Page 29 of The Goddess is Fierce
george
. . .
We stayed at the library researching all day. The information we had on the Erotes was limited unless it was Eros. Felix convinced us that if all the Erotes used arrows and one of them murdered an entire family over one, we should deep dive into the one we had the most information on to see if we could find out more about the arrows.
A lot of stuff that had been passed down through history probably started out true, but then things got changed as thestory was retold. Some of the inaccuracies were because the gods started the rumor in the first place. Like, everyone thought Freya hated Loki because he was always slut shaming her in front of everyone, but those two loved each other. Loki slept around just as much as Freya did. They set each other up and covered for each other all the time.
Cupid’s arrows could be fact or fiction since everyone we found who claimed to be hit by one didn’t have a wound on their body and no one actuallysawan arrow flying through the air. With gods, that could literally mean anything.
We stopped for the night to have dinner with my family. We invited Baldur and Odin. My mom usually would have tested Baldur and made him apply for a library card, but with his magic gone, none of us knew how the library was going to react, so she just took him upstairs to the living room.
We were all looking at the photos Oscar and the guys had developed. Most of them were of Drake’s mom on campus, but it was the last few that had what we needed. Kind of. Gabriel told me about magical photography. He figured out once he met my dad and Loki that you needed to adjust the aperture for god aura. It was a different setting than other supernaturals.
Drake’s mom was photographing a man in black standing by Shrieking Woods. He was holding a golden bow and had an arrow nocked. We couldn’t see him at first because he was surrounded by averystrange aura for a god. Ours were usually gold, but his had bits of black and red in it.
She figured the settings out at the last picture and he didn’t look like any god I’d seen. He wasn’t as tall. We could only see his profile from a distance, but he seemed a little plain for a god. And none of the other gods at the table who were much older than me knew who he was.
Azren and my dad hadn’t met any of the Erotes. If Baldur had, he didn’t remember. Odin was pretty famous for hiswalkabouts in all the realms that weren’t closed off to him. Odin squinted his one eye at the photo and sighed.
“I’ve never met that guy in my entire life. Olympus isn’t bad if you avoid Zeus. Aphrodite and Ares are impeccable hosts and Dionysus throws fantastic parties. Athena and Artemis are brilliant conversationalists. The Erotes were around when I was there. I couldn’t pull up their faces from memory, but I’d remember if I saw them again. I remember the Erotes being a wild and feral bunch that I had a good time with, but I honestly don’t remember there being seven of them.
“That was a very long time ago and I haven’t been to Olympus in a while. I’ve never met him. He wouldn’t be distinctive in a crowd full of humans, but he’d stick out like a sore thumb among gods. There’s something wrong with his aura and his appearance isn’t as shiny as the rest of us.”
“That’s what our auras look like when they get tainted,” Azren said. “If we do something horrible, our auras do the same as mortals. Loki’s nearly did the same after he killed Baldur, but he was so eaten up about it, he was pretty much never going to do anything like that again. It’s when we do something terrible and welikeit and intend on doing it again that our auras get tainted. His aura might not have looked like that when you met him.”
“He must have learned to shapeshift his aura like you and Loki did,” Gabriel said. “Most supernaturals can recognize a tainted aura, even if they don’t know what they are feeling, but it’s the first thing I start teaching as soon as they start taking Dark Arts. I hired one of my best students to replace me and they’ll be doing the same. No one might have witnessed the murders, but they would have remembered those witches talking to him if he hadn’t.”
“The arrow has to be important,” Baldur said. “If gods can shapeshift, I don’t think he cares about the photos. He went after Drake’s parents to get his arrow back.”
“I agree,” Azren said. “That’s why it’s stashed in the Netherworld where he can’t go until I can bring it out to examine it and find out what’s so special about it.”
Before anyone could say anything, a flash of flame appeared in our dining room, which meant Loki was here. He had my aunt, Uncle Bjorn, and cousin Freydis with him, which meant someone saw something, but I don’t think he realized Baldur was going to be here. He had been trying to give him space.
“Ah, fuck,” Loki sighed, disappearing again.
“Sorry,” Ravyn said. “Bjorn and Freydis had a shared vision from the Fates and those arealwaysimportant, so Loki brought us, but if we had known Baldur was here, we would have walked. Loki told me his version of what happened when we first met and now that I’ve been with him this long, he only tells stories like that when he feels insanely bad about what he did.”
“Can you bring him back?” Baldur asked.
“Um, do I need to bring him back outside? This is a historical building with a lot of dangerous books in it and my sister is going to have big opinions about you dating her daughter if you break it,” Ravyn said.
This was it. I knew Loki was beside himself wanting to make things right with Baldur but was keeping his distance out of respect. I think Loki would feel terrible, but not quite this bad, if Baldur had come back with his magic and memories and wanted to beat his ass. It was the fact that he came back like that, no one found him to help him, and the killer had probably been fucking with his head to make him think he was a murderer.
I think we all got that Loki was grieving and lashed out at the wrong person to make his point. Even Loki’s wife would agree Baldur had the right to react to that how he wanted to. Baldurdidn’t have magic, but he was still the biggest god I’d ever met. He was bigger than my dad. If Baldur wanted to throw down, he could still do some damage.
“No need,” Baldur said. “Maybe I’ll feel differently when I have my memories back and can remember dying. Odin and Freya have been telling me what I was like back then and filling in the gaps surrounding my death that didn’t make the history books. If I just went off the internet, Loki killed me because he’s a terrible person and he thought it was funny. I don’t remember him, but I’ve asked enough questions about the man responsible for my death to know he’s a complicated person. I’m not going to hit him. I just want to talk to him.”
TotalGod of Light move.
I wasn’t the same kind of god as Baldur and I was much younger, but I can’t say I would react the same. I’d make an attempt to understand why he did it and would probably forgive him once I found out his reasons, but I’d still want to hit him. And I said that as someone who deeply loved my uncle and understood him.
My aunt just gave Baldur a curt nod. She loved him and accepted everything that came with being married to a trickster. They were mostly maliciously helpful and not violent. If someone got hurt by a trickster, they usually didn’t need to lay a finger on them. Ravyn wasn’t just married to a trickster. Her daughter was one, too. She was used to talking them out of things and she knew LokiandBaldur needed this.
I knew they needed it, too. Also, if Bjorn and Freydis had gotten a shared visionnowwith everything that was going on, it was probably important. My aunt was a master at being married to a trickster and how to handle them. She whipped her phone out and hit a button.
“My love, get that perky butt back here. It’s someone else’s turn to spank it.”
Oh, fuck. That wassomy Aunt Ravyn. Baldur had only been around my mom for the duration of this dinner and he’d just met my aunt. Odin pounded on his back as Baldur choked on the lamb my dad cooked.
