Page 44 of Prometheus' Priestess

Her lip quivered, and she brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear, using her hand to keep her face hidden from him. Still she didn’t say anything. When she did turn back to look at him, confusion glittered in those sparkling, shattered, jade-coloured eyes.

“And yet you did,” she said in awhisper.

“And yet Idid.”

He went to tell her then who he was. Who cared if she thought he was crazy, if it would unlock her soul’s memories. He would do it. But when those memories were unlocked, she might think that he was standing in her way, and he found − thanks to Aphrodite’s influences − that he didn’t want Amara thinking of him in that manner. It clawed at a primal part ofhim.

It was only in this moment, on the precipice of knowledge, on the impact of seeing her, that he realised just how clever the goddesses had been. If he was to protect Amara from their onslaught, he couldn’t simply reveal what he knew, because she would now just think it was some elaborate excuse. He was going to have to find another way to do it.

She slid her hand away from his at his silence. Before he could take it back, they were interrupted.

“Amara, you ok, love?” Alice boomed from the doorway that led out into the kitchens and the back entrance.

Amara abruptlystood.

“Sorry, Alice ... let me just finishup.”

Alice shook her head. “Ah, nah hen, leave it until tomorrow. You and your ... friend head on off now so I can lock up.” There was a glint in Alice’s eye that said she’d wanted to say more and was only holding back, as her boss, to spare Amara any embarrassment. Amara kept her head bowed as she ducked behind the counter to grab her bag and jacket.

Prometheus frowned. He wouldn’t have expected a former priestess, particularly of Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite, to be so meek with another woman. Men, he could understand, given what the goddesses had subjected Amara too. But still, they tended to pick their priestesses with more backbone. He worried that the fear had begun to seep a little deeper into Amara’s bones, into the depth of her being, altering her on a fundamental level while he’d been gone. After all, nothing good had ever come from being in the human world for long. It was why he had given them the lifespan theyhad.

Then Amara threw him a look he couldn’t decipher. One full of hurt and pain and ... somethingelse.

“Don’t come back, ok?”

So she had a backbone afterall.

But before he had a chance to respond to that heartbreaking statement, which revealed the depth of the cut he’d caused, she walked out the door withouthim.

CHAPTER XXII

Aphrodite had asked him to make sure that Amara and Prometheus’ union bore fruit. She had stoked the flames, she told him. Now it was simply a matter of letting inhibitions get the better of them. But after leaving his sisters, Dionysus had begun to hatch a plan of hisown.

Always, Tyche managed to belittle him ever since she rebuffed his advances. To make him out like he wasn’t good enough forher because he was merely the enabler of others’ plans, that he never had the balls to take care of anything himself, that he wasn’t man enough forher.

Well, her chance would be a fine thing. For what would Tyche’s mother say if, after their priestess drove herself to subconscious abandon, Amara chose to end her life instead? What would the Goddess of Ill and Fair Fortune have to say for herself then? If he was merely an enabler and she the greater executor ofplans?

That she would pick that stoic Titan Prometheus over his company was baffling too. What did she see in a man that had no sense of play? He was always so serious about everything. All doom and gloom and premonitions that stopped the fun of the humans in the first place. The fact his plan would hinder the Titan as well as Tyche in the eyes of his sisters was an even bigger incentive. So they would lose the priestess; it was no matter. There were plenty of other priestesses to choose from in Olympus. This opportunity to stick it to the goddess who had turned him down was too ripe to miss.

Tonight, while the priestess licked her wounds in a bottle of wine, Dionysus would make sure there were no boundaries inhibiting her from taking that final step off the precipice. After all, Aphrodite hadn’t specifiedwhichinhibitions he had tolower.

Implication was a cunningmistress.

CHAPTER XXIII

Amara had thought that the busyness of the day had done the trick, until Theo had shown up. The minute she was home, too exhausted to cook or do anything other than plonk herselfin front of the TV with a show that she wasn’t really watching, her thoughts started to intrude on her again.

Why had Theo shown up today of all days? Had he seen her last night? What had Kiaria said to Alice? Would she lose her job even though she worked so hard today? God, had Alice known today? Had John said more had happened than it actually had?

She was starting to get an onset of a headache that she undoubtedly deserved, but her tastebuds craved more than water. So Amara wandered into the kitchen. She found an unopened, dusty bottle of wine that had been sitting at the back of the liquor cabinet no one in the house really used and grabbed the corkscrew. She twisted and pulled until she heard that satisfying ‘pop’ and the sweet sound of the first glug as the wine began to fill the glass. She drank it steadily, a slight dribble of red liquid escaping out the corner of her mouth in her haste, until the pangs of hunger disappeared and her head feltwoozy.

At least those damn intrusive thoughts weren’t bothering her anymore. She went to refill her glass and settled in to watch whatever mind-numbing thing was on the screen. As long as it would keep her thoughts off how good Theo had looked, smelled, felt ... that look of pity in his eyes that saidhe cared. She’d beenfine.

One glass turned into another, and another.

By midnight, two bottles of wine and half a bottle of whisky down, the headache had returned. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she stumbled into the small bathroom across the hallway. Opening the medicine cabinet hard enough that it thwacked her in the forehead, she stumbled backwards.

“Ow.” She rubbed at the place that was sure to bruise.

---