Twisted Strings of Fate

Chapter 60

I'm not ready for this. I can't do this. I can't do this alone. I don't want to be alone.

Charity backed away from Aphrodite, her clawed toes scraping against the glass lake as she turned and ran, the sound similar to nails against a chalkboard.

"Why are you running away, little lovebird?" Aphrodite asked sweetly. "Haven't you been looking for your dear aunt all this time?"

Charity was halfway to the shore when she felt herself being lifted from the ground, her body still running after she was up in the air. Her stomach roiled inside of her she went higher and higher before coming back down in front of Aphrodite. The flight was not fast, more like gently floating like a balloon, but it wasn't any less terrifying.

Forced to face the goddess, Charity was afraid to move, afraid to speak. Aphrodite must know everything. She must have known that Charity had talked to Clio, and thus now knew how to kill a god. It didn't matter that it was an impossible feat, the fact that she knew made her a liability.

Charity believed that her time on the Earth was coming to an end.

"Oh, you look like a mouse whose tail has been caught in a cat's mouth," Aphrodite said with a tone full of humor. "Don't be afraid. We are family. I haven't harmed you."

Charity felt something in her words, something that was forcing her to calm down, to be compliant. She would have fallen for it if she hadn't focused on Clio, the Muse wounded and bound to a pillar of glass. Charity had at first thought that she was dead, but Clio's head lulled a little. Aphrodite had done that. To another goddess. What would she do to a mere mortal?

Save me or avenge me, Clio had requested, one of the last things she had said to Charity.

How was she to do either?

"Here, to show that I am not your enemy," Aphrodite said, using her magic to gently set Charity back on the glass lake. "There. Now we can talk civilly."

Charity braced herself for something else, for this to be merely a ruse before the killing blow. But for what reason would Aphrodite need to do that? Perhaps she really did want to talk, but Charity held no hope that Aphrodite wanted to reconcile. What she did to Clio was obvious that the white swan was the same person she was long ago.

Charity straightened her spine and tried not to shake. "Aren't you going to kill me?" she asked. Might as well get the hard question out of the way first.

Aphrodite's beak lifted but only on one side, the smile not touching her eyes. "I will be candid with you Charity. I have no plans to kill you now or any time soon. Believe it or not, I need you."

"Why?" Charity quickly asked, her brow furrowing.

Aphrodite gave a sultry sigh. "Because you and I are connected. That spell that my sister almost finished, it was supposed to take away all my magic." She lazily circled Charity like a panther. "The spell should have given my magic to her. My guess was that she would have used it to heal herself. But she died before the spell could be completed. And that's when things became complicated."

When Aphrodite paused, Charity took a guess. "It took your blood instead of your magic."

"Yes, but you already figured that part out," Aphrodite said. "But it didn't just take my blood. Even though my sister didn't finish the spell, her death was enough sacrifice to finish what she had started. The spell siphoned my magic, but since she was already dead, it had to go somewhere. Care to guess where?"

Charity thought about it before shaking her head.

"Oh, but you're so good at guessing," Aphrodite said, disappointed. "It went into my own spell."

Charity shook her head, not sure what the goddess was talking about, then her eyes widened. "The curse?"

"Yes. Normally, my little love spell should have only affected my sister and that stupid hero," she said, her voice turning vehement near the end. "It was a big surprise to find out that not only had my sister laid an egg, but that the spell also affected her daughter. And every child sired thereafter."

Eyes widening, Charity thought things through. "But your magic was still being siphoned because of the spell. It should have made you powerless."

"Yes, but for one thing," Aphrodite said, her body shivering with delight. "The spell did more than just give my sister's pain to her husband. Their pain gave me strength. It fed me."

"It fed you. The curse gives you more power," Charity said, thinking things through. "So you'd keep getting more power from each bond, which only fed the curse, letting it survive to the next generation."
"You are a smart one. There's a reason I favored you above your other relatives," Aphrodite said, her voice honeyed. "I knew you would be the one to figure me out."

"But you could have stopped me. Why did you let me figure it out? Why did you help me?" Charity asked suspiciously. "Was this all some game?"

Aphrodite huffed prettily, her beak turned into a pout. "It's these modern days. Oh, I'm all for women to have their independence, to prove they can be just as good as men, but it's this whole idea that a woman doesn't need a man that doesn't make sense to me. Don't women want to be loved and adored? Don't they want to be lavished and worshipped? It's enough for a goddess of love to lose hope for the world."

Charity remained silent. She had a feeling that a lot of this was a sort of drama that had to be played out. If she was patient enough, everything would make sense.

"Things were going so well for your family. I tried to be good for your family. I even put your step-father in the right spot to be there for your mother when your biological father died so that she wouldn't be alone," Aphrodite said, making it sound as if Charity's father had died of natural causes instead of being killed. "But then you came along. Oh, you were the most delicious of creatures, falling in love so young, and to a television hero no less. Never had my curse been so strong for someone to create a bond from a long distance.

"And then you fell in love with your childhood friend, and I was already laying the groundwork for a storybook ending. It was going to amazing with all the twists and turns of a whirlwind romance ending with a beautiful, backyard wedding. The two of you would have been such a cute pair."

Charity almost saw it, as if she were reading Aphrodite's mind. She saw herself in a simple white dress, Launchpad in a tux, and the two of them getting married with all their friends and family around them. She felt a bit of joy at the sight but realized this must be Aphrodite's doing. She was projecting the image inside Charity's mind.

"Stop it," Charity cried out, her feelings being manipulated by the image. In an instant, it was gone. She felt sorrow and hollow loss, wishing it was back. But she told herself it wasn't real, not even those feelings of romantic love for Launchpad.

"And when you fell for two more heroes, I couldn't believe my luck. Four heroes! Not the most bonded to one person, but that was certainly a lot of pain for one person to handle," Aphrodite said. Her smile turned cruel. "Your agony was delicious."

The smile didn't last. Aphrodite reached out and grabbed a strand of Charity's hair, keeping a firm grip. "But then you…you tried to kill yourself. No, that wouldn't do." She pulled on Charity's hair. "I was very displeased with you then. It was a good thing that I was watching at that moment, that I could send your step-father home just in time to save you. You owe me for that." Aphrodite yanked again, this time hard enough to cause Charity to shriek.

"And that should have been the end of it. You promised your friend that you would never do it again," Aphrodite said, letting go of Charity's hair and walking away. "And that was that. I even started planning a new wedding. Your childhood friend is handsome and kind enough, but I realized that you weren't compatible. No, those other two were much better. I had a hard time deciding which one to cross your path. The dark, handsome stranger, or the kind, sweet genius. Do you want to know which one I decided for you to fall in love with?"

Charity didn't answer. She kept her face level, her breathing calm.

"You're no fun," Aphrodite said. "But I guess it wouldn't have mattered. Because by that time you had made your decision. You had decided to not choose any of them. It wouldn't have mattered who I sent your way; you would rather die old, alone and miserable rather than give into love."

"That's not why," Charity finally said. "And you know it."
Aphrodite waved off her comment. "Oh, how noble of you, to refuse to give into love so not to give birth to a child. How selfish of you."

"I refused to give you another victim," Charity said.

"You broke tradition," Aphrodite condemned. "And that was a problem. It was why I planted the idea of breaking the curse in your grandmother's mind."

Charity's eyebrows furrowed. "But why?"

"Because then you would meet all your suitors. You would come to know them, experience your love for them, long for them, yearn for them," Aphrodite said, her voice turning sinful as if she had lived vicariously through Charity. "It nearly worked. How many times had you given into temptation?"

Charity remembered each time she longed to give into love, the kisses she shared with Fenton and Drake, and even the warning she gave to Drake, about how if he pushed her hard enough, she would have caved. "But it didn't work."

"Sadly," Aphrodite agreed. "But by that time, I couldn't stop you. And here we are."

"But there's one thing I don't understand," Charity said, anger rising inside her. "It's always been one child, one baby born per family. Except for Pendi and Asa's twins, who were murdered on your orders. Why? Why not let more children be born and the curse spread to more people? That would give you more power."

"Ah, that is…something that I hadn't anticipated," Aphrodite said. "You see, pain is a powerful conductor. Before my sister's daughter grew up and became bonded to a hero, I eked out my life with what magic I had left. But once that bond formed and the pain flowed from one body to another, the power was intoxicating and made me very powerful. More powerful than I had ever been before.

"But then my niece had a child of her own and bonded her own hero. And then another. More power flowed to me, more than I knew what I could do with. I soon found out that a body—even an immortal one—could hold only so much power. I either had to siphon off that power or burn from the inside out."

Aphrodite smiled as if she were telling a joke. "So I created the gods." She raised her hand, and a glass figure of Zeus grew from the lake. "I used my own Ichor to change him into an immortal, then gave him some of my power. But it wasn't enough. I brought others to Ithaquack and transformed them, and we became the most powerful beings ever to have existed."

"Not powerful enough to escape your prison," Charity couldn't help but say.

"That could not be helped," Aphrodite snapped. "My prison lasted as long as my sister's blood remained. Your blood. So to end my prison would be to end myself. I'd rather be trapped here than to die."

Charity disagreed. She had been trapped by the curse long enough to know that freedom was better than an extended life.

"So my blood keeps you imprisoned. It keeps you powerful. And it fuels the gods," Charity said. She felt as if a large weight fell on her shoulders, as if she could physically feel the gods pulling the energy from her. "And it can kill you."

"So you aren't going to pretend that darling Clio didn't tell you that precious secret?" Aphrodite said with a smile. "How do you expect to defeat me if you show your hand?"

Charity gulped. "I don't know. I'm kind of winging it here. Perhaps I'm still hoping that there's some reasoning with you."

"Reasoning?" Aphrodite threw back her head and laughed. It was exaggerated, but she still looked beautiful doing it. "You thought you could reason with me?"

"Well, as you said, you need me," Charity said. "You need me to survive. Once my family dies out, so do you."

Any mirth that Aphrodite had disappeared from her face. "Yes, that does mean we are at an impasse? Or do you have a proposal? Some sort of compromise? Or do you still harbor hopes that you can trick me and kill me?"

"I don't think so," Charity said honestly. "You're too old to be tricked."

Aphrodite frowned at the slight to her age.

"And I'm no hero. I doubt I could fight you," Charity said. "And now that I've talked to you, I know there's no reasoning with you. You won't accept any compromise. And to be honest, neither will I."

"Then what are you going to do?" Aphrodite asked smugly. "What is your plan? You've been so clever up to this point. Dazzle me with your intentions."

Charity had realized what would have to be done not long ago. She was resigned to her plan. "Nothing," she said without an ounce of smugness.

"Nothing?" Aphrodite said with a half-laugh.

"Nothing," Charity reaffirmed. "You won't kill me no matter what I do. So I intend to wither away and die, which had been my plan from the beginning. And there's not a single thing you can do to stop me."

Aphrodite's eyes darted around. "But—I could—I'll erase your memories. I'll send you back, and you'll fall in love and have a child."

Charity shrugged. "You can try, but I don't think you can change a decision I made a long time ago."

"I can make you forget your suicide attempt," Aphrodite said. "Take away all that depression and sadness. How happy you'll be when one of your heroes falls in love with you all over again."

"I made this decision way before then," Charity said. "Back when I was a kid, when I was watching my father torture my mother. I knew then that I never wanted to bring that level of pain to another human being. I promised I would never have a child. Is that something that erasing my memories could change? I don't think so. I think it's too much a part of me to alter. You'd have to erase everything I am to change that."

It had only been a guess, but by the look on Aphrodite's face, it was true.

"I don't have to kill you with my blood," Charity said. "I just have to die."

She watched as Aphrodite's face changed back and forth through many emotions: anger, hatred, fear and resignation. A part of her had expected for the goddess to kill her then and there. Charity had already accepted that her death was a possibility, and she did not fear it. She only would leave behind many regrets.

But Aphrodite didn't kill her. Instead, she relaxed, her face going slack and dark. It was more horrible than the thought of the goddess killing her.

"Well…if that's the way it is with you, then it seems as if I have no choice," she said to Charity. "But you must remember, everything that happens next will be your fault." Raising her hand, she summoned four pillars of light that shot down from the sky. When the light cleared, Drake, Fenton, Jim and Launchpad stood before them. Before they could react or speak, four glass pillars shot from the ground and the same glass tendrils that bound Clio wrapped around them, securing them in place.

"Charity!" they shouted, confused and frightened.

Charity wheeled to rush to them, but Aphrodite grabbed her hair from behind then clenched her chin between two strong, manicured fingers.

"Since you refuse to play nicely," Aphrodite whispered in her ear. "Then you can watch them die."

(Author's notes: Almost done. Tomorrow will be Chapter 61 and Monday I'll post the ending chapter, # 62. I'm very excited to see what everyone thinks about the ending. Thank you everyone for reading.)