The Tyrant's Tomb

curse, I couldn’t have taken it back any more than she could take back her
wish. Finally, around the end of the Roman Empire, I’d heard rumors that
the Sibyl’s body had crumbled away entirely, yet still she could not die. Her
attendants kept her life force, the faintest whisper of her voice, in a glass jar.
I assumed that the jar had been lost sometime after that. That the Sibyl’s
grains of sand had finally run out. But what if I was wrong? If she were still
alive, I doubted she was using her faint whisper of a voice to be a pro-Apollo
social media influencer.
I deserved her hatred. I saw that now.
Oh, Jason Grace…I promised you I would remember what it was to be
human. But why did human shame have to hurt so much? Why wasn’t there
an off button?
And thinking of the Sibyl, I couldn’t help considering that other young
woman with a curse: Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano.
I’d been completely blindsided the day I strolled into the Olympian
throne room, fashionably late for our meeting as usual, and found Venus
studying the luminous image of a young lady floating above her palm. The
goddess’s expression had been weary and troubled…something I didn’t often
see.
“Who’s that?” I asked, foolishly. “She’s beautiful.”
That’s all the trigger Venus needed to unleash her fury. She told me
Reyna’s fate: no demigod would ever be able to heal her heart. But that did
NOT mean I was the answer to Reyna’s problem. Quite the contrary. In front
of the entire assembly of gods, Venus announced that I was unworthy. I was
a disaster. I had ruined every relationship I was in, and I should keep my
godly face away from Reyna, or Venus would curse me with even worse
romantic luck than I already had.
The mocking laughter of the other gods still rang in my ears.
If not for that encounter, I might never have known Reyna existed. I
certainly had no designs on her. But we always want what we cannot have.
Once Venus declared Reyna off-limits, I became fascinated with her.
Why had Venus been so emphatic? What did Reyna’s fate mean?
Now I thought I understood. As Lester Papadopoulos, I no longer had a
godly face. I was neither mortal, nor god, nor demigod. Had Venus somehow
known this would happen someday? Had she shown me Reyna and warned
me off knowing full well that it would make me obsessed?