VII Hera
Hera was sick. She must have been because otherwise, how could she explain what was happening to her? High color, shivers, thirst… The symptoms disappeared before she took medicine, but over the next week, she felt them every day . Something was wrong.
And there were those dreams where someone bound her hands and instead of fighting, she asked him to touch her…
Hera shook her head, trying to banish those unhealthy thoughts from her head.
Something was very wrong.
It’s his fault , she thought, reminiscing on Dago Midais and his silver eyes with slitted pupils.
His Charm did something to her. She’d never thought about sex as much as she did now. There were times when she was curious about it, but now she felt like she was obsessed with it. Considering her previous experience, it made absolutely no sense.
There was nothing interesting about sex. It was embarrassing for the participants more often than it brought them together, it could be painful, and it required more effort than it was worth. Everyone, including her friends and authors of medical textbooks, said it could be enjoyable and beneficial for health, but she thought it was overrated. Food also could be enjoyable and healthy, and she could prepare it alone . Why want more?
But her body seemed to want something more. Against logic and experience… against everything.
Like a nightmare.
She tried many times to change the course of her thoughts. She racked her brain trying to come up with an alternative to Midais’s plan. When that failed, she frantically looked through Erato Adonis’s Promiscuous Diary in search of a woman who could become his wife instead of her. When all the candidates who met her criteria turned out to be already married, she started reading The Legal Code of Ilion and Fundamentals of Politics to prove to herself that they weren’t nightmarishly boring…
To no avail.
On the eve of the deadline set by Dago, Hera was stuck. She had to choose.
Unfulfilling work and life with Dago as a jealous rival, who would certainly throw dust in her eyes, waiting for her smallest misstep?
Or professional fulfillment and life with Dago as a husband who could probably make their life together not unpleasant?
Hera sighed and leaned her head against the desk. The first solution sounded difficult, but she would show the strength of her character if she chose it. She should choose it…
Who said that? she heard a quiet thought coming from some distant corner of her mind. And even if someone did say that, why would you listen to them? Why choose the difficult solution when there is an easier one?
Hera straightened. She searched for answers to these questions, but all she could focus on was her accelerating heartbeat.
She swallowed and rose from her seat.
One couldn’t argue with logic, right?
***
Dago Midais’s castle was essentially a tower with three stories, each narrower than the one below, and like the flat platform that was the foundation of his flying island, it was built on an octagonal plan. From the ground, the entire structure resembled a cloud, but the chameleopaint with which everything was painted could change its color, so Dago could make the castle inconspicuous even on a cloudless day. Hera didn’t even try to calculate how much something like that would cost. Even if she cast all the spells that powered the castle herself, with her current income, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford even half of the huge column that Dago used as a landing pad.
As she flew over the column in question—also octagonal—Hera released the fireproof bag from her talons and carefully landed next to it. After shifting to her human form, she knelt and put on the dress she’d taken from her bag and the new sandals she’d bought to replace the ones burned by her shame. At the bottom of the stairs that wrapped around the column like a snake, a ginger kitten with feathered wings was waiting for her in front of the castle gate.
“Hi, Hera,” the imp said, staring at her curiously with his poisonous green eyes.
“Hi, Pandorian.”
They watched each other for a moment.
“Do I have to convince you to let me in, or can I just enter?” Hera eventually asked.
“You have to convince me.” The cat moved his fluffy tail right and left. “But you can’t use the same excuse as last time.”
He was so cute that Hera was tempted to approach him and give him a stroke. What stopped her was her common sense. The morpheuses of the imp class might not have had a lot of power, but the consequences of their affinity for games were sky-high. Literally and figuratively.
“Dago invited me here,” she said.
Instead of getting out of her way, the phantom licked his paw.
Ah yes. That was too logical.
“I want to see the castle.”
“Why?”
“To find out where the living room really is.”
The cat set his paw on the ground and gave her a look full of innocence and sweetness. “Why do you need that knowledge?”
“I want to know if it’s dirty or clean.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother says that men living alone in a clean house are suspicious.”
A strange sound came from the cat’s throat—a giggle, for lack of a better term.
“My mother says that if I stay with humans for too long, I will become one of them,” Pandorian said. “Mothers are so funny, aren’t they?”
“Very.” Hera nodded politely.
The imp stood briskly. “Come, I’ll show you the library. It’s really clean.”
Hera was about to ask about the living room but bit her tongue. Dago probably wouldn’t mind if she waited in the living room, but he certainly wouldn’t insist on showing her a room full of expensive magical books. Magi were usually undemonstrative when it came to their libraries. There might not be another opportunity to take a look at the Midais’s collection.
Just like last time, Pandorian led her through a door of pretentious size and up the stairs that spiraled along the smooth walls, spectacularly decorated by windows with unearthly views behind them. However, instead of continuing up to the third floor, which she now knew was entirely occupied by a darkly tasteful bathroom, he passed through a portal marking a corridor that led to the rooms on the second floor. There were three black doors on the right side of the corridor and one on the left. Each had its own columned portal, but unlike the entrance, which had a floor number engraved at the top, here there were no clues as to the purpose of the rooms behind them.
The winged cat stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned toward her. “The library is on the left,” he informed her, gesturing at the door with his little paw.
Hera glanced at it and then at the opposite one. Not hiding her suspicion, she asked, “What’s on the right?”
“I can’t tell you.” The kitten adorably cocked his head. “I can’t go in there.”
Hera hesitated, but eventually concluded that if there were no bookshelves behind the door to the left, she would simply withdraw.
She reached for the gilded doorknob…