"The moment I met you,
I held my breath.
And you've been taking
it away ever since,
Nico di Angelo."
[ NICO DI ANGELO x MALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
[ HEROES OF OLYMPUS SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0008. | THE WORST DAY OF A MOTHER'S LIFE
Aphrodite would never have suspected her life to have been difficult, and some may agree that she did in fact live an easy life, but she couldn't quite believe it. She had a torn heart, completely broken by her marriage to a man who didn't love her as he should, just as she didn't love him as she should.
But she knew how her torn heart was a laughing stock amongst the Olympians. How the goddesses mocked her for being beautiful and the gods sneered at her for not loving them. She despised their ignorance to only see her as a beautiful thing rather than a person with a mind and a soul. She was a beautiful joke to them all and she tried so hard not to be spiteful. She tried so hard to be who she was meant to be - to love wholeheartedly.
But how could she love so greatly and purely if she had a torn heart?
Even her children she could not love fully, because she had to share her love with their fathers. Deimos and Phobos and Eros with Ares, and Hermaphroditus with Hermes, and Eryx with Poseidon. She was torn even in her unyielding love for her children.
But then came her son, Vela. He was her son. No one else's. She didn't have to share her love for him with anyone, she was just able to adore him completely all on her own because she was his mother and he was her son. Her little star who she would do anything for; even make a soulmate for him because she didn't mind if he loved someone else more than he loved her, she only wanted him to be happy. He was her most selfless love, her most gracious love that she would never regret. Her little boy who had not broken her heart, only healed it.
It was why it hurt so much to see him pained by the world. To watch how Zeus and Hera used him for their games with the Fates, never caring about the scars that marred his beautiful body. She despised them for it. Those young gods who had made themselves a king and queen to rule her when she was aeons older. And now they hurt her son. The little boy she loved more than anything in the world. More than Ares, more than Deimos or Phobos or Eros, or any mortal lover she chose along the way, she loved Vela the most.
And that was why this was the worst day of her life.
Vela had called on a crisp white pegasi named Eirene that he chose to ride into battle. She knew he got travel sick from his PTSD of crashing as a star, but he swore he would be alright if he rode Eirene.
Aphrodite was to take her own chariot as to not wrinkle her armoured dress; she had hoped to travel with Ares, but he had denied her. He said it was too dangerous to be near him in war where he was in his element and a target. He couldn't risk her getting hurt as a hazard for him.
