Chapter 2 #2
Beside me, Hermes sat on a flat stone, swirling a fig leaf in a half-empty cup of wine. “He really doesn’t do well with no ,” he said.
I watched Apollo’s hands on the strings, the light in his hair, the perfection of his face. Nothing within me stirred.
“No,” I said softly. “He doesn’t.”
I kept the rest of my thoughts a secret. Apollo was not the one I missed.
The mead was thick and golden, laced with crushed petals and herbs that numbed the tongue and warmed the throat. Hermes refilled my cup without asking. His own was already empty. He drank like someone who never worried about the cost.
“Do you see her?” he said, nodding toward a mortal girl wrapped in violet-dyed linen, weaving through the dancers with the grace of a hunted deer.
“She’s run from three suitors tonight. One was a blacksmith with hands like tree bark.
Another was a poet who tried to win her with a poem he definitely stole from Hesiod.
The third—ah, that one’s a mystery. She whispered his name to a tree and then bit the bark until it bled. ”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you know this how?”
“I’m terribly observant,” he said, grinning. “Also, the tree told me.”
The libations made me warm enough to laugh, a soft thing. The world shimmered around us: smoke from the fires curling upward in blue spirals, the nymphs gliding like mist between the dancers, and the sky above smeared with stars.
“Now, that boy,” Hermes went on, pointing with his cup, “thinks he’s descended from Poseidon. He’s not. But he’s convinced a girl from the coast he can breathe underwater. He’s never seen the sea.”
“And that one?” I asked, tipping my chin toward a reed-thin man with a crooked nose and three lovers hanging on him.
“Oh, that’s one of mine,” Hermes said smugly. “Born with his fingers crossed. He’ll sell his grandmother for a good joke and a better lie.”
Apollo’s music threaded through it all, light, aching, full of restrained beauty.
It wound around the revelers like ivy, pulling them in, making their joy seem deeper than it was.
I could feel his attention drifting toward me again, delicate and constant.
He was playing for everyone, but his thoughts were not communal.
They tickled at me like a breeze behind my ear.
Why don’t you look at me?
Because I know what you want, and I will not give it. The cup in my hand was nearly empty when I felt a shift—not in the music, not in the revelry, but in the air around us. It was the way space clears before a quiet truth enters the room.
Hephaestus came without torchlight or flourish. No ivy crown or perfume of divine roses. Just the smell of forge smoke, oil, and iron. His steps were uneven, slow, and honest. He moved through the dancers like someone used to not being seen.
But I saw him.
He glanced my way, once, and then looked away quickly. As if it had been a mistake.
I moved aside on the low stone bench without speaking, patting the space between Hermes and me. He hesitated. Then sat, careful and quiet, his broad hands resting on his knees.
“Evening,” Hermes said. “You’re late.”
“I was working,” Hephaestus said, his voice low and rough like stones settling in a riverbed. “Didn’t realize the night had started.”
“Time’s a liar,” Hermes said cheerfully. “But the mead’s still good.”
Hephaestus nodded. I poured him a cup.
We sat like that for a while—the three of us. The beautiful music carried on. The fires crackled. Laughter rose and fell like wind in wheat. Somewhere behind us, someone screamed in pleasure or madness or both.
Hephaestus sipped his honeyed drink slowly.
“You’ve been missed,” I said softly.
He didn’t look at me. “Most people don’t notice when I’m gone.”
“I do.”
The words surprised even me.
Hermes said nothing, but I could feel his smile. Not mocking. Just pleased.
The forge god gave a quiet grunt, the closest thing to gratitude I think he could manage. His shoulder brushed mine slightly. It was solid. Real. Not golden or glowing. Just comfortable and steady.
I liked it more than I expected.
The mead dulled the edges of the firelight. Or maybe the fire itself had softened, grown contemplative like the music.
Hephaestus sat beside me, not fidgeting, not trying to charm. Just being. It was a rare kind of comfort, divine, but undemanding.
“You don’t come to these often,” I said, watching the play of gold on his forearms. They were marked with burns and soot, rings of dark where the forge kissed him too closely.
He shrugged, a quiet roll of thick shoulders. “They’re not built for me.”
“Maybe they should be.”
He huffed. “You’re kind.”
“No,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I’m observant.” At the echo of his earlier words, Hermes grinned.
The god of the forge, however, gave me a look like he was testing whether to believe that. Then, after a long moment, he said, “I like the quiet in your voice. Most gods talk like they’re echoing their own names.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me,” he said, smiling faintly. “When I was younger.”
I glanced across the field. Apollo was still playing, but slower now. His music curved in on itself, introspective. Dionysus had vanished somewhere into the dark with a trail of followers. The revelry had dipped into that strange lull that comes before either sleep or something sharper.
“I used to think quiet was emptiness,” I said. “But now I think it just needs time to settle.”
“That sounds like something Hades would say,” Hermes chimed in from his spot, spinning an olive pit between two fingers. At my glance, he winked, all teeth. “Don’t worry. I’m only listening with half an ear.”
Hephaestus chuckled once—a dry, warm sound—and leaned forward to stoke the fire in front of us with the end of his hammer, which he’d tucked at his side like most people would carry a satchel.
“I’ve never seen you outside of spring,” he said.
“This is what they want me to be,” I answered. “Bright. Blooming. Harmless.” Spring would come soon, this was the harvest. In the misty dawn of another sunrise or two, it would be my time again.
“Are you not?” The soot-streaked man studied me.
I didn’t answer. The peace between us felt too good to disturb it with the troubling direction of my thoughts. Then the fire nearest us flared too high, too fast. Hermes straightened. Hephaestus turned his head.
The drums had stopped. A ripple passed through the field, one of those shifts that lives in instinct, not sight. Even the dryads paused.
I smelled metal before I saw him, all iron and blood, leather and heat. Ares stepped from the smoke like a storm made flesh. No armor. Just skin. Just strength. He scanned the crowd, choosing where to start.
Conversations died in his wake.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t acknowledge anyone. His eyes passed over Hermes, skipped Apollo, paused—briefly—on me. Then lingered on Hephaestus. The hush wasn’t reverent. It was braced. Hephaestus didn’t flinch. He sat tall, hands still folded around his cup.
Hermes gave a low whistle. “Well. Now it’s a party.”
I looked to Hephaestus. “Will there be trouble?”
He didn’t answer. Just stared into the fire and said, “That depends on who he came for.”
I rose to greet him because not doing so would’ve felt like a challenge.
“Ares,” I said, folding my hands before me. “The revel burns brighter now.”
He stopped just shy of the fire’s glow, his chest rising slow and deliberate. His eyes were the color of polished war bronze, and when they locked on mine, I felt them not just on my skin—but beneath it.
“Kore,” he said, not smiling. “You wear spring like a veil. Does it ever feel like armor?”
I didn’t answer. Not with words. I let the stillness in me speak.
He turned his gaze then, slowly, toward the silent god of the forge sitting next to me.The air drew tighter, as though the night itself had taken a breath it didn’t want to release.
Hephaestus didn’t stand. He didn’t move. He just looked up at the god of war with something that wasn’t fear but wasn’t peace either. A kind of resigned steadiness, like a mountain knowing the storm has come.
To his credit, the god of messengers, thieves, and cunning didn’t vanish or interrupt. Not yet. But I could feel his presence lean slightly forward, his grin sharpened into readiness.
“I came to see what you’ve been forging,” Ares said to Hephaestus, voice quiet, dangerous in its ease. “You’ve been underground too long. Makes a man forget the sun or beauty—or softness.”
“I remember them,” Hephaestus replied, low and even. “I just know better than to worship them.”
A flicker passed through Ares’ jaw. Not quite anger. Something older. He took a step closer, and the fire between them hissed.
Hermes muttered, “Gods save us, someone give them both something to punch.”
I moved between them, not directly or foolishly, just enough to draw Ares’ eyes back to me. “You didn’t come for the play.”
“I don’t enjoy theater,” he murmured, his voice softer now. “But I do enjoy watching people wear masks.” His eyes traced my face as if he could see something hidden under the surface. I held his gaze. I would not step back.
Then, with a flicker of mischief or, more likely, madness, Hermes clapped his hands and declared, “Who wants figs? I’ve got a basket of indecently ripe ones, and I’m not afraid to bribe a war god with dessert.”
It worked.
The tension cracked, just a hairline fracture, but it was enough. Some of the breath came back into the firelight, into the crowd nearby. Ares blinked, then looked to Hermes with the faintest snort of amusement.
“Keep him leashed,” he said, nodding toward Hephaestus.
“Or I will.” Then he turned back to me, and his smile appeared—slow, unsettling, a blade dipped in honey.
“I hope the turning doesn’t soften you too much, Kore,” he said.
“You’re too lovely to be broken. But beauty doesn’t stop blades, does it?
” He took one step closer, close enough that I could smell blood and myrrh, and bent his head just slightly toward mine.
“Call me if the forge ever grows too cold.”
Then he was gone. No flourish, no flare. Just absence, swift and sudden, like a weapon withdrawn.
I exhaled, not realizing until then that I’d been holding the air in my lungs like a shield.
Hermes handed me a fig, solemnly.
“God of war,” he said, “still doesn’t know how to read a room.”
Hephaestus hadn’t moved.
“Are you well?” I asked.
“Yes, I always am,” he said, voice even, but the edge in it was hammered sharp.
We sat again, the three of us. The fire crackled. The music had stuttered to silence. But the night, it seemed, had remembered what else it could become.
The fires burned low behind me. Laughter echoed faintly, already fading.
I walked toward the temple, where offerings would sleep in baskets by the altar, and the marble would still be warm from the day’s sun. The air had cooled, touched with dew and a hush that felt almost sacred.
Hermes strolled beside me, hands in his sleeves, humming something tuneless.
“You don’t have to follow me,” I said softly.
“Who said I’m following?” he replied. “I’m just walking. Coincidentally in the same direction.”
I glanced at him, and he gave me that half-grin—easy, quicksilver. But he didn’t press. For once, his silence felt like a kindness. The path wound through olive trees, silver leaves fluttering like coins overhead. Crickets sang. A moth passed close to my face, its wings the color of ash.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Hermes asked, finally.
I considered the question. “I watched. I listened. I was part of it, and not,” I said. “Like a statue someone dressed in flowers.” It was how I often felt.
“Sounds familiar,” he said, tilting his head toward the moon. “You can always tell the real gods from the ones that like to perform being gods.”
I smiled faintly. “What about you?”
“I perform so well I forget who I am most days,” he said, with a wink. “But you? You’re starting to know. That’s the difference.”
I let his words settle, dust floating on water.
The night had been so many things, ripe with joy and danger, full of beauty and threats wrapped in silk and honey. Apollo’s music still echoed in my bones. Ares’ voice still lingered at the back of my neck. Hephaestus’ warmth sat beside my own, like coals that hadn’t quite gone out.
And yet… none of them held me.
I was Kore, maiden of spring, daughter of the harvest. But the girl who returned from the dark was not the same one who had entered it. I had stood between revel and war. I had not broken.
The temple rose ahead, white and still in the night. My mother’s being pulsed inside it, steady, vast, undeniable.
Hermes stopped walking.
“You’re not coming in?”
He shook his head. “Too many expectations in there.”
I nodded. “Thank you, then.”
“For what?”
“For walking near me,” I said.
He laughed, soft and genuine. “Anytime.” He vanished like breath from a mirror.
I climbed the last few steps alone, the stone cool beneath my feet.
Inside, the offerings waited: bread braided with herbs, apples and squash, jars of honey, bowls of beans and barley. All for her. For Demeter.
Mother.
The turning of the harvest meant soon it would be time for planting again. I wondered—not for the first time—when they would start leaving offerings for me. Did I even want them to do that?