“What are we doing up here?” she asked.
“Waiting...”
“For?”
“Perfect justice,” he said, and winked at her. “Ah, here we go.”
Lia peered down at the party below. She saw the crowd parting to let a woman through, a beautiful woman in red, so beautiful one could rightly call her a goddess.
“That’s your mother,” Lia whispered.
“I invited her as a sort of peace offering.”
“That was nice of you,” she said.
“Not really,” August said. “I’m going to shoot her in the heart with a great big arrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Oh, look, there’s our artiste,” August said, pointing out David working his way through the crowd, glad-handing as he went. Though his smile was broad, it appeared forced to Lia. He was likely still recovering from having Aphrodite, in the form of a mafia queen, threaten to kill him in all sorts of gruesome ways. “Cover me.”
Lia glanced around, not knowing how to cover him. August didn’t seem to care. He took off his jacket and laid it over the banister. He rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. This could not be good. Then he reached behind his head and pulled two arrows from his quiver.
“August...” Lia said.
He notched them both on his bow at the same time.
“This is not good...” Lia winced.
He pulled back the string. He wore a look of purest concentration. Two arrows, one bow, and his aim had to be perfect, just perfect.
“I can’t look,” she said.
She covered her eyes but peeked through her fingers.
The string thrummed as he let the arrows fly. Gifted with his sight, Lia saw one burning arrow stream into the chest of David, right through his heart.
And the other arrow, black as iron, struck his own mother, right through her heart.
Then...
“Oh my gods...” Lia breathed.
David looked at Aphrodite like he’d seen the sun for the first time.
Aphrodite looked at David like he smelled of dung.
David started to make his way through the crowd, fast as he could, pushing people aside, while Aphrodite drew away from him even as he took her hand in his and kissed and kissed and kissed it...
“August, you didn’t.”
“An arrow of love. An arrow of hate. Now he’ll know what it’s like to be brutally rejected, and my mother will think twice before interfering in my sex life again. A job well done.”
“You really are the Prince of Mischief,” she said.
“I’ll show you mischief, my lady.” He kissed her. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t just...”
“What?”
“We can’t leave them like that. They’re in love-hate with each other,” she said.
“The arrows weren’t very potent,” August said with a shrug. “The poison will wear off soon.”
“Like...in an hour?”
“For Mother? An hour. For David Bell? More like a week,” he said. “But trust me, he deserves it, and Mother can more than handle herself.”
He slung his bow over his back again and took Lia’s hand. They went out of the gallery, not through the main entrance but through a back door and upstairs to the roof, where they stood and looked out on the lights of London.
“That was kind of sexy,” she said as he slid his arm around her waist. “The archery thing. Good look for you.”
“I’ll teach you how to shoot.”
“Where? Olympus?”
“Is that where you want to go?” he asked.
“What are my options?”
“Let me think...” He nodded thoughtfully and started ticking off places on his fingers. “Olympus. The Underworld. Maybe you can get some weaving tips from Arachne—unless you’re afraid of human-size spiders. There’s Arcadia. Ancient Crete. Elysium. The Land of a Thousand Dances. Delphi. Your pick. We have all eternity.”
“Pan’s Island?” Lia asked.
August looked at her through narrowed eyes. “The real Pan’s Island, you mean? Or the fantasy version from the storybook?”
“The real Pan’s Island,” she said. “If it exists, I mean. But if you exist I suppose Pan must exist, and he must live somewhere.”
“He does,” August said. “On an island, in fact. We’re old friends.”
“He likes you?” Sounded like August—Eros—had managed to piss off most of the Olympians. They had better go somewhere August would stay mostly out of trouble.
“He’s the god of nature and sex is natural. I’m the god of sex and nature is very sexual. We have loads in common.”
“What’s his island like?” Lia asked. She didn’t want to be disappointed if it wasn’t like she’d dreamed.
“Wilder and stranger and more beautiful than you can imagine,” August said as he drew her to him. “You’ll probably go mad there.”
“Can we go there first?”
August waved his hand and suddenly a red curtain hung on the roof of the gallery, a red curtain held by nothing.
“Shall we?”
Lia crept over to the curtain. She put her ear to the velvet, and from behind it she heard pipes playing a tune so lovely and lively that she thought if she started dancing to it she might never wish to stop.
August took her hand in his, and he slowly began to draw the red curtain aside. She spied a river running silver, and a forest greener than any green her eyes had ever seen, and young girls in diaphanous gowns of baby blue, palest pink and sunshine yellow dancing in circles around a laughing bearded satyr.
Lia looked at August in delight. He stared at her with love in his eyes, with unutterable love.
“Are you afraid?” August asked.
“No,” Lia said as she passed through the curtain and into the realms of magic and myth.
And yet.
Oh, and yet...
She was afraid.
Ω
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the various and sundry maniacs who helped bring this book to fruition. We have to start with my humanities and aesthetics professors at Centre College. I’m finally making something out of my liberal arts education with The Red and The Rose.
I also have to thank Mr. Bulfinch wherever he is for his fine compendium known commonly as Bulfinch’s Mythology. Also, I extend my gratitude to authors Catherine Johns (Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome), Robert Garland (Ancient Greece: Everyday Life in the Birthplace of Modern Civilization) and, of course, Homer (The Odyssey, The Iliad). Homer, the world owes you a donut. Sorry. I bet you hate that joke.
Massive piles of gratitude to freelance editor Mala Bhattacharjee for her brilliant suggestions and eagle-eyed editing. I can’t recommend her services to other authors enough!
Very special thanks to author Kira A. Gold (The Dirty Secret) for her astute editorial suggestions and costume corrections. Thank you, Jenn LeBlanc (The Rake and the Recluse), for help with English titles. I probably still got them wrong. Silly American.
Thank you, British comedian, author and TV presenter David Mitchell (Back Story, That Mitchell and Webb Look), for his entire oeuvre, which I devoured while writing The Rose in order to better reproduce the voice of a posh and whimsical (and adorably stuffy) English person.
Enormous thanks and love to the Eagle Creek Writers Group of Lexington, Kentucky, and our fearless leader, Jennifer Barricklow, for the constant encouragement and helpful critique. Much philia (“brotherly love”) to Earl P. Dean, Andrew J. Cole, Bob McKinley, Banning Lary and K. F. Lee, and all my other Eagle Creek writing buddies!
Thank you to the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning in Lexington, Kentucky, for the opportunity to teach creative writing. The more I teach, the more I learn.
&nbs
p; Of course, great thanks is due to Michelle Meade, my fearless editor who was especially fearless when letting me loose on another erotica project. Eternal gratitude as always to my literary agent, Sara Megibow. Kudos to the cover designers at MIRA Books for my beautiful cover. It’s better than I dreamed.
Many kisses to everyone who read The Red and loved it enough to demand another adventure of those wicked Godwicks. Shall we go for three?
Of course I must thank the ancient peoples of Greece for the richness and beauty of their stories, myths, culture and legends. Now I raise a cup of wine to you and drink deep in your honor. Dii propitii! May the gods be propitious!
And finally, agape (“unconditional love”) and eros (“passionate love”) to my husband and fellow author, Andrew Shaffer (Hope Never Dies). Cupid got me good when I met you.
I mean, Eros.
ISBN-13: 9781488088575
The Rose
Copyright © 2019 by Tiffany Reisz
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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