Joy In Love (Daughters of Cupid Book 1) Page 15

  Whomever my heart led me—to Damen.

  “What is it?” Eros asked. “This does not please you?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean—I want to go home. I want to be with Faith, Hope, and Cherish. But—what happened to Marisol? Is she okay?”

  Eros came to my side and put his arm around me. “Do not be troubled, sweet Joy. She is well, and her time well earned. Fate is kind to those who hold their belief in the Creator.”

  He held up the quiver of arrows. “He goes to the depths of the land of souls to search for you.”

  I stared at the arrows, their feathered end tips stiff and unyielding as I brushed my fingertips across them. My heart skipped a beat. Even in my absence, Damen searched for me. He saw me die, didn’t he?

  “You did not harm him?”

  Eros squeezed my shoulder. “He has not as many years in this world as I, but he is wise to know when the battle is at equal odds. We would circle each other for eternity, which is saying something for a son of Chaos.”

  “He is well?”

  “You have changed him.”

  I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. I walked along with my father as we passed several more white columns. “I don’t know how I could have.” Not that I hadn’t tried.

  “When you see him, you will know.”

  “I can go back to him?”

  Eros pulled out the silver-tipped arrow. “There is more than one type of love, daughter. Come, there is much I need to teach you in the little time we have.”

  “I’m to go back, then?” I dared a glance over at him.

  His eyes sparkled with amusement. “As soon as you learn to fly.”

  28

  With the Carnavale over, the streets of Venice seemed quiet and deserted almost. I could hear the waters in the canal under the bridge lapping at the sides of the buildings, the gentle sloshing in the motion of the tide coming in and circulating through the city.

  I’d spent almost a month with my father, learning that with my wings came great responsibility. I tucked them in and kept them hidden from the eyes of mortals.

  I could have gone anywhere to test out my new skills. Faith tried to persuade me to go to Rome. Cherish insisted I come home. But in the end, Hope had suggested I return to Venice.

  There was something about this city that was both beautiful and sad to me at the same time. It was where my father met my mother and where I had been born.

  The waters gleamed with an emerald glint as the sun moved over a building and cast its light into the waters. To my left, a pigeon cooed, and another called from across the bridge.

  A few streets ahead was the square where Napoleon once ruled this area, and it made me think of the man who once lived during this time. The one I met here on this very bridge.

  I touched my lips as I spotted a couple down the canal on another bridge. They embraced, and the woman laughed. It sent a little tickle of giddiness inside me. I recognized it for what it was, love. Not strong yet, but strong enough, it would start to bloom. And for him, it was there. Dormant and shy.

  There was no one around me to watch as I adjusted my bow and arrow over my shoulder. I didn’t need them. Not for the kind of love between this couple. I pressed my fingers to my lips and blew them a kiss. I watched as a sparkle of my essence floated down the canal and landed on the man’s cheek.

  Even from this distance, I could see his eyes widen, the slow smile that lifted his lips. She blushed at something he said, and he slid his arm around her. Her head went to his shoulder, and they moved on to the other side of the bridge.

  Sometimes love was more comfortable to give than it was to receive.

  I tucked my hands into my jeans pockets, and the breeze lifted a wisp of my hair. Under the bridge, a gondola elongated and the man standing at the helm with the oar in his hand caused my chest to squeeze. Not a man, but a dark-skinned satyr. I spotted the nubs of his horns in his dark, curled hair. His eyes, gold and gleaming, glanced up as he came into view.

  In the boat, another man sat, hunched.

  “Damen.” His name escaped my lips.

  He looked up, his eyes as startling as his expression. They were blue, royal blue. Our gazes locked, and he sat up straighter.

  He blinked, and his brows drew in confusion.

  Jace maneuvered the gondola to the side not far from the bridge, where there was a dock to tie it.

  I couldn’t move. I had been replaying an imagined version of this moment in my mind for nearly a month.

  Oh, please…

  I giggled, hearing Faith’s voice in the back of my mind. As if you didn’t believe he would come.

  While my sisters and I still had the ability to speak to each other no matter where we were, the connection had changed. I could choose when and where to allow it, a filter of sorts, where before they could invade my mind and even know what I was thinking. Eros had taught me to block my memories, my thoughts, for there would be others who would use them should they invade my mind. I think he meant Damen, as I could see Eros did not trust the son of Chaos.

  He also taught me to trust my heart.

  And I gave it to Damen on that night months ago when a young half-mortal girl named Joy gave in to an immortal bent on revenge and torn by his devotion to another.

  It wasn’t my heart I came here for.

  “You came.” I held onto the stone railing of the bridge.

  I deemed this bridge ours. It was the one with the cherub in the center of the arch—the one where Damen kissed me and inserted his dark thread. It held my heart, and I missed it. I missed him.

  “I have searched the realms for you,” he croaked, his face shadowed by the growth of a beard. His skin paler, and his hair longer. It made me want to reach and run my hands through it even if he looked like he’d been to hell and back.

  I went to him anyway. I wrapped my arms around him and held on. Slowly, his arms went around mine, his face nuzzling my neck. I almost cried from the sheer delight of his scent, his warmth.

  Eros had been right. I had changed him. I could see it in his eyes as he brought his hands up to my face and looked deeply into my soul. I shivered and let him search until he said, “You’re here. You’re alive.”

  For a man who had lived centuries, he seemed more mortal than others. And broken. His heart cried out to mine.

  He was as incomplete as I. “I told you I would be with you always.”

  “In heart.”

  “Always,” I said.

  “Now that I’ve found you, I’m not letting you go again.”

  He’d gotten possessive again.

  “Kidnapping me again?”

  “If I have to,” he said.

  “I’m the one who told you where to find me.” I glanced over at Jace. He sat on the boat and nodded his acknowledgment toward me. Turned out, after the showdown at Marisol’s wedding, Giles and Jace had come to a truce. Surprising, since my half-brother was usually more brawn than brains, but I had to give him credit. Getting updates on Damen had helped me cope with being separated from him all these weeks while I trained. My sisters came to visit at Father’s domain, but Damen wasn’t allowed. And I couldn’t leave until I could fly, which my father waited until last to teach me.

  “Is this some sort of payback then?” Damen started to pull away.

  “Did my father torture you?” Because it sure felt like torture at times being apart from him.

  “If you call torture spending every hour of every day trying to find you, not knowing where you were, then yes. I have been tortured to the point of not knowing.”

  “Even though I was dead?”

  “It nearly killed me when you disappeared from my arms.”

  “I gave you my heart.”

  “And you have mine. Oh, baby Cherub. I do not know what power has brought you back to me, but you have my heart. You have my everything if only you will say you are mine.”

  Silly son of Chaos. I grinned at him.

  “You say I have your hea
rt, but you have yet to give it to me.” I pressed my hand against his chest. I felt it beating, and it was the best feeling ever.

  “Take it.”

  “And the thread of fate that once curled around mine?”

  “It’s here.” His hand covered mine. Damen’s eyes had this dangerous glint, and a storm brewing inside them. I recognized that storm, as I many times had endured it through my training. Its fear and finality. Then his lips came crashing down on mine.

  I’d been thirsty for months, a desire building inside me for one thing and one thing only. I drank of him, and he tilted his head, angled to deepen the kiss, and his heart skipped a beat under my palm.

  I was dizzy with the intensity of his kiss. Soon the taste of something sweet slipped past my lips and sent a shudder through my body. For a heartbeat, then two, both our hearts stopped, and when they beat again, they were as one.

  Pulling away, Damen brushed a curl of my hair back from my face. “You’ve had me under your spell since I captured you, baby Cherub.”

  “It wasn’t a spell.” I was so in love with this man it radiated through my entire being. I could feel his love for me. “You gave me back the thread.”

  “Yes, but as I have yours, you now have mine. We’ll be entwined for as long as we exist. Although I’m not sure how it is, you are alive. I held you as you took your last breath. I watched you disappear. I went to Thanatos to try to get you back.”

  I explained to him what happened. I watched as those blue eyes darkened and held my breath for a full minute to see if they would turn black. They didn’t. Instead, they seemed to shine brighter.

  “I can’t believe you went to confront death.”

  “It wasn’t that hard. Although it amused him.”

  The image of the great Damen De Santis going before a superior, such as Thanatos, for me caused tears of bliss to blur my vision. “

  “You amused death?”

  “And I would again to save you.” He took my hand, sent gooseflesh rising against my wrist. “Marisol needed my protection. In return, I asked for her loyalty and love. She provided me with companionship, and I prolonged her life. To love makes one weak and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Only it did.” He brushed his thumb around my wrist and the silver and gold bracelet he’d given me for my birthday reappeared. “It reminded me of the stars in the night, the way they glittered across the waters on the night I found you at this bridge. I knew even before I threatened, that I could never lower you into Tartarus’s arms. You’d be like one of these tiny shining diamonds in the night, your light always there like a beacon calling me.”

  “And the kiss?” Oh, upon my death, I’d remembered that kiss.

  “I take care of those in my household, Joy. It angered me that Marisol would take such extremes to leave the comforts I had given her for such a weak thing. I wanted to teach her a lesson, and Cupid for interfering with my business.”

  “Love isn’t weak.” My pulse raced under his touch.

  “I would have died in your place. Eros’s arrow was meant for me.”

  I shook my head. “No. It was always my fate, not yours. My father explained I had to die. I could not become what I am if I hadn’t.”

  “And you would return to me?” he asked.

  “Forever, if you’ll make me but one promise.”

  “And what promise is that?”

  “That you’ll let me keep my shoes on when we get home.”

  He tilted back his head and laughed, yanking me closer. I wrapped my arms around his neck, ready for the kiss that would seal our fate from this moment forward.

  Thank You For Reading

  I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Reviews are so helpful to authors. I really appreciate all reviews, both positive and negative. You don’t have to write anything if you don’t want to, just touch the stars 1–5 at the end of this book on your Kindle device.

  Author’s Note

  I hope you enjoyed Joy’s adventure in falling in love to getting her wings. Most of this book was inspired by a trip I took in 2018 to Italy. Many of the locations are based upon real places that I visited while on that trip. I wanted to bring the beauty and awe of these places and their history to you and hope you found them as romantic and alluring as I did. I haven’t forgotten about Joy’s other three sisters, and if you’re interested in their stories they’ll be coming. I plan on releasing one each Valentine’s Day for this series. I have to say, though, the best part of writing this book was going back while editing and falling in love with these characters all over again. Faith, Hope, or Cherish: which sister would you like to read next?

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, God, and my family for everything. There would be no books without you. Thank you to Linda Au and TGB Editing for your excellent proofreading and editing skills. This book is immensely better because of you. Thank you to my youngest, who kept reading over my shoulder, waiting to find out what happened next. And thank you to Josephine Blake, at Covers and Cupcakes, for taking my idea for a cover and making it into the beautiful cover art you hold in your hands.

  About Eliza

  Eliza Chambers invites readers into a world where love and light prevail. Join Eliza for fantastical adventures based on mythology and ancient folklore.

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