Prophecy of the Most Beautiful (32 page)

*****

XXII. Ace Remedy

"What are
you
doing here?" Cupid snapped. He crossed his arms and awaited his wife's reply. Psyche took her time answering. She tugged at each of her leather-covered fingers, pulling off really long gloves. Psyche's dark brown eyes gave them each a look of detest. Ace watched her fold her gloves neatly, put them in a small pouch on her hip, smile with a sardonic air at her husband's leering expression, then shift her gaze back to the sparkly-eyed wanker, Dropper. He was still sitting on a chaise trying to swallow the pharmakon (herbal) pill Ace had just given him for the pain.

Ace had been smart and had stored medical supplies in the wide pockets of his robe. He had lost a couple vials of his blood clotting enhancer and all of his gauze and bandages were ruined from the jump, but everything else had survived. He had rewrapped the Dropper's leg and now he was praying to the gods that his serpent anti-venom was strong enough to counteract the Scorpion's venom. He had made it himself from the carefully-extracted venom of the Basilisk serpent––venom Swindle had risked his life to help him get. He hoped their efforts would not prove to have been wasted now.

"So this is who our Lady is making such a fuss over?" Psyche said, her English-style accent kind of poetic. She was a bloody beautiful goddess. Her neat hair framed her heart-shaped face, creating a background for her perfectly rosy cheeks and romantic eyes. Her body was long and shapely and covered completely in leather. Her features were as sharp as her attitude, but overall, she was a vixen.

"You didn't answer my question, Soul," Cupid quipped at his wife.

"I love when you call me
Soul
. It's so romantic." But Cupid's expression only grew more aggravated as he wasn't going for the distraction. Psyche sighed and strutted past them. "I was sent to make sure you completed your task accordingly," She said, shortly, "Why I wasn't just given the assignment in the first place, one will never know––but, here we are."

Cupid groaned. "Why is it always
you
that she sends after me?"

"Scared I may catch you entwined with a lover, Amor?"

"As if you ever would. Besides, you know I do not keep lovers."

"So you claim." Psyche glared at Chloe as if she knew her husband had been snogging the Oracle, but no one here was going to confirm that for her. Then her attention was back on Dropper.

Ace thought it was pathetic how Cupid and Psyche had ignored his best friend who lay dying beside him. They hadn't lifted one divine finger to help Swindle. But it was proof that what Strafford had always said was true. The gods didn't really care about half-breeds. They were pawns used to settle the gods' disputes and conflicts without ripping the heavens and Earth apart, and in the thirty centuries the gods had been around they had seen so many
heroes
die that they had become numb to it. They were perfectly content to let the Fates' string unravel––even if it frayed right to your death.

"Does he know the truth, Amor?" Psyche questioned her husband. She paced for a moment, her eyes still roaming over Dropper. Bill came then and perched himself on the back of Swindle's lounge. The bird squawked and Ace took it to mean:
You better not let him die.

"Look at him," Cupid replied absently, still clearly upset about the bit of news his wife had just shared with him, "Does he look like he knows much of
anything
?" He fell back on a lounge, propped his arms under his head and stared off into space.

"Well, I figured if he came to ancient Corinth, he might have learned something about it."

"Learned something about what?" Dropper asked.

"About what you are," Psyche replied with a tiny smirk.

He saw Dropper gulp. "Wh––what am I?"

A bloody annoying wanker, maybe?
Ace thought,
The source of all of our troubles?
He shook his head and tried to find a vein in Swindle's arm to inject the anti-venom into. There were just so many and all of them could now be seen through Swindle's jaundiced skin. The venom was moving so fast...

Psyche started to sit down right where she was and a high-backed chair of gold appeared under her. "Dissension among the gods means there is an imbalance in the heavens," She said. "When that happens, sometimes things…" The goddess looked at Dropper, "…
fall
."

"And quite hard, it seems," Dropper said, rubbing the back of his head as though he was remembering the pain of almost cracking his skull on the back streets of New Elysium. Or maybe he was remembering Strafford slamming his head against the cottage wall.

Psyche gave a tight smile. "You, boy, are a constellation, fallen from your station in the upper heavens, which is known as the
Regalis Stella
."

There was a long moment of stifling silence.

"Say tha' again," Ace mumbled, unsure that he had heard right. He gave Strafford a look as if to ask, "
Have you ever heard of this? Constellations falling out of the Realm of Stars?
" His brother shook his head,
no
, but they shared the knowledge of now understanding why the Dropper's eyes were always twinkling. He shared a look with Chloe and realized she had figured it out as well.

"How can tha' be true?" Strafford said, clearly skeptical despite the evidence. His brother was not one to accept anyone's word at face value, especially a god's.

"You're a Prince raised up in this world," The goddess replied, "and you should understand well the complexity of it. Anything is possible."

"I know tha'. I've jus' never heard of a constellation fallin' out of the
Regalis Stella
before."

"Well, now you have."

He could tell Strafford was forcing himself to be patient. "Well, even if he is wha' you say, wha' does tha' have to do with
you
?"

Psyche smiled. "It's simple, really. My lady, Aphrodite, wants the Most Beautiful and she has grown impatient waiting for you to find it for her." She was looking at Dropper.

"Why does the goddess of Love want
me
to bring it to her?" Dropper asked.

"Because," Psyche said, "only with you can the Most Beautiful find true existence."

Ace didn’t have a chance to figure out what this meant. Swindle had started to breathe regularly again. The anti-venom was working, thank whichever god that actually cared.

"Wha's this Most Beautiful thing?" Strafford asked, "And why are gods tryin' to kill us over it?"

The goddess of Soul laughed. "You are simply in the way. You may be a Prince, but you are still a demigod. And as you well know, all demigods are expendable."

"That's a messed up thing to say!" Chloe snapped. Ace wanted to smile, enjoying the sight of the Oracle sticking up for them to a god. Her heart was sugar but her tongue was salt and pepper. He loved it.

Psyche shrugged. "It is true. And be warned, Pythia. Your existence is fast becoming a dilemma for Olympus. Such a problem that the very heavens quake." She gestured at Dropper. "And the stars begin to fall at your feet."

Something very strange and unexpected happened then.

A breeze started to blow around them, waves crashed hard against the barge, rocking it, and Chloe's eyes began to glow a faint yellow. Her wet, red hair instantly dried and billowed in the gentle wind making her appear like a goddess in her own right. Even Psyche looked a bit miffed by how divine Chloe suddenly looked.
Jealous
, one might say.

"
You cannot stop the coming
," Chloe said with the voice of a much older woman, her future voice. She pointed a shaking finger at Psyche. "
History will repeat itself. Prepare yourselves. The great war is near
."

Then she passed out.

Great
. Another one down.

Strafford barely caught her before she hit the deck and made her comfortable on a few pillows strewn about nearby. His brother looked up at him, and without him saying a single word, Ace knew what to do. He had done what he could for Swindle and Dropper and all he could do now was wait and hope that it had been enough.

He fumbled around with his meds as he thought about what Chloe had just done. Did she even
know
what she had just done? She had
chanted
, another Fate-granted gift that was already warning them about the unfortunate future that lay in front of them.
The great war is near
, she had said. Not something you wanted to hear where the gods were concerned. A war of the gods never ended well.

Never.

He found what he was looking for just as Chloe broke out into a seizure.

"Hurry up, Ace!" Strafford barked as he lifted her hand to his lips to kiss it. If Ace hadn't been sure before that gesture of affection, he was now. Nobody knew Strafford like he did, and he now knew what had been different about his older brother for all these weeks. What all the bloody
smiling
had been about.

Strafford had fallen for Chloe. In a
major
way.

Bloody hell.

Choosing to bypass the revelation for now, Ace unscrewed the bottle of his secret muscle relaxant serum made from the sap of a cypress tree from the island of Ortygia and divine
ambrosia
from Olympus.

Very forbidden stuff.

Ambrosia was very sacred to the gods and was as impossible to get your hands on as pure Olympian gold. But that's what Swindle was for. While Strafford found a use for Swindle's scholarly knowledge, Ace befriended the thief in him. Why did people think he was one of the best healers Apollo had ever given his essence to? His medicines were top-notch––made with top-notch ingredients stolen from gods. That's why.

"I'll leave the delivery of that particular message to my mother up to you, love," Cupid said to Psyche as Ace administered the serum to Chloe. Her seizure ended only a few short moments later.

"
Oh, you would
," Psyche snapped.

"Is she okay?" Dropper, the wanker, asked. He leaned over the side of his lounge, his leg still in the healing process.

"She'll be fine," He replied, returning the serum to his pocket. "But she'll be weak. We might have to carry her."

"
I'll
carry her," Strafford said.

He nodded and handed him a flask of water from a spring in Delphi. "If she seizes again, give her this." Strafford nodded, trying not to look worried.

"I could kiss her and make it all better, Prince," Cupid offered. Strafford glared and the young god laughed, though he stopped when he got a glimpse of Psyche's expression.

"Don't the two of you have somewhere else to be?" Ace spat at the god and goddess, standing. "Or do you insist on wastin' more of our time? If you haven't noticed, we're on a frickin' mission here." He didn't usually have the guts to speak to the deities like this, but they were getting on his bloody nerves. He blamed
them
for Chloe's seizure. He blamed them for Swindle, he even blamed them for Dropper. He blamed them for everything.

"Well, isn't this lot just full of bold tongues, Amor?" Psyche spit back. Cupid shrugged, clearly not caring about Ace’s bad attitude. "You know as well as anyone,
hero,
that you are at our mercy right now. But luckily for you, the goddess does not expect Amor to adhere to her wishes and apprehend the fallen star, but to disregard them as he has so many times before."

"It's true," Cupid said, looking bloody proud of himself. "My constant disobedience is the only reason we're even married, you know."

He did know. Thousands of years ago, Cupid had been ordered by a jealous Aphrodite to make the beautiful mortal Princess Psyche fall in love with an ugly man. But instead, Cupid had kept her for himself, putting into motion a series of events that would
literally
send Psyche to hell and back. As a reward for surviving it, Zeus made Psyche a goddess and she became Cupid's wife.

"Okay, so wha' are you sayin'?" Strafford said. Chloe was still out cold, but at least not seizing. "Everyone already knows you're a disobedient lil' prick. Wha's your point?"

Cupid smirked, realizing that Strafford was still pissed about him snogging Chloe. "My point is,
hero
, that your unspoken wish is granted. We're going to leave as we came and without what we came
for
. It's against our law to force mortals and the likes of to do our will. We only make you wish that you had."

"So you are leaving me here then?" Dropper asked, surprised.

Cupid shrugged nonchalantly. "Yes. It’s never wise to put desires before destiny, even for gods. Only ask my sweet Psyche what she was made to go through the last time I did that. No, I think I’ll be staying out of this mess. It’s much more pragmatic to let fate run its’ course. Isn’t that right,
Strafford
?” When Strafford only glared at him, he laughed. “Besides, the end result of us letting you go will be much more entertaining for me.”

“Wha’ the bloody hell does tha’ mean?” Ace asked just as Swindle's eyes fluttered opened, accompanied by a soft groan. A swell of pride surged through him because his best friend was going to live. He poured a little water into his mouth.

“It means, that if you think my mother is going to just let this fly, you’ve definitely inhaled too much laurel.”

“Stop talking them in circles, Amor,” Psyche said. “My husband only means that the goddess always has a backup plan. And the
Graces
have no such qualms about interfering with destiny.”

Their silence turned to ice around them, they were quiet so long. Psyche's words floated above them, making the air dense with anxiety. Even Strafford had no smart ass response to come back with.

This mission had just gotten fatal.

The three attendants of Aphrodite, the
Graces
, were
assassins
, not the beautiful, gentle angels mortals had made them out to be. And if Aphrodite sent them after you, it was clear she meant business.