Aphrodite Pandemos held the shell mirror over the steaming pool and watched the water refuse to answer her. The bathhouse glowed gold around her, its columns warm with morning light. She had come to the Venus Thermae to see the pairing before she sealed it: Sophia Alderwyne, the clever Alderwyne heir, matched to Hermes, the messenger who already loved her. It should have been the easiest bond of her long career. Every bloodline she braided between god and mortal thickened the divine world's roots, and this one was meant to be her proof. The mirror showed only her own face. She tilted the pearl toward the light and tried again. Nothing. A dove landed on the rim of the pool, its pearls chiming softly against gold. Peristera cocked her head at the empty glass. "I know," Aphrodite said. "She won't let me see." She had watched Sophia for weeks. The girl was sharp the way a blade was sharp, edge turned outward. She joked when asked what she wanted. She changed the subject when Hermes leaned too close. Aphrodite could read desire in anyone who let it surface. Sophia kept hers buried under the Alderwyne name, under her new fashion house, under every clever answer she had ever learned to give. Without a named want, the mirror could not match her. And a bond forced onto a hidden heart curdled. Aphrodite had seen it before. The mortal turned cruel. The god turned bored. The blood soured in the line. She fastened the pearl-and-shell girdle at her waist and stepped down from the bathhouse. Sophia was in the garden below, standing with Hermes near a fountain. She wore a camel coat over a pale bodysuit and a heavy gold pendant. Hermes stood too close, grinning at something she had just said. Sophia laughed, then stepped back before the laugh finished. Aphrodite watched that half-step. That was the answer. "Sophia," she said, coming down the path. "Walk with me." Sophia glanced at Hermes. "One minute." They walked to the edge of the fountain. Aphrodite did not lift the mirror. She set it face-down on the stone. "I was going to bind you to him today," she said. Sophia's jaw tightened. "Bind." "A match. Blessed. Permanent." "Don't." Aphrodite waited. "I like him," Sophia said. "Honestly. That's the problem. I don't know if I like him, or if I like being chosen by someone quick enough to keep up." She looked at her hands. "I won't answer that in front of you. Or him." "Then I can't match you," Aphrodite said. "Not yet." She picked up the mirror and turned back toward the bathhouse. Peristera lifted from the columns and circled once. Aphrodite had come to seal a bond and was walking away without one. Hermes was still waiting by the fountain, still smiling, still expecting the day he had been promised. She would have to tell him.