Page 23 of Prometheus' Priestess

Prometheus grunted, loath to agree with her internally once again but finding no fault in the logic.

“There are much more dangerous ways to cause a woman pain,” she continued softly. “The fear they instilled in her was … brutal. Unnecessarily so, in my opinion. And you know how I canbe.”

Prometheus nodded. He had experienced Aphrodite’s vindictiveness first-hand, and that had only been meant to be a harmless prank according to her.

“She will break as a mere mortal woman if they keep up this tough-love plan Artemis and Athena have embarked on. She is not a hound to be broken in.” Aphrodite’s words continued to be so soft as to be barely audible, but her sing-song voice carried on the wind, making her words seem eerily premonitive and had Prometheus unknowingly nodding along.

“Perhaps, if she experienced pure love, she would alchemise the fear faster. What do you think, Prometheus?”

He contemplated his answer carefully, unnerved by the softness of Aphrodite’s approach when his instincts screamed that she wanted something. “I am unsure why you have called on me to answer this question for you. You already know the answer. You gifted the humans theiremotions.”

Aphrodite pinned her gaze on him and suddenly she was the mercurial, demanding goddess he knew all too well. “Create her a mortal, one designed specifically forher.”

Prometheus began shaking his head. “After what your sisters have already put her through? They will just use the mortal against her further. No. Teach her to love herself as you love yourself,” he countered.

Aphrodite opened her mouth to reply but Prometheus stood, powerful thighs bulging as he did so. “No. That’s my final answer if that’s what you brought me here for. I will protect the priestess more heavily from now on, seeing as her own goddesses have forgotten the brutality of being human, but do not ask anything else of me, Aphrodite.”

And with that, he turned his back on her, taking long, powerful strides as he left.

It was a rare occasion when Aphrodite was denied, an even rarer one when her pure intentions were dismissed. Prometheus had now denied both dual aspects of her and, for some reason, Pygmalion floated through Aphrodite’s mind at that exact moment. Why the talented sculptor, insistent on not falling in love, would pop into her mind at that moment was odd. There must be a reason, she thought to herself as she watched Prometheus walk away, his tanned bronzed shoulders glinting in the last of the evening sunshine.

She had made the sculptor, intent on defying her, carve out his perfect woman in marble. Once he had done that, he willingly asked Aphrodite to gift him love so that he could bring his creation to life. All it had taken was using his craft in her favour. She had gifted Pygmalion the same technique that she had gifted Prometheus when he created the humans.

Still, her brain couldn’t put the link together. What was it about the artists, beyond the method she had used, that linked them? Was it the fact that they were both stubborn? Something niggled at Aphrodite ... a thought that tickled in her mind, something that irked her, an itch she couldn’t scratch. All she knew was that it had to do with Prometheus’ almost callous rejection.

But, she realised, it wasn’t the rejection ofherthat was sore. It was the rejection that he wouldn’t do just aboutanythingto help Amara. That was not the act of someone that should have had unconditional love for the priestess in human form.

Of course! Although the priestess was clothed in human skin, she wasn’t a mortal soul. When she’d been gifted her emotional intellect, it must have attached to the soul not the skin of the human. Perhaps her memory had been reset, but the blueprint for emotional intelligence was already there. It didn’t need to be crafted anew as it had with the rest of the humans. The curse had been circumnavigated. Prometheus didn’t unconditionally love her. Which meant, Aphrodite realised with a start, that he could fallinlove withher.

She just had to find a way to use his weakness, his taste for humanity, in her favour. And she knew exactly who to ask.

CHAPTER XI

“Agame of dice myfriend?”

Prometheus chuckled. “Against you? No.”

The woman across from him managed to maintain a pout worthy of her mother for all of two seconds before it fell and the creases around her mouth turned into laughter lines. Prometheus grinned back at her, his large forearms crossed against his chest as he leaned against the countertop and watched her. Tyche truly was a beautiful woman. She was as voluptuous as her mother, Aphrodite, but athletic like her father, Hermes. Her cleavage peeked out from behind a modest dress, while her strong, lean arms were bare as she leaned towards Prometheus from her position.

“Go on, you know you wantto.”

It was a taunt between old friends, for it was a running joke who would prevail. Tyche, Goddess of Fair and Ill Fortune, or Prometheus’ foresight. So far, in all the years they had known each other, Prometheus had only managed to win three hundred of the thousand or so games between them. Not that he was counting.

“Chess then,” she countered, for she knew he could not resist a game of logic.

“Chess,” he agreed before slowly making his way back to the table now that he had cleared the dishes of their supper away. Tyche went to the wall behind her that held cavern spaces for books and pulled out the old stone chess set. She knew where almost everything in this cabin was, having been one of the only ones Prometheus allowed to visit since he’d been sequestered to the confines of these walls in the mountain.

Night had descended, but there was a light that hung above the table that emitted a soft yellow beam so Tyche could see as she began to methodically polish and place the pieces in their rightful squares on the board, one by one, starting with the white first. Prometheus allowed himself a small smile. It was often an overlooked trait of Tyche’s, her organisation. Most people often just associated her with chaos. Prometheus himself had been guilty of that in the past and was surprised when she’d revealed her Virgo nature. There was a messy imperfection to chaos, she had once told him. He had never forgotten it.

“Still as compulsive as ever,” he jested, a rare joke from a man who rarely let anyone see this side of him.

“Look who’s talking,” she quipped back. “I hear you managed to get yourself entangled in the affairs of humansagain.”

“Who told you that?” Prometheus scowled.

“Aphrodite, ofcourse.”

“Is that why you’re here? To do your mother’s bidding?”

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