AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Ah, you met Paris." Amusement filled her voice.
I blinked a few times. "Your tortoise is called Paris?"
"That one is. He's an old man now, coming up to eighty." Something sad crossed her face and I had the horrible realisation of just how many people and things she must have lost over her life. "Helen will be outside. She loves the sun."
"You called your tortoises Paris and Helen?" Reading up on the various clients Jinx had given me a decent enough grasp of myths and legends to have spark interest.
She raised an eyebrow. "Is that a problem?"
"I guess I'm surprised you named them after people who wronged you," I said.
"They didn't wrong me," she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's complicated. I have some coffee brewing if you want to hear about it."
"Hear the real story behind Troy?"
"Well, I don't know the whole story," she responded, turning and heading back into the kitchen. She turned down the music, but left it playing in the background.
"I only know the legends, so you're already ahead of me."
She busied herself making coffee and set a very milky one down in front of me. "It's a proper latte," she promised. "Just made with decent Greek coffee. It's the best."
"Or do you just think that because you were born in Greece?"
"I was born in Cyprus," she corrected. "But I see your point." She put her own coffee on the island and took a seat.
Memories of the night before came back in a flurry, or at least some of them.
"I cleaned it this morning," she promised. "Not that I'm going to make you, but you could eat off it."
"That wasn't what I was thinking," I responded. "I was just remembering."
"I hope it was as good in your memory as it was in reality."
"Oh, it is."
She bit her lip and a flush rushed to her cheeks. Clearly I wasn't the only one thinking about it. Aphie cleared her throat. "So Troy. I wanted the stupid golden apple, and I knew that Paris and Helen had taken an eye to one another, so I kind of manipulated the situation so they'd meet. I didn't actually realise it was going to end up a massive deal and everyone at war with each other. But I also didn't really think it through." She wrinkled her nose. "So yeah, not my finest moment."
"Then why name your tortoises after them?"
"Because I feel bad," she said softly. "Not just for how I behaved, but for the happy ending I promised them that I then didn't deliver. It's a reminder not to let my ego get the better of me. It's why I kept the apple too."
I raised an eyebrow. "You did?"
She hopped off her stool and went over to an ornate wooden dresser that didn't quite fit with the rest of the kitchen. She pulled open the glass doors and reached up.
Despite the seriousness of the conversation, I couldn't help but be a little distracted at the sight of her nightdress riding up, but I pulled my mind away from there. Hopefully, there'd be plenty of time for that later.
She turned back to me with a small golden ball in her hands, and it took me a moment to realise precisely what it was. She held it out to me.
I stared at it for a moment, trying to reconcile the idea that the golden apple of legend was in her hand.
"I promise nothing bad will come from holding it," she said. "It's just an apple."
"Hardly just." But I took it from her even so. It was lighter than I expected, but maybe that was because I'd expected something made of solid gold. I turned it over in my hands. "There aren't any words on it."
"What?"
"The legend says it had words on it about belonging to the fairest."
