Page 22 of Loved By Aphrodite

“Wait.” She tapped a finger on her chin. “You said this was a type of hardware lock, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then shouldn’t a lock have a key?”

“That’s not how it works.” He paused. “But then again, it’s not like the things I’ve seen the past few days have been ordinary. I suppose it’s worth a try to find somewhere a key might fit.”

She gestured to her right. “I’ll look over here, you go there.”

Nodding, he put his laptop away and began to search through the tangle of vines and flowers. The sweet, heady scent of the love-in-idleness tickled his nose as he scrutinized the server trays behind it and he was glad that as a god, he was immune to its magic. He could only imagine how potent it was for humans.

“Have you found anything?” Aphrodite called out.

“Not yet. You?”

“No. But let’s keep looking.”

He wasn’t even sure what they were looking for, but he kept his mouth shut. If anything, not finding anything would at least disprove the lock and key theory, and they could move on and find another solution. Then—“Huh?” He stopped as he noticed one of the vines emitted a faint purple glow. It hadn’t been so obvious before, but as he reached the rear of the rack where the lightbulb had burned out overhead, the glow pulsed in the darkness.

Hmm.

With a snap of his fingers, all the lights in the room turned off.

There.

“Hephaestus? What’s going on?”

“I think I have something.” Soft footsteps indicated she was behind him. “See?”

“What—oh.” She gasped, her eyes roaming over the vines. “I don’t think I’ve seen it do that before.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, and…” She glanced around her. “Look, the glow is coming from somewhere.”

Sure enough, the glowing vines did seemingly branch out from a central spot in the mainframe. Following the trail, they traced it to a corner in the back of the racks. The light pulsed brighter there, beating with a regular rhythm. The vines wrapped around one particular spot on a lower rack, swirling in a circle like a bullseye on a target. When Hephaestus reached out to push the vines aside, they slowly retracted back to reveal a small compartment inside.

“Is that it?” Aphrodite said in an excited tone.

“Could be.” He peered inside. “There’s something in there.” The soft glow bathed in the compartment in a purple light. Itreminded him of a security keypad, but there were no numbers, letters, or symbols to press. Instead, there was an indentation in the middle, shaped like a?—

No.

It couldn’t be.

He wouldn’t.

“What is it?” Aphrodite asked. “Did you find a lock?”

He supposed it could be a kind of lock. But there was only one key. “I…” He didn’t know what to say as his chest tightened. Why the hell would Eros do this? Was this a sick game to him?

“Hephaestus, say something.” Impatient, she pushed him aside and peered inside. “I don’t see a lock.” Her nose wrinkled. “But it kind of looks like…”

“A shell,” he finished. But it wasn’t just any shell. He knew the exact shape and size of this particular shell well. He’d held it enough times to know that it would fit exactly inside that alarm pad.

“Are you sure,” she said. “Why would Eros use a shell? That’s my symbol, not his.”

His mouth went dry as his stomach tied into a tight knot.

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