Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The rich bouquet of free-flowing wine, the firm squeeze of a supple hip perched on your lap with soft breasts pressed into your shoulder, the rise and fall of music and laughter; the Hellenic pantheon knew how to throw a party.
Hell’s Royal Court, nearly a third of its Infernal Court, and at least a few members from the Court of Nightmares, including Izi and her mother, the First Succubus, were in attendance.
Bacchus kept the wine flowing. Between Demeter’s wheat, barley, olives and grapes, and Artemis’s hunt, from common animals like boar and antelope, to something roasting on a spit that I was fairly certain was a leopard, there was a cornucopia of succulent dishes.
Aphrodite was living art, and an honor to be around.
I drained my goblet and smiled as one of Bacchus’s shapely Maenads refilled it.
I guess, Bacchus, Bacchos, Β?κχο?—were linguistically competitive to the neighboring Roman pantheon and its counterpart.
A demon told a demon who had blabbered to another demon that a soothsayer had told a soothsayer: we’d one day refer to our host as Dionysus on this side of the cultural divide. But today was not that day.
Hades and I picked neighboring seats during the eight-day festivities, if only to toast to misunderstandings of antagonists and the afterlife.
A pink cloud of flowers and hair plopped into his lap as his bride lifted a silver goblet to join the toast. “To misconceptions.”
Hades wrapped his arm around her waist, and she planted a kiss atop his head.
“And to your controversial love story,” I added.
When they both hesitated to lift their cups a second time, I amended, “Because fuck what’s written, and fuck what others think.
You’re happy, and that’s rare. What a beautiful thing to be so in love that a tale like yours is too complicated to be understood. ”
Hades met my toast, but Persephone’s face softened.
“You speak like someone who knows what he’s talking about.”
Five hundred and fifty-five years, and I still flickered when I picked the scab where her memory remained.
I slapped on a grin. “We’re not here for love stories.”
We shared a belly chuckle as we looked toward the head of the table.
It was Ares, god of war, who had invited Hell, regardless of who supplied the wine and merriment.
The King of Macedonia, a human man called Alexander, was ready to be Ares’s sword arm as he marched his empire east.
Hell knew the area well. What once belonged to the Sumerians, then the Akkadians, then the Assyrians, now belonged to the Babylonians.
Hell had a front row seat to all that went on in the Cradle of Civilization, particularly as it watched the King of Heaven move from Canaan outward, thriving as far west as Egypt, east as the Tigres, and trickling north as a war deity called Yahweh marched his rule onward and upward, conquering territory well beyond Mesopotamia.
Ares thought that Hell might be interested to hear how his people would conquer Heaven’s people and proposed an alliance between Hell and the Grecians.
He was right.
Between plans, they did what they did best.
Eat, drink, dance, fuck, discuss, sleep, repeat.
I stayed present for the first week of festivities and negotiations, but a nymph—one of the Naiads, called Nai, for short—had brushed past me at the table. She bent at the waist to whisper how I couldn’t make any decisions about allegiances without seeing Greece for myself.
Persephone leaned across her husband to give my bicep a squeeze. “Go. Get out of here. We’ll catch up when we aren’t conquering the world.”
Her husband threw me a wink, and we emptied our cups before I extended my hand to accept the invitation.
The nymph’s cheeks pinked as her hand disappeared in mine.
“Lead the way.”
Maybe I wanted to escape the monotony of meetings.
Perhaps I was just emboldened by the mix of curious and jealous looks as others at the table carried on with their talks while watching to see how I’d react.
But I let her take my hand, following the woman made of little more than air and water whose loveliness rivaled.
..I stopped my mind from comparing the nymph to the goddess as I caught Aphrodite’s sharp glare from my peripherals.
Could the goddess of love hear my unspoken words?
Of course not. She had to be speculating. I’d heard tales of her vanity and jealousy, though most immortals had an inscrutable list of intermingled fact and fiction to their name. Some were victims of the rumors. Others had started the tall tales themselves.
In a single step, the clouds and marble and scents of Olympus evaporated. No torchlight muddied the silver night. Moonlight washed the pale stones as we moved through the metropolis.
The earthly silence was deafening.
The city was awash in silver light. Rolling hills elevated half of the houses, the flickering candles in their windows doing little to rival the stars burning overhead.
“I thought nymphs preferred the forest?” I asked, both to get her talking, and because I truly didn’t know why a forest deity would bring me to the heart of Athens.
“Isn’t it neat?” Nai winked. She dropped my hand and gestured to three intricately carved fish and the liquid that burbled from their mouths into a marble pool below. “The humans have brought fresh water into the city.”
I approached the pool and ran my fingers over its cool, clear surface. “To drink?”
“And for beauty,” she cooed.
I knew a bid for attention when I heard it. I was meant to compliment her. To tell her that water was beautiful, as was she. I was no stranger to the words whispered to women, to tumbling into the beds of gods and fae and things that lurked in the shadows.
I’d even attempted my hand at the title of incubus and set out to meet a human in their dreams in recent centuries, but only once. The mortal had opened up for me, had invited me so willingly, and I’d hated it. I’d vanished before reaching their bed, never to return to their home.
I could tell Nai whatever she needed to hear now. I could slip my hand over her hip, tilt her chin up toward mine, pin her against the wall between two of the softly murmuring fish-shaped spouts.
But we weren’t alone. A woman’s gentle hum carried over the fountain’s gurgle. The tune was almost familiar. Simple, minor, haunting. A humble home. The dead sea. A human grinding barley into flour.
My heart stopped.
She bit her lip, following my gaze to the sound of footsteps.
I swallowed. “We’re not alone.”
She relaxed. “It’s a human, Prince. The two of us remain behind the veil. She can’t see us.”
I didn’t meet Nai’s eyes. I watched the darkness become a shape.
She approached with footsteps so light I wouldn’t have heard them at all if I hadn’t been looking into the space between buildings.
It was a young woman. There was something odd about her shadow.
It should be inky in the alleyway, but it had a stark quality that I couldn’t quite articulate.
Nai followed my line of sight. She waved the silhouette away. “That girl comes to the fountain often. As I said: she can’t see us.”
I remained immobile.
“What’s she singing? That song, is it from your people? Do you know it from your pantheon?”
Nai flashed annoyance. “The girl just sings. Pay it no mind.” She reached for my hand again, feeling the uncomfortable tension that stretched between us.
“You haven’t heard the tune? The lullaby isn’t Hellenic?”
“Do you…not like an audience? If her song bothers you, we can go somewhere else.”
Silver moon. Silver buildings. Silver heavenly bodies.
I couldn’t control my tone. My words came out husky. “You said this human comes here often? Why?”
Nai’s irritation was palpable. “Women can’t study beneath the Teacher. Even in Hell, you had to have heard of our great thinkers. Socrates, then Plato, then—”
“Aristotle,” I finished for her. I was impatient as I said, “Yes, I know of him. He’s giving the humans words for many of the constellations.”
Nai fidgeted impatiently while the human settled onto the fountain’s marble lip. I couldn’t be certain of the woman’s age, but she couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She procured a slim papyrus scroll and began working, looking up at the night sky, then back to her paper every few seconds.
Something was wrong with her skin. Her hair. Her eyes. I couldn’t look away.
“She’s studying the stars…” I wasn’t sure if I’d said the words out loud. It was a night with no breeze, and yet my breath was stolen by the wind.
I didn’t have to turn to see Nai’s expression. She made her feelings clear while I remained glued to the mortal.
“Listen,” she said somewhat curtly, “I’m meant to show you a good time in Athens. Can we at least get on with the tour, or—”
I didn’t care about whatever she said next.
So what if Nai had been an intentional plant to gain our favor and win us over? Wars and alliances were met in a number of ways, and I wouldn’t fault the Hellenic pantheon for using everything in their arsenal.
“You did well,” I said quietly, and I meant it. She relaxed slightly, some of the irritation slipping from her shoulders. “Trust me. You showed me a...” Could I say it was a very good time? Was that true? Instead, I said, “I’d like to be alone. Thank you, Nai.”
She might have said something in return. I wasn’t listening.
There was a pearly glow to the human’s skin, and I couldn’t look away.
I stayed behind in the veil, staring in slack-jawed amazement at a human woman with an aura that glimmered like tourmaline, who’d snuck out in the middle of the night to look up at the stars.
Five hundred years: wasted.
I was adrift once more. I had no plan. No care for royal duties. No dignity.
I remained behind the veil as I followed her home that night, scouring her home for any other sign that this could be my human.
I fought to manage my expectations.