Chapter 5
Sunrise comes, and I’m still sore with indignation. Too restless to stay in bed, I get up and dress without summoning my handmaids.
Olympus is quiet when I step outside. The paths are deserted, and all I hear are the tinkling of the fountains and the occasional distant cry of an eagle.
It’s only the forge that shows any signs of life. When I near it, a rumble of activity builds—the growl of the furnaces and the rhythmic blows of a hammer.
Without stopping to think, I veer toward it. The heat spills out when I pull the door, a welcome contrast to the icy bite of the morning air.
I jump as an automaton rolls past me, and Hephaestus looks up from the anvil where he’s working. His smile is as warm as the forge itself.
“What are you doing here?” he asks—the same question that Eris barked at me, but his voice is infused with curiosity and a sincere eagerness to help. The tension I’ve been carrying immediately starts to dissipate.
“I want Ares to grant me a favor,” I begin, as he sets down his hammer. “He’s your brother—can you help?”
Hephaestus furrows his brow. “Ares?” he asks. “He’s intractable. He’d never agree to do anything for anyone.”
“I thought as much. But I hoped you might know some way to persuade him.”
He shakes his head. “What do you want from him?”
“A guarantee of safety for a man in war.”
His eyes are full of sympathy. “You’d do better to pluck him from the battlefield yourself than ask Ares.”
“He wouldn’t even listen,” I say. The memory of Ares turning his back on me, as if I were an irritating child, burns in my mind.
“Listening isn’t really his forte.”
I suppose he never has to. Ares is nothing like Hephaestus.
He’s strong, but with none of his brother’s meaty heft.
Ares gives the impression of a coiled snake, tensed for an attack at any moment, swift and unpredictable, whereas Hephaestus is solid and stable.
Ares is armored in bronze and scorn alike, so why should he bother hearing what we have to say?
“I wasn’t asking him to do it for nothing,” I say.
“Can you tell me anything I could offer him, anything that he wants?”
“There’s nothing he wants,” Hephaestus says. “He’s not interested in any of us.”
“Even you?”
He laughs. “Especially me.”
“Why not?”
He picks up his hammer again. “Ares only values violence,” he says.
“He chose to fight against Zeus and Hera. I never did.” He smiles, rueful.
“We both disappoint them, in different ways. But I have no common ground with the War God. All I can tell you is that it isn’t worth trying to appeal to his better nature.
He doesn’t have one. And if you can’t persuade him, no one can. ”
“Oh?” I flash him a smile. This is much more to my liking than the rest of the conversation. “Why’s that?”
He clears his throat. “Well.” He stumbles slightly over the words. “Of all the gods—I mean, I can’t think of many who would refuse you.”
“A shame, then, that he’s the one whose help I wanted,” I say drily.
“It is,” Hephaestus agrees. “Sorry that I can’t offer any better advice.”
I look around the forge. It bristles with productivity. The honest labor that Hephaestus puts in, the effort he expends on his craft and his artistry, couldn’t be less like Ares and his war-camp: a hollow place, haunted by fear and aggression and the promise of ruin.
“Don’t be sorry,” I say. “You have given me good advice.” I touch his arm. It’s hard with muscle, strong from decades of bending metal to his will and heaving slabs of rock. “To go and get Phaon myself.”
His smile fades, his expression serious. “If you’re going back there,” he says, “be careful.”
—
Gods need worship, and mortals need stories.
I could let Phaon follow Ares into war, but I chose him for my own purposes: so that the tale of the old man made young and beautiful by Aphrodite would be told at my sanctuaries, passed down at firesides and sung at feasts.
So that it would fan the flames of hope and longing and fuel more prayers and more adoration.
I can’t just choose another to take his place.
A god’s favor must be a rare gift, or else it loses its value.
I take my chariot from the stables; my pretty, enchanted doves cooing with pleasure. They won’t like our destination, but I won’t waste my time talking now.
As I approach the plains I visited last night, I see dark shapes swooping through the heavy clouds ahead of me.
It’s Eris and her ghastly sisters, the Keres, in monstrous formation.
I glance down and see the vicious tips of spears angled up toward the heavens.
A flow of warriors, streaming through the valley. The battle has begun.
I hesitate, then guide the doves to the hilltop above. As they glide down to the rocky surface, the Keres shriek and the men below holler back, their war-cries curdling with the sisters’ voices in an awful cacophony. My doves panic, scrambling in midair, and bring the chariot down with a jolt.
I climb down and stroke their feathered necks while they gaze at me reproachfully, tucking their beaks firmly into their chests.
I stand, surveying the throng of mortals from the edge of the peak.
All I want is to see Phaon. I’ll scoop him up and spirit him away, back to the destiny I chose for him.
Despite his words, he’ll be grateful to me later, when he’s back in his lover’s arms where he belongs.
Beneath my feet, the armies surge toward each other, unstoppable currents seething and boiling, and there is Ares, charging on a black stallion, his spear lifted to the skies.
His shout rings across the valley, that same dreadful sound that feels like ice creeping through my veins.
I waver. Hephaestus warned me, and now I think I might have been too reckless in my confidence.
The God of War is wild and dangerous, and he’s in his element here.
I don’t know him. I can’t predict what he’ll do when he sees me.
Men fall in the stampede, sinking underneath the jabbing spears and swinging swords; some try to scramble up the slopes to safety, clinging on to jutting branches and screaming for help, but the battle rages on.
The Keres stalk through the carnage, baleful black-cloaked silhouettes, crouching over the bodies where they fall.
Their role here is to gather the souls of the dead and carry them to the Underworld.
They’re swift and stealthy, unceasingly busy in their grisly harvest.
From the foot of the hill, Eris raises her head and catches sight of me. Even from here, I can feel her eyes boring into mine.
I toss my head, stiffening my spine. Eris can glare all she likes; she can’t frighten me away from the battlefield. Her steely contempt spurs me on, and I stride down the rocky slope to face her.
Exasperated, she lifts her wings and flutters to meet me before I can get to the bottom, hovering just above the melee. “Get out of here, Love Goddess,” she hisses.
“Don’t give me orders, Eris.” She has no right to tell me where I can and can’t go.
“You won’t want to spill your precious golden blood on my battlefield,” she taunts. “Don’t ruin that pretty dress.”
“I’m sure you’d like nothing better,” I say. Mockery drips from every syllable she utters, but it’s true that those bronze blades can pierce my skin. They can’t kill me, but they can hurt me. She thinks I’m afraid; that I’ll retreat from the prospect of a scratch.
I don’t waste another moment on her. I walk straight into the battle.
Clouds of dust billow up from the earth, and the air is thick with heat and sweat, the sour stench of fear and the ringing of metal.
But I can see the shimmer of the rose-tinted glow surrounding Phaon, the precious mark that means he’s mine, and I push my way toward him.
I don’t care that my dress is muddied and splattered with filth, that it’s torn beyond repair just as Eris warned.
Men catch a fleeting glimpse of me, an unarmed woman shoving through them, and they must think they are dreaming, that their minds have been frayed by the horrors around them.
In the confusion their bodies crush against me in a thick press of flesh and bronze.
I can’t tell which side is which; I can see only the frantic clash of swords and fighters, but I lift my hand and force them apart in front of me, carving a path that none of them can cross. The crush eases; a space opens up, and I see him clearly.
“Phaon!” I call.
He whips around, fear and surprise flashing across his face, and an enemy fighter rears up behind him, brandishing a sword. I step across the empty ground between us, swatting the attacker away with a sweep of my arm, and the man tumbles backward. Almost immediately, he’s trampled into the mud.
I turn back to Phaon, smiling in reassurance. Now he’s had his taste of war, he’ll take my hand willingly, I know it. I reach for him, my fingers wrapping around his wrist. He tries to pull away, but he can’t free himself from my grip.
“Phaon,” I say, “it’s time to go.”
“No,” he protests, but the choice isn’t his. Not anymore.
“You’ll thank me for this,” I tell him.
I’m about to whisk him up in my arms when an arrow flies past, right in front of my eyes. It’s too fast for me to stop it, to pull him away before it lodges itself in his tender, vulnerable throat.
The world slows, and the noise of the battle recedes to a muffled blur as he staggers and falls.
His fingers slip through mine.
I blink.
He can’t be. But he lies broken at my feet, his eyes dull and the blood pooling beneath him. Phaon, whose eyes twinkled with warmth when he thought he found me stranded, who shared his meal with me and then his dreams. Dreams I made a reality, one that’s now torn from his grasp forever.
The face of his wife—of his widow—rises vividly in my mind, robbing the breath from my body. I brought them together, for her to lose him all over again. The horror of it strangles the cry in my throat.
“You were too slow.”
I turn, bewildered.
Eris, her smug delight shocking me back into the heat and noise of the battle once more. The ripple of glee in her voice is repugnant.
She feeds on conflict; the rage and turmoil that surround us strengthen her, bringing color into her pale cheeks and a glow into her hollow eyes.
There is nothing that would give her more pleasure than to rile me into revenge.
I know this, yet numb shock gives way to grief and fury mounting in my breast.
“Eris!” His voice is unmistakable, rising above the din.
His stallion rears up in front of us, close enough for me to see the rolling whites of its eyes and the froth lathering at its mouth.
I lift my eyes to Ares. The warhorse bucks again, its flanks slick with sweat, but he stays steady on its back, leather reins gathered in one fist and his spear raised in the other.
The ground beneath us quakes, and the battle roils, but the animal bows to his will, quietening to his command.
His dark gaze is locked on mine. I can discern no pity in him. No apology, no regret and absolutely no mercy.
“Eris,” he says again, with a steely authority that she can’t ignore. She peels herself away, spreading her wings and gliding over the fighters to join him.
Then he and Eris plunge into the fray, and I’m left standing alone with Phaon’s body.