Page 35 of Prince of Flowers
“And what have we here?” said a woman’s voice, up from the treetops. “A sapling, and a princeling. Most curious.”
There, among the leaves, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She wasn’t sitting on the branches, but floating among them. The sunlight around her seemed to shimmer. My eyes might have been playing tricks on me, but I detected the faintest golden aurora surrounding her, the wavering of a mirage.
And her face — as clear as the sky, as lovely as a rainbow, as bright as the sun itself. The woman was radiant, like an angel. Or a goddess.
Uh-oh.
14
I shieldedmy eyes from the sun as the strange woman descended from the treetops. She tilted her head, studying me, then Sylvain, her hair billowing in the breeze. Her chin dug into her hand, her elbow resting on her knee, her legs crossed, like she was sitting on an invisible cloud.
The face of an angel, the mischievous smile of a demon, and the luster of a goddess.
My heart clenched.
“Gods above and below,” I muttered. Sylvain looked to me with recognition, hearing something I’d said a dozen times before. He understood, and so did I.
Entities walked the Earth the way that creatures of myth and legend did. The gods and goddesses of old, angels who dwelt above, and the demons who dwelt below. All were beings of unknowable power who lived in between realities, in the hidden corners where men never looked. A more ambitious or foolish kind of man could ask to contact one of these entities for favors, for power. But there was always a price.
Sometimes the entities reached out to humans themselves. And as someone with more than a passing knowledge of Greek mythology — basic course at the Wispwood, really, freshman stuff — I knew that the attention of the gods wasn’t always a good thing.
The woman crossed her legs in the opposite direction before she touched the ground, her bare feet padding gently on soft grass. Flowers sprouted where she stepped, the jewels and tiny bells dangling from her throat and barely covering her breasts tinkling as she moved. Every gust of the balmy breeze that tousled her hair smelled like flowers, like succulent fruit. It smelled like a favorite perfume, an orgasmic dish, the scent of a lover’s hair on a pillow.
She stepped around us in a slow circle, her hair so long and lush that it nearly touched the ground. Her hands stayed clasped coyly behind her back, as if to say that she meant us no harm. Sylvain looked on warily as she walked a path of petals around us. More and more flowers blossomed in her wake.
“If you’ve come for a fight,” Sylvain said, “then we’re more than ready.”
I wished I could have punched him right in the chest. That was a barefaced lie, the prince once again relying on bravado to deal with everything that came our way.
The woman covered her mouth, her laughter like wind chimes, like glass bells.
“Silly man. How do the humans like to phrase it again? Make love, not war? Oh, I know you fae are only newly returned to this reality. But surely you’re not already so hungry for blood so soon after your fresh kill?”
I threw Sylvain a warning glare when she wasn’t looking. “You’ll forgive him,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think he’s only trying to say — respectfully — that we are not interested in conflict with your majestic person.”
Sylvain puffed out his chest, this sexy, savage, sexy brute. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
I really, really wanted to kick him in the shins, smack him in the face with my grimoire. Again the woman tittered.
“Such sweet words you say to me, sapling, and yet they ring empty. There’s no need for false platitudes, sweetness. You can be honest with me, the way the two of you are honest with each other. Is that not how things are meant to work between summoners and eidolons? A question of trust.”
I looked guiltily at Sylvain, who was very much mirroring the expression on my face. What did he have to be guilty about? I was the one who’d tricked him. Multiple times, too, though not always on purpose, except for that one incident where I’d launched him like a rocket to take down a giant man-eating plant.
“Trust,” I said. “Right. So you know about our arrangement?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” the woman said. “I’ve been casually observing your profession over the ages. Summoners and eidolons, it’s such an interesting dynamic, don’t you think? How everything within your art easily comes down to relationships. In many ways, the bond between a summoner and their eidolon is one of love — or at least one of loyalty. Don’t you agree, princeling?”
I thought I could hear a low rumble coming from deep inside of Sylvain’s chest. Again, not the time to think of how sexy that was. But he could stand to be a little more polite to the woman who was almost definitely a goddess.
“But I think the two of you have done quite well for yourselves. Look at that massive, engorged thing that you just took down. Enormous, aggressive, turgid, and yet with a single blow?”
The sentence hung in the air. I shuffled my feet, half-certain that we weren’t talking about slaying monsters any longer. What was up with all the horny innuendo?
She shook her head and tittered. “They’re named after me, you know? The thing you killed. Venus. Or Aphrodite, as I prefer these days. Ah, but what’s in a name?” She held her hand over the softest lips I’d ever seen, feigning a gasp. “Oh, but I misspoke. What if this handsome fae prince uses my true name against me?”
“Use your name against you?” Sylvain scoffed. “That if I could. You stink of power, woman.”
Aphrodite drew her hands back, flipping her great tresses over her shoulders as she let out a peal of delighted laughter.
