Starry Night

1

Orion

It all started with an email. No, not the kind where a Nigerian prince wanted to give me all his money. I was too smart to fall for that. Again. This email was from some dating website called Heart2Heart. I almost deleted it four or five times. I’m still not sure what kept me from consigning the message to the trash. Maybe I was bored. Or wanted to believe the notion I had a romantic destiny.

Sighing heavily, I tapped on the message and read it for the tenth time.

Ready to meet the love of your life this Valentine’s Day? Put your trust in Cupid!

You know that here at Heart2Heart we’ve helped thousands of lonely hearts find their perfect match, mate, and bond over the last five years.

Now, your romantic future is about to get even brighter thanks to the cheeky cherub themself, Cupid. Known worldwide as the number one matchmaker, we’re thrilled to partner with them for this special Valentine’s Day event in which they’ll use H2H’s enormous database to find the magical match that’s just right for you.

Ready to embrace your romantic destiny? Put your trust in Cupid and sign up today.

Until the email arrived, I’d never heard of Heart2Heart. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about my romantic destiny in, oh, a millennium or so.

I know what you’re thinking. Okay, Boomer! You’re only as old as you feel. Let me tell you, I felt each and every one of my 5,03 years. Damn, it made me feel old when I said it out loud.

It’s probably a good idea if I introduce myself before I go any further.

My name is Orion Starborn. No, Starborn isn’t my actual last name; I created it for legal purposes. Turns out you can’t get a social security card, driver’s license, or birth certificate with only one name here in the good old US of A. Makes me wonder if the government made exceptions for Cher, Madonna, and Prince.

I was born into the empire of ancient Greece in what is now Messina, Sicily, in the year 3008 BC, to Euryale and Poseidon. If you’ve read Greek mythology or watched those Percy Jackson movies, you’ve heard of my father. You know, the god of the sea. Euryale was the sister of Medusa. Yes, that Medusa, the one with the slithery hairdo, who could turn men to stone with one glance. Thanks to circumstances beyond my control, I’m an immortal demigod.

No, really. I am. Which makes me the ultimate nepo baby.

Anyway, back to the email I couldn’t seem to delete. I hated Valentine’s Day with a literal burning passion. If I could incinerate every Hallmark store, florist, and candy shop within a one-mile radius, I would have. I mean, I could, but I wouldn’t.

Maybe.

I’m betting you see me as some brokenhearted loser whose only goal in life was to get through the season of love with my heart intact in its ice-encased coffin. A metaphorical coffin, not an actual coffin.

I’m magically gifted, but I’m definitely not able to remove my heart at will. That’s the stuff of legend and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . Let’s face it, Indy is legendary. Have you seen him in those tight pants and leather jacket, cracking his whip? Mmmmm!

Where was I? Oh yeah, my literal burning hatred of Valentine’s Day and my eternally broken heart.

It all started a thousand years before the birth of Christ. I really am that old. Ask me sometime about my skin regimen. I was crazy in love with Apollo, god of everything under the sun. His eyes were the deepest brown, his dark curls begged to be stroked, while his olive skin glistened like the Mediterranean on a summer’s day.

Sounds promising, right? Wrong. No matter how I tried to capture Apollo’s attention, he never so much as cast a glance my way. But I didn’t let his attitude stop me. I had an ace in the hole, so to speak, in the form of my best friend, Cupid.

Yes, that Cupid. The very same cherub who was working with Heart2Heart, claiming he could find everyone’s perfect match. The very same son-of-a-goddess who promised me my heart’s desire but got me killed instead.

But Orion, I thought you said you were an immortal demigod?

Please hold all questions until the end…

Cupid told me the best way to get Apollo’s attention was to ignore him. Tale as old as time. So I listened to my friend and did just that. Instead of mooning over Apollo, I went hunting with his sister, Artemis, who, truth be told, was the only person, goddess or mortal, whose talent with a bow rivaled my own.

We spent months on the hunt together. Killing wild boar, deer, hares, you name it. I threw lavish feasts in her honor. People would come from miles around to fete the goddess and to pray their own hunts would be successful. Artemis and I were having the time of our lives until Apollo got wind of what we’d been up to.

I’d finally caught Apollo’s eye. He showed up at one of the feasts, practically vibrating with rage. Not only was he angry I appeared to be courting his sister, but also that I’d stopped lavishing him with all of my attention, praise, and sacrifices. Gods, am I right? Can’t live with them. Can’t live…at all, actually.

I did my best to explain to Apollo he was the one I was trying to impress. Whose eye I was trying to catch. He was my one true love. The man of my dreams. My sun and my moon.

Apollo was having none of my excuses and flowery words. He struck me blind, telling me I would never again be able to look upon his fair sister’s face. I begged and pleaded for him to return my sight so I could hunt again. With my sight restored, I would become a hunter of even greater renown, rivaling even his sister’s talents, all in Apollo’s name. I promised to build temples to revere him and to sacrifice a thousand bulls in his honor, if only he would heal me.

Not only were my pleas all in vain, but vowing I would eclipse his sister with my bow and arrow was the absolute worst thing I could have said in that moment. Apollo created a giant scorpion from the sand beneath his feet. He promised to spare my life if I could defeat the beast. Without my eyes, my sword and bow were useless. When my arms tired and I could no longer stand, the creature came for me, stinging me relentlessly. I felt its poison course through my veins, burning like a thousand suns. I spent my last breath begging Apollo for mercy, which he did not grant.

Later, I found myself on Charon’s ferry, handing over a coin for my passage to the Underworld, where I was doomed to spend an eternity suffering, alone and blind, mourning my own misfortune and the loss of Apollo.

Oh, stop your sniffling. Spoiler alert: I didn’t spend an eternity in Hades. Artemis, grief-stricken over my death, begged Zeus to place me among the stars. Which he did, but he also placed the scorpion alongside me as a warning that no mortal, demigod or not, could ever eclipse a god of Olympus.

Zeus always was a dick.

As it turned out, Artemis wasn’t the only goddess who was in love with me. Aphrodite, unbeknownst to Apollo, sent my corpse to Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, who was able to revive my mortal body and restore my sight on the condition I leave Greece for all eternity. At the goddess of love’s command, I was to be made immortal until such time as I was able to find true love and have it returned to me.

It would be a cold day in Hades before I allowed my heart to overrule my head again. I accepted the arrangement and escaped to Carthage, across the Mediterranean Sea. I was whole again, with one small exception. Instead of the cerulean eyes praised by poets, I was left with one eye green as the forest and one eye golden as summer wheat.

If I was being honest, immortality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I’d spent the last several millennia drifting from place to place. I was a vagabond. A man without a country, never once finding a place that remotely felt like home. All the while keeping my heart safe in its ice-encased coffin.

Until today.

I couldn’t help thinking Cupid owed me one. I never thought he’d amount to much, but of all the Olympian gods, he was the only one who remained relevant in this modern age. Zeus’s magnificent temples lay in ruins. As did Apollo’s Oracle of Delphi. No one prayed to Athena for her wisdom or to Demeter for a bountiful harvest. Cupid was all that remained of the bygone, classical era.

Clicking the link in the Heart2Heart email, I started to create a profile. Like the ad said, my romantic destiny was waiting.