Daughter of Chaos

Chapter Fifteen

She eyed me with a cynical twist to her mouth, but she didn't speak. The goddess was beautiful; even in the middle of the night, her blond hair hung in perfect ringlets, and her red dress looked like she'd just come from a fancy party. What do I look like to her? I was drenched in sweat, my hands were bleeding, and dirt from the road clung to my skin. I pushed my hair out of my face and stood up.

"It was you who helped me, right?"

She sighed. "I left the instructions in your book, yes." She sounded like she regretted it, and I scanned the path behind her, worried that the trucker would find me here and she would do nothing to save me.

Aphrodite waved a hand. "He's already forgotten everything."

I looked at her skeptically. "What about his truck being turned over?"

She shrugged elegantly. "He thinks he fell asleep at the wheel. He's going to take a vacation after he finishes this run." She rubbed her hands together as if they were dirty. She sighed again, deeply, and squinted at me in disapproval.

"Why did you come when I called if you don't want to help me?" I hadn't been racking up many politeness points with goddesses lately, but my ordeal in the truck had left me in no mood to mince words.

"Who says I don't want to help you, you silly thing?" Her laughter chimed through the dark night, both soothing and irritating at once.

"Then help me. Please," I added belatedly as her eyes narrowed slightly.

"If you can learn manners, Darlena, I might do just that." She put her hands on her hips and glared at me.

I bowed my head, waiting for her to take the lead.

"Do you understand Red magic yet, child?" Her voice held a trick, so I thought a moment before I spoke.

"I think so. Red magic causes chaos. Death, destruction, and disasters all seem to be a part of it."

The goddess sighed, and I shot her a quick look. "There is so much more subtlety to it, child. Red is the magic of chaos, yes, but chaos is the greatest force in the world. Chaos is neither good nor bad; it simply is." She paused to let me absorb this. "Do you realize the world was created in chaos?" I nodded, dim memories from mythology class tugging at my mind.

"Chaos is higher than all else, and chaos magic is the magic of the cosmos. Red magic does not cause chaos, child, it governs it."

Her words sank into my mind, and suddenly I felt like I could see clearly.

"So I don't have to kill people to be a Red?"

Aphrodite's laugh tinkled like tiny bells. "You don't have to do anything to be a Red. You use chaos magic, for good or for ill. It's not the power that causes death and destruction, but the Witch who wields that power."

I thought about that for a moment. "But what else can I do with it? Hecate seems to think I'll kill more people, Pele asked for a good disaster, and Persephone said I'm not strong enough to handle it. What else is there to chaos?"

"Love." That one word echoed around me as if Aphrodite spoke with a thousand voices, and tingles raced up my spine. "Love is the greatest chaos of all."

She had a point. I'd never felt so out of control, so consumed by chaos, as when Justin and I had been dating. Still, I hesitated. "But what do I do?"

"Choose me."

I stared at her in shock. Even though Mom seemed happy with her patron, I'd never considered making the same kind of vow. Working without a patron didn't mean you couldn't ask the gods for help from time to time, and that had always seemed preferable to the binding of choosing just one god to serve forever. I drew a shaky breath.