1Inside the temple, the air is dim with fragrant smoke. The young woman moves steadily through the billowing clouds, her thin robe swishing at her ankles with every step. Her hair spills down her back, a dark river woven through with saffron ribbons that gleam in the firelight.
She drips honey into a shallow dish, a slow stream of amber, rich and sweet. The aroma mingles with the burning incense. It's intoxicating.
Her head is bowed as she approaches the statue with her offering. It's a clumsy likeness, ivory carved by human hands trying to capture the essence of a goddess they can hardly imagine, but her reverence is palpable-and so is her longing.
Lotus blossoms are festooned around the base, their sky-blue petals and sun-golden centers inviting. She sets the honey down at its cold, white feet. Another dish holds a pomegranate cut in two. Dark-red seeds spill from its tender flesh, soft and juicy and tantalizing.
She's gazing at uncomprehending stone, never dreaming that the goddess she seeks is not in that vacant figure but behind her. The scent of her hair carries the freshness of the wind outside the temple, the one that shakes the leaves on the oak trees, the wind she sometimes whispers into, hoping I will hear her.
And, today, I will.
Inside this temple, we are all alone. Only she holds the keys to this sacred space; no other mortal can enter without her permission. She relishes that power, like I relish mine. I am the Goddess of Love, and she is my priestess. While she belongs to me, she will be safe from the dreary tedium of a husband and the long years of serving his needs.
Instead, she devotes herself to love. When I look inside her heart, I can trace the shape of her unspoken dreams, know who it is that consumes her every thought. The image of one of the other girls who worships here, sweet and pretty, rises in her mind. I feel my priestess's heart surge with joy as though it beats behind my own breast.
She makes her devotions to my statue, but it isn't her offerings that draw me here. It's the rush of flames burning beneath her skin when she thinks of her beloved, melting her from within in an exquisite torture. That is the real gift to me.
Other gods demand blood and sacrifice. What I want from mortals are their secrets. The cravings that they cherish in private; the yearning that pulses through their veins and stirs their souls, that robs them of speech and thrums in their breasts like a hummingbird's wings. I hear it all, every tentative hope, every forbidden want, every fragmented gasp of passion, and to me they are poetry.
With a final glance at the smooth skin of her cheeks, the sweep of her eyelashes and the pouting curve of her lips, I leave the temple, veiled in a mist that renders me invisible to mortal eyes. When she discovers that she has been rewarded and finds her longing is requited, she'll give me grateful thanks, but I already have what I came for.
I soar out of the bronze-gated sanctuary of Paphos in the form of a dove, fluttering through the pink skies of dawn as the sun rises over the island.
The awakening of desire in my priestess stirs that same sensation within me, and I fly from my sanctuary to a secluded bay, sheltered by rocky cliffs, where I know he'll be waiting for me. As I land, he emerges from the sea, the sunlight sparkling off the rivulets that run down his broad shoulders. I shrug off the illusion of my feathered disguise, a goddess again.
His name is Nerites; a sea-god, only minor in the hierarchy of deities. He rules over shellfish, his days spent overseeing scuttling crabs and thorny sea urchins, presiding over the lives and deaths of clams and oysters and mussels. Some marine-gods are fish-tailed, their blue-tinged skin crusted in barnacles; old men of the waters with gills and flippers and straggly beards. Not Nerites. He's a fine example of a young god in his prime: strong and vital and perfect. My eyes linger on the smooth muscles of his chest, the taut outline of his upper arms and his mesmerizing green eyes, the same shade as the watery depths from which he's emerged.
He opens his mouth to greet me, his words spilling out with eager haste, slipping over one another like wriggling fish, before I silence him with a hand to his lips. My nails shine, shell-like and delicate, against his salt-roughened jaw, and I enjoy the contrast for a moment before I pull his face to mine, surrendering once more to the thrill of that familiar, irresistible force.
Later, when with a longing glance, Nerites plunges back beneath the waves, I stretch out on the sand, a pleasant ache tingling through my body at the memory of his touch. He'll be gliding between the tall fronds of kelp by now, swimming through the submerged forest, green-gold sunlight split and refracted through the salt water. He'll pass spongy blooms of mauve and lilac coral, softly waving tentacles of colorful anemones brushing his skin as he descends into the silent, shadowed halls of the sea-gods. Somewhere in those waters, the dress I was wearing will still be drifting, a diaphanous ghost lost to the tides. I wonder if the currents will carry it to him, if he'll see it and take it, a keepsake of this most recent of our trysts.
I close my eyes, the late-morning sun warming my bare skin, bright behind my eyelids. A haze of dreams flutters around me, lulling me into sleep with the whisper of soft-breaking waves and the distant call of wheeling birds.
A ruffle of wingbeats rouses me and I lift myself onto one elbow, shading my eyes as I peer up into the sky. I smile as the dark silhouette takes form: sweeping gold-feathered wings, a headful of shining curls, the lithe torso of the most handsome and delightful god I know. My son, Eros.
He lands gracefully and tosses me a wide square of fabric, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he points upward. "Helios is right above us," he says.
"I suppose he is." I drape the cloak around my shoulders. The Sun God's chariot is directly overhead, the glare of the shining orb he pulls across the blue dome spilling its light across us, dazzling and clear. I know how he likes to spy.
"A sea-god?" Eros asks.
"Shellfish," I reply.
He laughs, and I see echoes of myself in his carefree attitude and the delicate shape of his face. He has no father; it was my body alone that brought him forth when I was still a new goddess. His talents stem from me—his ability to conjure infatuation, to breathe passion into souls mortal and divine, to whisper words of flattery into hopeful lovers' ears so that they can charm the object of their desire.
"So," he says, sitting on the sand beside me, tilting his face up to the gentle warmth, "what happened to the son of Eos? Have you replaced him so quickly?"
I shrug. Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, some years ago bore a mortal son with a face as glorious as her most beautiful sunrise. He grew up to become a young man so striking, he caught my eye from the heavens. "It was a brief affair," I agree. Like a fire, it burned bright and burned out. For me, anyway. "He keeps a temple to me now, in the land of his father to the east."
Eros nods. "Anyone else?" he asks.
I sit up higher. "Hermes stole my sandal."
Eros laughs again, low and mellifluous. "As a means of seduction?"
I roll my eyes. "His idea of one," I say. "For the God of Trickery, I thought it was quite poor. He sent an eagle while I was bathing in the River Achelous. It snatched up one sandal—I think he hoped I'd go and ask him for it back."
"Why not?" he asks. "Hermes is handsome."
"He is." A god of careless elegance and quick wit, not unappealing in the least. "But imagine if Zeus heard of my taking up with one of his sons. He'd try to marry me off to him before I could even get the sandal back on."
Eros wrinkles his nose. "It was probably Zeus who sent the eagle on Hermes' behalf," he agrees.
Both of us hear it at the same time: the stroke of oars splashing in the water and the thin voice of a mortal man, his song hovering on the breeze. A small boat rows toward our bay, and we exchange glances.
Eros stands up, swift and smooth, his wings outstretched again. "I have prayers to answer," he says. "A hero, longing for a king's daughter who's doomed to be sacrificed to a sea monster."
I brighten. "So he'll slay the beast?"
Eros nods. "And be rewarded." He taps the quiver of arrows slung on his back, the ones that pierce a heart with no pain or harm, swelling it with love instead.
Eros flutters away, and I'm about to follow when I hear my own name.
Aphrodite.
I look from side to side. There is no one there.
Aphrodite.
It drifts toward me on a wave of yearning, and I realize the source. The boatman may not have caught sight of me, but he's thinking of me so fervently that I can hear it like a prayer.
In a split-second I transform, this time into a human woman, aged and gray-haired, swathed in a long, dark dress.
His vessel draws nearer—a modest rowboat with a worn sail—and I see him more clearly. His weatherbeaten skin, browned by the sun and crinkling into pleats around his eyes. His beard, threaded with silver, like the thin strands of hair remaining on his head. A dog sits expectantly at his feet, gazing up, waiting for his command.
Copyright © 2026 by Jennifer Saint. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
