irritated me. “That’s your boss you’re talking about.”

  “Not yet. I’ll get to that. Some of the serving class inherit their posts, like Aeas and me. Others, like Theron, serve under oath. Aeas’s and my loyalties are inherited by blood, but as the household was unkind to me, I have chosen to leave. It is my right. You are not of an Olympian household. No one will ever inherit loyalty to you. The only way you will have a loyal servant is by oath.”

  “Now, why would anyone swear an oath to a mere mortal?” I guessed at the reason, but I made him answer anyway.

  “Because Eros wants you back, and you need an immortal’s help. Once you marry Eros…”

  “Only Aeas outranks you.”

  “Exactly.”

  If I was trying to paint a picture of Titus’s character, and I was, these few details were telling. First, he wouldn’t allow himself to be abused. Second, he wasn’t above pitting one master against another if he believed an injustice had been committed. Third, he was willing to risk his time and reputation with me if it meant a raise in situation for him later.

  I still didn’t like him. He wasn’t at all like Aeas. I’d never have to remind myself not to take advantage of Titus. He would probably start ordering me around. “I’m sure there are trained fighters in Eros’s kingdom that he trusts more than you.”

  “Maybe, but they are all loyal to him, not you. And, I better than anyone understand the greatest danger to you.”

  At the same time we both said, “Theron.”

  “But, you’re right,” Titus added. “Eros doesn’t like the idea of me being with you every waking moment, and he told me in no uncertain terms that if I ever tried to have the kind of relationship with you that Theron has with Aphrodite, the beating I received from Theron would seem merciful.”

  “If you so much as think about having that kind of relationship with me, I’ll kick your sorry tail all the way back to the Fortress.” Honestly, didn’t Eros understand that the last thing I needed right now was another guy to deal with? “What if I fail at the tasks?”

  “I’m led to believe that Aphrodite and Theron have an agreement. Once you fail, you’re fair game. She wants you to disappear forever, and he’s willing to oblige.”

  “He told me as much himself.”

  “No matter the outcome of the contract, I will stay with you until your dying breath. That was my agreement with Eros. No man in his household was willing to give up an age of his life guarding a mortal, but I will, and I’ll make sure Theron never hurts you again.” It was hard to doubt his sincerity. If we had one thing in common, it was a hatred of Aphrodite’s bodyguard.

  “You could be lying,” I said. “You could lead me right to Theron and hand me over.”

  “Then my fate would be worse than yours, because I’ve sworn an oath to protect you, and if I betray you, the Judges of Olympus will condemn me as a traitor.”

  Aeas told me nearly the same thing when he put me on the plane. More importantly, I knew Eros wouldn’t have sent me someone that couldn’t be trusted. My reluctance to accept him was based on my run-ins with Theron, and I knew very well that Theron was an exception, not the rule.

  “By the way,” Titus offered, “Theron paid for what he did to you. Eros made sure of that.”

  I didn’t ask how. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  The jet was much faster than a commercial airline. Our actual flying time from Montana to Nepal was just under twelve hours, but we crossed the international dateline, so when we landed in Kathmandu, it was nearly noon on Sunday, over twenty-four hours since I received the task from Theron. I had lost one full day. After taxiing across the tarmac, we stayed in the silent jet. The pilot and copilot stood outside the cockpit.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re waiting to be boarded,” the copilot explained. “Once they check your visas and passports, they’ll let you be on your way without going through the airport.”

  I glanced at Titus, who seemed to expect this. Only I was unaccustomed to the lifestyle of the wealthy and privileged. Titus motioned me to stay seated as the airport security guard boarded the plane.

  The guard was pleasant and spoke English. “Came to do some climbing, did you?”

  “I hope we’re not too late,” Titus replied. “We are sticking to the lower elevations.”

  After glancing at our climbing permits, the man smiled. “That area is accessible year round if the weather is good.”

  “We’ll hope for clear skies,” Titus said amiably. “My girlfriend is quite a photographer.” I threw him a glare, while the security guard looked at the passports. After the guard was gone, Titus stood to unload the overhead compartments.

  “I am not your girlfriend.”

  “For now you are.” He paused with a hand resting on the shelf above so he towered over me. “It’s simpler. We don’t look anything alike, so we can’t pass for siblings. We say we’re a couple, and no one gives us any grief.”

  “Why did you give him a fake passport?”

  “It isn’t fake. It’s as real as the one you have back home, but in this one you’re a year older. No minors are allowed to climb without a licensed guide.”

  “That’s so stupid. I’m going to be eighteen in a month.”

  “Now you’re almost nineteen.” Titus told me his passport said he was twenty-one, but he had just passed the mid-point of his nineteenth age.

  After airport security cleared us, two young men from a waiting car boarded. I recognized both of them. They had been with Aeas in the orchard outside the palace that first day I visited Eros’s kingdom. They helped unload the supplies we picked up in Hawaii.

  Titus spoke to them in Italian. “She doesn’t like me,” he told them. “Thinks I’m going to kill her when her back is turned.”

  One of them called Titus a name that roughly translated to “scoundrel,” but the other put a hand on my shoulder. “Eros sends his love. He also sent Titus, so you can trust him.” My Italian wasn’t great, but I knew what he said.

  “If you say so,” I replied in English.

  He nodded and led me down the steps into a hot afternoon. I spent yesterday morning staking out wolves in the snow. I had worn long underwear under my jeans, a thermal top under my T-shirt and a sweatshirt in addition to my coat. At the cottage in Hawaii, I shed all the layers except my T-shirt and jeans. My duffle bag was bulging with extra clothes. Here in Kathmandu, it was even warmer than Hawaii. I wasn’t used to seventy-degree weather during the third week of December.

  On the tarmac waited a mid-80s Isuzu SUV. The seats were torn and an old AM/FM radio sat in the dashboard. The seatbelts were broken. The steering wheel was on the right side, so the gears had to be shifted with the left hand. After being ushered into the back seat, I peeked into the cargo area and found it loaded with winter gear.

  Titus climbed into the back seat with me. “Is there anything you want to see before we go to the hotel?”

  I didn’t know enough about the city to name a single landmark, which was sad. I had never been to Nepal, and I would very likely never return, but I wasn’t here to sightsee. I didn’t have time to act like a tourist, snapping pictures and sampling the local food. The jetlag was starting to hit me, too. I nodded toward the guys in the front seat and asked Titus, “Why do they speak Italian, but not English?”

  “Anyone educated to have dealings in the mortal world learns Greek and Latin first. The romance languages are easy to learn. German and English are more difficult.”

  “You speak English perfectly.”

  He smiled at this compliment. “Aphrodite sent me to Oxford for two years. English is useful in Europe. She expects all her entourage to speak it fluently. Eros’s servants are more likely to know the native tongues of the Americas, since that is their k
ingdom.” He leaned closer, and whispered, “Actually, they do know some English. They’re just embarrassed to speak it in front of you.”

  I had only heard of conditions in impoverished nations. I had never seen them firsthand. As we meandered through neighborhoods trying to dodge traffic, I saw crumbling stone houses with metal or warped wooden rooftops. Ragged children played along the street. Very few wore shoes.

  One of the boys in front pointed to a building ahead. “Il suo hotel.”

  I expected modest accommodations, but we arrived at a luxury hotel. It was an American chain and offered all the amenities one would expect in the States including restaurants, an indoor and an outdoor pool, exercise room, and twenty-four-hour room service. It seemed like an eyesore, a temple built to pride, after the poverty we had just witnessed.

  Titus checked us in while the other men oversaw the unloading of our gear. Standing in the enormous foyer, I felt myself growing dizzy. Stars streaked across the lights in front of me. We took the elevator to the top floor, where each suite lay behind a grand wooden door. Ours was midway down the hall. Upon opening the door we found that the exterior wall of the suite was all windows and showed a view of the city and majestic mountains beyond.

  “We have separate bedrooms,” Titus informed me. “Each has a private bath.”

  I teetered through the doorway.

  “Whoa.” He caught me as I collapsed.

  “Don’t touch me,” I protested.

  “I’m not,” he answered as he scooped me into his arms. “You’re walking.” He carried me to a bedroom, where he poured me onto the bed and threw a blanket over me. “Sleep. I’ll find you some decent food when you wake.”

  “I only need a few hours.” My words were slurred. Even with my eyes closed my head spun. It was the worst jetlag I had ever had, and the worst possible time for it. I was completely worthless until I slept this off.

  I awoke hot and threw the blanket off to find shoes still on my feet. Fierce late-afternoon rays beamed through the window. In my grogginess on the way in I didn’t notice just how upscale the suite was. Hand woven carpets covered the wood floors. My private bath included a jetted tub and a walk-in shower. The countertops were granite. There was even a satin nightgown and matching satin robe hanging in the closet. I looked down at my faded jeans and worn T-shirt. The hotel staff probably wondered why a ragamuffin like me was staying in their nicest room.

  Titus was inventorying our gear when I stepping into the living area.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked.

  “You’re just in time for dinner,” he replied.

  “I hope it’s nothing too adventurous. I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of girl.” I picked up one sheet of the inventory list and was struck by the magnitude of the journey ahead of us. This was no day hike. We were packing snow shoes, crampons, ice axes and rappelling gear in addition to our tents, bed rolls, first aid supplies and electronic equipment. “I thought we were sticking to the lower elevations.”

  “It’s still treacherous. We’re going prepared for the worst.” He handed me a pair of boots and a parka. “Yours. The pants are there next to you.”

  “How are we going to carry all this?”

  Titus began rolling Mylar blankets into the first aid kit. “This is just our gear. We also have to carry enough food and water for the trip up and the descent.”

  “I think a yak is a very good idea.”

  “I thought you’d come around on that one.” After packing the supplies into two titanium-framed backpacks, Titus pulled the hotel phone onto his lap. In the desk he had found the menu for a restaurant downstairs. He was thrilled to see that it specialized in European cuisine and offered several Italian entrees. “What do you want?”

  “Steak, but only if they have beef. No yak meat.”

  When our food was delivered, I ended up with a ten-ounce New York steak while Titus had spaghetti and meatballs. We sat at the table, and the waiter served our plates. Before he left, Titus asked him to take our picture. “Make sure you smile,” Titus said to me.

  The waiter snapped two photos then wheeled his cart out of the suite.

  “Why did you have him take our picture?” I cut a piece of steak and savored it. It wasn’t a Montana Angus, but it was dang good.

  “For your contest.” He ate like an Italian with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other, turning the tines of the fork in the dip of the spoon until the spaghetti was fully wrapped around the fork. “We both know Erik Savage never entered.”

  I broke off a piece of dinner roll. My cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment. “I was… after the tasks…” Did he know that Tyson Ewing saved my life? Did anyone else know that the honey-colored cards all belonged to that one man?

  Titus set down his fork. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a rumpled card with embossed black letters. “This fell out of your coat pocket.”

  Before going to the wolf den I shoved that card in my pocket for luck.

  Titus set a blue passport booklet on the tablecloth and slid it toward my plate.

  I opened it and saw his picture next to the name Tyson Ewing. “You?” I almost dropped the passport into my plate. I was too shocked to utter the thank you I should have. “Why?”

  Titus picked up his fork and spoon. “You’re not much good to me dead.”

  There was a knock at the door, and I was grateful he left the table to answer it. The delivery was a large manila envelope. Titus lingered in the doorway after the messenger was gone, then his eyes moved across the room.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Our travel itinerary and instructions. It lays out how far we need to go each day to reach the meeting point on time. We’ll head out first thing in the morning and drive to the town at the foot of the mountains. It’s only three hundred miles, but the trip will probably take all day.” His demeanor changed. He pushed the papers aside with a wicked glint in his eyes. “Do you know about the billboard Eros stole from Aphrodite’s warehouse?”

  I continued eating and didn’t look up. He moved from one uncomfortable subject to another just to torment me. I could not survive an entire week of this.

  Titus dipped bread into the extra sauce on his plate. “You remember the doors in the upstairs room that overlook over the sea?”

  “Behind the curtains.”

  “Eros hung the center portion of the billboard—the part that’s you—behind the curtains on those wooden doors. Everyone thinks he sits up there for hours staring at the sea, but he’s really just looking at you.”

  I set my fork down and sipped some water. What did Titus expect me to say? That I was flattered? I slid back from the table. “Then he’ll be disappointed if he marries me. They edit photos to make them perfect. I don’t really look like that.” I tossed the napkin on the table. “I’m going to make use of that huge tub in my bathroom.”

  Titus’s glance darted across the living room, and he stood. “Lock the door.”

  I turned on him, suddenly furious. He spent the entire day trying to convince me I could trust him, but when it came to me bathing, I had to lock the door to keep him out. “I guess you’re not as trustworthy as you claimed to be.”

  He set his hands on his hips. “I am a man, after all.”

  “That you are,” I muttered before slamming the door and locking it. I was too angry to admit he’d hurt me. I wanted to believe he would be my friend and my guardian, but it turned out he was just like every other guy in the world.

  While the tub filled, I watched the last rays of sunlight linger on the rooftops before the mountains stole the light and sank the buildings into shadows. When the stars began to sparkle in the sky, I drew the curtains. For awhile, I just soaked in the hot water. Then I found the switch that turned on the jets, and I let the air massage the tension out of my back and shoulders. I stayed in the tub until my hands and feet were pickled and pale. With reluctance I finally wrapped myself in one of the plush towels embroidered with the hotel
’s crest.

  Aeas only packed me a single change of clothes, two pair of underwear and some socks. The thought of Aeas in my underwear drawer was disturbing, but somehow my pride was being shredded on all sides since I had undertaken to win a god. I put on clean underwear and the satin nightgown from the closet. In the morning I would tell Titus I needed more clothes, but I didn’t want to see him again tonight.

  Today was the easiest leg of my journey. Tomorrow would be a long drive, and each day after would grow more difficult. I had to wonder if it was all futile. I wasn’t especially strong or smart or athletic. There was nothing that uniquely qualified me to beat these tasks except my will to win and the help I received from certain, generous immortals. Were Eros’s planning and his money and his servants enough? Once I met the messenger, I was completely on my own, and that was what I feared most. Alone I was weak. If I failed, there would be no one else to blame but me.

  I fluffed the pillows and pulled the blankets around me, but I couldn’t sleep. I listened for movement outside the room, but the suite had been built for privacy. It was a giant cocoon.

  I thought I imagined the light tap, tap, tap on the door. I sat up and listened, then I heard it again, barely louder than the first.

  “Titus?” I wasn’t ready to forgive him, so if he was bugging me, it had better be important. “What do you want?”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Aggravated, I climbed out of bed and pulled on the robe before opening the door. I expected to find Titus standing there. Instead, I saw the suite darkened and completely still. “Titus?” I stepped into an invisible body. A squeal of surprise escaped me before he put his fingers over my lips. The ring on his first finger brushed my nose. He held me immovable and kissed my cheek, giving me time to recognize him before he set me free. “You’re here.”

  Of course, Eros didn’t reply. He fingered the satin on my arms, then touched the thin strap of the nightgown that had fallen into view at my neck.

  I snorted. “It was in the closet. Don’t get any ideas.”