Chapter 95 #2
Two hands on my shoulders spin me around, and then I’m in Aphrodite’s embrace. Even in this moment, despite the fear that is trying to paralyze me, warmth infiltrates my heart and soul, and I lean into her. Just for a second.
But we don’t have time, and we both know it, drawing away in unison.
I stare. Aphrodite does not look like herself.
No longer the glamorous goddess, she’s dressed in armor that is so silver it hurts to look at. It’s not her fancy armor that she wore during the opening of the Crucible, though. No bodies contorting in hedonistic pleasure. This armor is plain and simple. This armor is for war.
Her dark, luxurious hair hangs around her in a knotted mass, and dirt is smeared with golden blood over the underclothes and spattered across the metal. There’s blood on her face, too, though I can’t tell where from.
Aphrodite’s expression is near frantic. “I didn’t know…” She swallows around her trembling voice. “I never thought he’d… Zeus, Lyra. He killed him.”
Bleak horror tries to wrest rational thought from me. Even for Zeus, Hades is going to hate himself for that. Not only will he carry the guilt for eternity, but he’ll have their souls to care for afterward. I can’t let him kill more. He may never recover from what he’s already done.
I frame her face with my hands, focusing her on me. “Can you help me stop him without anyone else getting hurt? Or do you need to hide?”
Of all the gods and goddesses Hades is targeting, he likes Aphrodite. Maybe he wouldn’t harm her.
“I—” Her gaze jerks above my head, and then she grabs me by the arms. We teleport away, only to reappear nearby. Despite the nothingness of teleporting, I still feel the vibration of the air where the tentacle of fire just blasted through exactly where we were standing.
“He won’t let me in,” I tell her. “How do I stop him if I can’t get to him?”
Aphrodite shakes her head, her hair falling over her shoulders in a tangled riot. “He doesn’t know it’s you. It’s like he’s turned off all reason.”
“What have you tried?”
She grimaces. “All of us have tried every power we have in our arsenal. Not just us, but other gods—Norse, Egyptian, Celtic, Aztec, Cherokee, Kushite, Dravidian. You name it. Nothing gets through—”
“No.” I squeeze her arm to stop her. “Not everybody…you. What have you tried?”
“Me?” Her smoldering brown eyes go wide with confusion. “I’m not a warrior—”
“I mean love.”
Aphrodite blinks. Then shakes her head. “That’s the first thing I tried.
” The glance she casts toward the temple is one so full of fear, her lips turn white.
“He couldn’t knock me away, but I also couldn’t push through the fire and smoke.
A stalemate. Useless.” She drops her gaze to the ground. “Just like everyone says.”
I don’t have time to argue with this goddess’s beat-up self-image. I tuck my axes into the back straps of my vest, adjusted for two. “What about my love?”
Aphrodite blinks again several times before her mouth opens in a silent gasp. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Is that something you can do? Tap into my love? Project it somehow? Make him feel that I’m here?”
The smile that tips up her lips isn’t a sexy smirk or the knowing moue she often uses. It’s real and just the tiniest bit hopeful. “It’s worth a try.”
She spins me around and pulls me into her so that my back is to her front. Except I can feel her, not armor. She wraps one arm around my stomach and the other around my arms to press her hand over my heart.
“What do I do now?” I ask. “Think a happy thought?”
“I’m all out of pixie dust,” she mutters. “But happy thoughts couldn’t hurt.”
She’s scared. I can feel her trembling against me.
Maybe I should be more afraid for myself right now, but I’m holding all my fear for Hades and the others. He would never hurt me. Not intentionally. He just needs to be pulled out of his despair-fueled, protective rage long enough to see.
“We move together,” she says. “If he can sense me anywhere as part of this, he’ll become suspicious, and he’s not exactly in the mood to be reasonable.”
“Sounds about right.”
She whispers something then that I don’t quite catch. Maybe something like, “Please let this work.” Except more like a prayer. If ever a goddess was praying to herself, this is it.
I don’t know what I expect—a glowing red aura to surround us, perhaps, or a pink floaty bubble, or maybe even little hearts shooting out of Aphrodite’s hand. It’s not for us to walk forward without anything—no armor, weapons, or visible magic. Just…flesh and bone and beating hearts.
Exposed.
Vulnerable.
The way every heart is when desperately asking another heart to love them.
Our first few steps are out of sync and awkward, making us trip a little, but then we get the rhythm of it.
Step. Pause. Step. Pause.
Like a bride walking down the aisle to her waiting groom. We get maybe ten steps before fire comes at us so hard and fast that I flinch.
“Keep moving,” she whisper-hisses.
Despite my heart trying to crawl out of my throat to escape, we both keep walking.
The tentacle stops inches from my nose, smoke billowing toward me only to curl back under before it touches my skin.
If a column of blue fire sheathed in smoke could be confused, this one is.
It cocks back, giving us room to take several quick steps, then slams forward but doesn’t manage to come any closer.
So we keep walking. A little at a time, backing Hades’ defenses up. It’s slow going. Agonizingly slow. Overhead, I can still see other tentacles waving wildly.
“We need to move faster,” I murmur.
Aphrodite puts her lips right by my ear and says in the softest whisper, “Talk to him.”
Talk to him? We’re not exactly the lovey-dovey type of couple who offer each other sweet nothings. “Other than letting him know I’m here, what should I say?”
“Just let him hear your voice,” she whispers.
I give a tiny nod as we keep walking with slow, mincing steps. “Hades.”
The smoke and fire before me instantly ripples as if my words are stones dropped into a still lake, sending waves outward. Then the smoke around the flames grows darker, blacker…pretty sure angrier.
“It’s not working,” I murmur over my shoulder. Any second, that thing is going to figure out how to stop us for good.
“Keep trying. It didn’t do that before.”
“It didn’t get angry before?”
“It didn’t ripple.” She sighs. “Make him hear you.”