by elda lore
“It’s day twelve.” My throat thickened at the thought.
“It’s day twelve.” His lips crooked up on one side. “Now get up.” The peacock feather drifted over my lips to my neck and dipped down to my chest. My heart leapt at the possibilities of that plume rubbing all over me and what day thirteen might bring. Twelve days of teasing had been torture. My reassurance of his commitment would come from consummating ourselves to one another again. And again. And again.
I sat up at the thought, and he stepped back so I could exit the bed. Dressed in minutes, he guided me out the door to his sporty Camaro and we sped through the darkness to the same cliff where we shared our picnic. Solis sat behind me, holding a blanket wrapped around us as we watched in silence the dawning of a new day. The sun rose with a rich buttercream, spreading out to a bright yellow and cresting the hill in a deep circle of orange. The flaming orb lifted slowly, gracing the world with subtle rays before bursting force in blinding brightness. The experience filled me with hope and a renewed desire for Solis. This wasn’t the lazy heat of a setting sun, but the explosive passion of a future. I nestled into Solis as he kissed my neck.
“I have something for you. A request.” He removed the blanket holding us hostage and retrieved a folded paper from his jeans. “Read this at noon today. Not a moment before. Promise me.” Additional kisses followed the request and with his lips on my eager skin, there was nothing I’d deny him. The time was roughly 6 a.m., though, and noon seemed a lifetime away.
+ + +
As my phone alarm signaled twelve-noon, I ripped open the hand-painted envelope, breaking the seal of a sun caught between setting and rising. It all depended on perspective.
My heart raced with anticipation. Time would not pass fast enough. I clutched the envelope and note to my chest and sent out a silent response. I will follow you.
I had no concentration for classes, but hope sprang at the thought of seeing Solis before midnight in our Mythology course. The material fascinated me, as I learned the ins-and-outs of relationships, once foreign and removed from me, now relevant and important to all I wanted to know about Solis. Sitting with a thud in my seat, a large smile crossed my face as I eagerly awaited Solis’ arrival near the raised lectern. Instead another man, portly and balding, crossed the stage.
“Good afternoon. I’m Professor Cartwright, the original professor for this course and I’ve returned from my unforeseeable illness. I appreciate Professor Cronus holding down the fort, or as the Greeks said, the forum. As Professor Cronus left in a rather rushed state, let’s have a brief review of all that’s been covered to date, shall we?”
I sat up straighter at his words, dread setting in and weighing my body to the auditorium seat. I chewed on my pen, confused at what to think.
Had Solis been fired after all?
Did he really leave?
Has he left me behind?
Panic set in at warp speed. I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart as Persephone sat next to me with a huff.
“I’m so glad I found you.” Short of breath, she swallowed hard and brushed back wayward hairs from her forehead.
“What’s the matter?”
“Solis called me. He had to leave.”
“What’s wrong?” My harsh whisper carried, filled with frustration and disbelief that Solis hadn’t contacted me himself.
“He tried to call you, but you weren’t answering.”
“He didn’t call.” I reached into my bag, scrambling to retrieve my phone. Slowly fumbling with each inconsequential item, I quickly removed the larger items: wallet, pencil bag, sunglasses. No phone.
“I…” I nearly stuck my head in my bag, searching for an item not present. I had no idea where I’d left my phone. I had it before noon, but after checking it nearly every five minutes for an hour, I…I couldn’t remember what I did with it so it wouldn’t distract me from counting down the hours.
“He had to return to the estate. He said he left you a letter. He hoped you’d understand. He’d understood that his departure made the plans a bit impossible.”
“He hoped I’d understand what?”
“He didn’t say, just said he had to go.”
His lack of explanation didn’t sit well with me. The abrupt departure without a message sent a shiver of uncertainty through me. I sat back with a soft thump against my auditorium seat.
I would not follow him, I told myself. I would not go anywhere without an explanation. But there was no conviction in my self-argument.
“Well, if he couldn’t tell you, I doubt he told me in a message. I’m not chasing after him,” I huffed with no steam behind me. I didn’t doubt he had a reason to return home. I doubted me. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he didn’t want me. Maybe he realized he couldn’t be with me after all.
Persephone’s blue eyes softened.
“It’s not chasing, Veva. It’s following. It’s hoping. If I could follow Hades, I’d go in a heartbeat.” She smiled sadly. “I’d go in the tick of a second.” Her eyes fell to her knees and she picked at lint not present on her jeans.
“That’s different, Pea. You and Hades love one another.”
“You can’t convince me Solis doesn’t love you. I won’t believe any argument you try to use on me, and it’s not just because I’m used to your form of arguing. He fell from the sky. He gave you a star. I saw him worship you. And I saw you shine in his light.”
“I…” I didn’t know how to respond. Was she right? Did I shine in his presence? I did love Solis, wholeheartedly. “I don’t have some secret way to argue,” I snapped, harsher than I intended and giving confirmation to her comment. I also tried to divert the conversation. Thoughts of Solis loving me, but leaving me, brought liquid to my eyes.
“You do. You like to argue, especially with Solis. It works for the two of you. Storm and sunshine.” She could have no idea what her comparison meant to me. To us. It was the very one we used on each another. I stormed around him; he orbited around me. Either way, the concepts were opposite and attracting. Opposition. Two halves making a whole.
By ten o’clock that night, I’d argued myself into my car and hit Highway 99 with the hopes my speed would get me to Solis in time. The cairn on my desk in my apartment sent me a message: thirteen stones. The future awaited. I didn’t want to be late.
SOLIS
Midnight drew near and I hadn’t been able to reach Veva. My heart filled with trepidation. What must she think? What did she fear? I didn’t even know if Persephone found Veva, if she knew I couldn’t meet her at midnight. Cell phones didn’t work on the estate in the typical fashion. Once I crossed into the groves, the phone was useless to me, but I had to get to Heph.
The news of a fight between Heph and War brought out an all-call. Those near enough were forced to return home. I had remained too close, but I wanted to be around Veva. Playing the role of professor at some small valley campus meant nothing to me other than a means to an end: winning back Vee. We were almost there. Day twelve. Midnight. I’d seen it in her eyes even before this day began. She would return to me, and I would follow her. I would remain at the campus and continue the charade until she could discover her talent or graduate with her degree. Whichever came first. Whichever she wanted. As long as I was with her, nothing else mattered to me.
The call home beyond my control, the magnetic cry too fierce to ignore, I returned in fear for my brother. I adored Heph and the added complication of him being Veva’s brother endeared him more.
“Are you all right?” I asked, pacing the floor of his room once again. The deep rich blues and cloudy grays sat in contrast to my burly brother. His forehead bled again. Ice still wrapped over his knuckles. His lip swelled below the growing scruff on his face.
“I’m fine.” Heph’s lie wasn’t disguised in his tone.
“How can you be fine? The woman of your dreams just got caught humping another man!” I blurted, my hand slapping down on my thigh. My other hand fisting, twitching to hurt someo
ne on his behalf.
“Thank you. I had forgotten the image of my fiancée’s ass in the air and someone pummeling her from behind.”
“Not someone,” I screeched still enraged and insensitive. “War, that bastard.”
Heph’s head hung and his brow pinched, forcing a new stream of blood to seep from the gash at his head.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, crossing to his bathroom and returning with a fresh, wet washcloth. He winced as I touched his head. Feeling uncomfortable playing nursemaid to him, I set the cloth on the table beside him.
“I don’t think it was meant to be.” Heph’s gruff tone rasped and shook at the statement. I couldn’t continue my tirade. No one thought it was meant to be. Lovie, the beautiful creature of Aphrodite’s birth, couldn’t possibly love the large oaf of a man like Heph. Not because she was too beautiful, or he was too innocent, but because she was too flirtatious and carefree, while he was reserved, cautious and tender. Heph deserved better than a beauty queen obsessed with another man, which was also Lovie’s position. War had her under his mischievous spell. The military hero, he knew how to woo women, and Lovie had been no different. Oil and water those two, and yet who knew better than me that opposites attracted.
“Did you get in touch with her?” Heph broke my thoughts, as if reading my mind filled with Veva.
“I can’t reach her from here.” My pacing trail returned as I strutted to the window and returned to the door. Like a caged lion, I forged a path over the dark carpet, growing agitated with each about-face.
“I’m sorry you had to return.”
I stopped.
“Don’t be sorry, Heph. It couldn’t be helped.” After discovering his fiancé in the compromising position, Heph lost control of his usually reined-in temper. A fight ensued, leaving both sides battered and bruised, but aching more in heart than body. Lovie stormed off in embarrassment. War had to be removed by Zeke. Heph was left in my charge. I couldn’t leave him.
“This is your duty,” Zeke warned me. I wanted to remind him I wasn’t an official Olympian. I didn’t sit on some invisible throne like his combination of siblings, friends, and offspring. Not a member of the chosen dozen, I stood outside the circle as number thirteen. The prophesied thirteenth. The one Zeke wished hadn’t been born, hadn’t been found, and hadn’t grown strong. After midnight, the number thirteen would be my lucky number, but not until Veva was in my arms and my bed, proclaiming her love to me. Until that moment, I feared day thirteen, as I feared our lack of communication would keep us apart. My hand shook as it swiped into my hair. My fingers slid to the back of my neck and held my hand there.
“What are you going to do?” I asked Heph, in hopes of distracting myself.
“Obviously, the engagement is off.” I didn’t disagree with the harshness in his tone. I wished to feel relief for him, but instead my heart pinched. It seemed at any moment I might feel the ache of loss like my large friend. He shook his head, and his eyes drifted shut briefly.
“I guess I’ll head to Hestia’s as I planned. I could use a break from this estate.”
Hestia was the third sister in the small harem of Zeke’s obsession with the daughters of Titus. The oldest daughter by a number of years, she lived a reclusive life in the upper northwest, deep in the woods, where she hid secrets and helped protect horrors. Heph found comfort there, as Hestia was the only mother figure he’d known. Her experience with fire aided Heph in teaching himself to craft and sculpt, using flames as the medium to mold his tools and art.
I had no words to respond to his need for escape. I agreed wholeheartedly. A knock came at the door.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” My heart dropped at the presence of Callie, a friend of Mel’s and a former one-night stand. Speaking of harems, my blood rain cold, knowing the estate thrived on temptation and I no longer wished to participate. I was better around Veva, and Veva was better off of the estate, without the reminder of the women of my past.
“Hello, Callie.” Just saying her name caused a deep flush to the rosy skin of the larger girl. I had nothing against any shape or size of a woman. My own Veva rocked curves, but Callie was not my type. Our union had been one of many mistakes I’d made in the past that I wished to erase from memory. Her smile deepened.
“I just thought you’d want to know…” She let herself in the partially opened door and helped herself to closing it behind her. Her back fell against it, her hands braced behind her rear as if holding the door shut. “I thought you’d like to know a car was discovered off the property.”
I spun away from her. Cars were occasionally found outside the grove: broken down, flat tire, out of gas. The humans found their own assistance and their issues did not concern us. I faced Heph and rolled my eyes. His dark circles remained focused on the woman at his door.
“Callie,” he muttered under his breath as way of greeting. The strangled tone forced me to look from the fallen face of my brother to the deepening flush of Callie. What the…?
“What do you need, Callie?” The innuendo was triple-fold. I wanted to know what the car had to do with us, what she wanted being in Heph’s room, and if she needed some personal relief, perhaps she arrived right in time to help my brother forget his wayward fiancée.
“I…” She blinked, as if she’d forgotten I was in the room. Her gaze broke away from the head-hung Heph, and she twisted her cheek away from him, as if he struck her. Facing the wall briefly, Callie spoke with tight lips.
“I thought you might want to know whose car was found and where.”
I let out an exasperated sigh, brushing fingers through my wayward hair again. I didn’t have time for the games of this girl.
“Heph.” The plea in her voice offered a second attempt to gain his attention. It was his turn to face away from her. The avoidance of her proved my brother may have been a bit unfaithful himself, or at least giving promise to another girl before he was betrothed to Lovie.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Whose car and where?” My exasperated sigh, I hoped, would remind them both of my presence and get me out of their subtle lover’s quarrel.
Her eyes snapped to mine.
“The south entrance.”
I nodded, not understanding. It wasn’t a common place to enter the estate. Only special invites entered…I stopped all movement. I don’t think I even drew a breath.
“The car was a black Jetta,” Callie added.
“Veva.” I gasped for air, choking deep in my lungs, with hope.
“It was found running. The driver door open. No driver present.”
And the oxygen in the universe washed out of me. A violent roar escaped.
VEVA
Without my phone, I navigated by ancient map, a rather huge mistake. I couldn’t see anything as I climbed the mountain I knew housed Olympic Oil. My fear was that I wouldn’t find the house itself. Confirmation came as the altitude rose and a heavy cloud cover fell. The fog grew thicker and thicker, and under darkness of night, my headlights reflected back at me. Twice I’d thought I’d found the two-tire trail Persephone and I witnessed in the rearview mirror, to find the home or barn at the end of the drive wasn’t my destination.
I slowed the car as the hazardous conditions didn’t allow more than five miles per hour. In my snail-crawl pace, I found a hint of another trail. Praying third time was the charm, I turned the car onto the narrow pile of earth in the ditch and faced a plethora of olive trees. Hopeful that some mysterious gate of recognition would open and allow me entrance, I pulled forward to be stopped suddenly as if I’d hit an invisible wall. I could see the grove in front of me under the narrow stream of headlights, but my car could not go forward. Setting the gear into reverse, I pulled back and swung out into the street, prepared to push forward again with greater force. Peeking over the back of the driver seat, I slammed on the brakes.
Directly behind my trunk stood a cow.
What the…? I took a deep inhale, as it quickly occurred to me there had been no impact. I hadn
’t hit the creature, which seemed to stare at me through the rear window. I twisted in the seat, prepping to accelerate, when something else caught my eye in the rearview mirror again. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and blinked twice. A girl with dark hair and large eyes stood in the middle of the road, dressed in an ankle-length dress of white. Looking ghostly and Grecian, she didn’t move, and my hands shook on the steering wheel.
I’m dead, I argued with myself. I hit the cow, didn’t even feel it, and I’ve passed into the afterworld.
Hades? I called out in my head, then shook it as hysterical giggles rippled through me.
I’ve lost my mind. Slamming the gear into park, I heaved open the door and stepped into the cool, fall mountain air.
“I could have killed you,” I yelled, uncertain if it was the mirage of a cow or her I could have hurt. The thought gave me pause. Did I imagine the cow? My head twisted slowly left to right before I took another hesitant step toward this beautiful creature.
“Ionia?” She hadn’t spoken but she smiled at my recognition of the girl in silent tears on that first day in the pool house. The girl Solis slept with, and the other girls mocked. She was stunning, with her raven hair and dark eyes. Her body was lithe and she stood picturesque. Artists would kill to paint her. My heart dropped at the thought. Solis might have already created art from her body. With her body.
“You’ve returned for him, haven’t you?” Her melodic voice broke my thoughts as if she could read them.
“I…” I didn’t know what to say. I was here for him, but was I too late? And how could I find him if I couldn’t get past the olive grove? “I was trying. But it seems I’m not invited.” My head hung. Persephone and I had been invited to Olympic Oil this summer and that’s how we entered the first time. Each other time we came or went from the estate we were escorted by Solis or another member of the plantation. How silly I was to think I could come here, unannounced, uninvited, and proclaim myself to Solis.
