Page 32 of Only the Wicked

“Hmm.” A low vibration emanates from her throat as she considers. “I’ll admit this one is unnerving. I’m not scared, but the way the lightning lights the shadows is eerie. But again, I’m not scared. Tornados frighten me. But not much else.”

“Earthquakes?”

“No. But I haven’t lived through a big one.”

“Why’d you move around a lot?”

“My dad was in the military.”

“Is he still?”

“Yes. Coast Guard. Based in Alaska.”

The drum of rain becomes the only sound. In the darkness, I can make out her silhouette and sense her gaze.

“Just think…” she says, almost dreamily, “There was a time when a storm like this would inspire theories about what angered Zeus.”

“Or Thor, or Indra.” Everyone thinks of Zeus and lightning, me included, but there’s so much more to the old religions.

“Indra? I've never heard of her.”

“Him,” I correct. “In the Hindu religion, god of heaven, lightning, rain, storms and thunder.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that.” Her words are soft, and I reach between us to caress her cheek. The muscles in my injured elbow tense, and I lower my arm, resting it against my side. It’s the oddest injury, mostly fine, but the wrong movement causes pain.

“As a kid, I studied mythology.” It’s not something I’m embarrassed about, but at the same time, it feels like a geeky admission, on par with admitting I aced a test that the rest of the class bombed.

“Inspired by Marvel? Thor?”

“Inspired by my grandmother.”

“Really? Was she a teacher?”

“Middle school math and science. But she didn’t have a lot of children’s books, so when I stayed over, she’d tell me stories from mythology.”

“Any favorites?”

“Oh, several. Cupid, for one. Mainly because everyone has the Hallmark version in their head, but the story is far more complex.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, let’s see. The way my grandmother tells it, it begins with three daughters, one named Psyche. She was beautiful. Stunning. So beautiful she was deemed a goddess among mortals. But yet her sisters married first and married well. She prayed for a husband, as you know, all women did.”

“Of course.”

I chuckle at her attitude. Something tells me the woman in bed with me would never pray for a husband. Thinking of her on the hike, she’s got what Nana would call an independent streak.

“Anyway, Venus became quite jealous. Her temples were falling into disrepair because the mortals were so taken with Psyche.”

“But yet no one married her?”

“No. These stories don’t always make sense. Men came from far and wide, but they would fall for other women. Now Cupid was a winged youth who did Venus’ bidding. Jealous, Venus instructed Cupid to make the hussy—that’s my Nana’s word, we can assume Venus chose another—fall in love with the vilest mortal. And he might’ve done her bidding, except Cupid had fallen under Psyche’s spell. All this time, no one proposed to Psyche, which distressed her father.”

“Naturally.”

“Her father traveled to an oracle of Apollo. The oracle told her father to take her to a distant hill, and leave her, where a god would descend and take her.”

“Let me guess. Cupid told the oracle to tell him this.”