Chapter 7
I’m rarely one of the first to leave a feast, but the incident with Ares brings a sour taste to my mouth.
I bid goodnight to the gods and exit the feasting hall, walking out beyond the courtyard, letting the darkness wash over me, cool and soothing.
As I pass an olive tree, one that flourishes in the inhospitable climate of the heavens thanks to Athena, a figure detaches itself from a marble column and steps out onto the path in front of me.
Ares.
His silhouette blocks out the glimmering moon behind him. It could be intimidating—he’s tall and powerful, a warrior dressed for battle—but it would take more than that to scare me. I’m the daughter of Ouranos, born from the shattering of the Sky.
I draw myself up to my fullest height. “Why are you here?”
I can still see him charging across that valley, urging on the chaos.
His face is in shadow. I can’t see his expression, only the dark gleam of his eyes. “I accepted Zeus’ invitation so that I could speak to you. I didn’t want to leave until I had.”
I can see my own wavy reflection in the bronze plate fitted over his chest, my puzzlement writ clear across my face. “Zeus doesn’t issue invitations, only orders,” I say. “And you didn’t say a word to me all night.”
“It’s not for everyone else to hear. I keep my business private from the other gods.”
“So you waited to get me alone.”
“Is that a problem?”
I can’t find a reason that it would be, but still it’s jarring to be here with only him. We’ve never been alone together before. “It’s fine,” I say coolly. “Say what you want.”
“I’m sure you know that it was Eris who fired that arrow,” he says.
“Eris?”
“Yes.” His tone is cold, no trace of regret.
Fury surges right back up inside me, as hot and fierce as on the battlefield. “What is this?” I demand. “An apology?”
“If you have any ideas about revenge,” he says, ignoring me as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “forget them. Eris is my deputy. I deal with her.”
Not an apology, then. I fold my arms across my chest and glare at him. “Why tell me this?”
“I assumed you’d realized already.”
Is he mocking me?
“How would I have known?” I bristle. “There were arrows flying everywhere; it was a battle.”
He shifts, and now the moonlight reveals his face, hard as if it were chiseled from stone and just as cold. “No mortal’s arrow could have flown past you,” he says. “You would have stopped it.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Weren’t you the one telling me I didn’t belong in battle?”
“You don’t.” He’s too swift to answer; it’s maddening. “But not because you aren’t powerful. Because it’s not your concern.”
“You told me that you don’t intervene when it comes to saving mortals. But it’s fine for her to kill them with impunity?”
His lips tighten. “She overstepped.”
“And if that’s not enough for me?” I ask. “If I decide to take matters into my own hands?”
“That would be a mistake.”
He hasn’t dropped his eyes from mine. The intensity feels like flames licking across my skin.
Anger burns in my core, roars in my skull, obliterating my thoughts.
I want to shake the complacency from him, to tear away the guarded front and see what’s beneath.
I know he isn’t really this controlled. He’s a war god.
“The mistake,” I grind out, “is hers. His life belonged to me. I gave it to him. No one had the right to take it but me.”
“So you do plan to avenge him.” His voice is as hypnotic and menacing as the beat of the army’s drums.
“If I choose.” I lift my chin. “Perhaps I will. Then again, I’m not like you. I don’t waste my time on feuds and conflict. Perhaps I’ll decide neither of you is worth it.”
Something flickers in his gaze before it shutters.
“You should have learned your lesson already,” he says, and it’s the same superior tone he adopted when he dismissed Zeus at dinner. “Don’t come back to my realm. Leave Eris to me.”
My heart pounds in my chest. “Is that all you came to tell me? To stay away?”
“It is.”
“Don’t worry,” I hiss. “Nothing would make me happier than never having to see you again.”
I turn on my heel and walk away, leaving him there. I stride down the path, rounding the corner, and then I stand for a moment, my breath coming hard and fast. I can’t go into my house like this; before the Horae see me, I need a moment to cool the white-hot rage coursing through my body.
The moonlight washes over me, soft and silver. A few seconds later, the flame of the War God’s fire-breathing horses trails through the sky, carrying him away.
Good, I think. Don’t come back.
—
That it was Eris who killed Phaon shouldn’t shock me as much as it does.
I made the mistake of trying to appeal to Ares in front of her—not realizing how cold his heart is—and that let her know how much I cared.
For a bitter, vindictive goddess, that must have been kindling to her fire.
Snatching Phaon away from me let her revel in my grief, and now it puts me in a dilemma.
I can do as Ares so arrogantly instructed me and leave her alone, or I can confront her myself.
I can’t bear to do as he said, but nothing would delight the Strife Goddess more than a fight.
I don’t have a solution by morning, but I know one thing. I failed to protect Phaon; I won’t fail Pandora. I find Zeus in the throne room, intent on talking him out of his scheme.
“Pandora again?” His eyes gleam. “Why are you so interested in her?”
“I’m not, really,” I demur. “I just wondered if it’s going to work. I thought perhaps there could be a better way.”
“How so?”
“It’s just that as you said, we did make her ourselves,” I wheedle. “How does it look to other mortals if the woman we created doesn’t obey us? I worry that it won’t be seen as a weakness of women, but of the gods instead.”
He nods, thoughtful. “I hadn’t considered that.”
I wait for him to go on. “So?” I prompt at last.
“I ordered Athena to carry it out on my behalf.” He rubs his chin, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “I’ll tell her to wait. Just until I think about it some more.”
I realize how tightly I’m clenching my jaw. I need a respite from the more infuriating gods. Glancing through the wide windows, I see the familiar and comforting sight of smoke rising from the forge. “That sounds like a wise decision,” I say.
I’m relieved to get away from him, letting myself in through the forge doors to the main workshop, where Hephaestus is busily engaged. He looks up and smiles in greeting as I enter.
I don’t even wait until we’re in the side room to ask him if he knew about Zeus’ plan for Pandora.
“No, I didn’t know,” Hephaestus says. “But what difference would it make anyway?”
“Well,” I say, “I might have refused to help him if he’d told me what was going to happen.”
“Really?” He sounds skeptical. “I don’t refuse him anything he asks for.
” He wipes a cloth over his face. The sheen of exertion moistens his forehead and his bulging upper arms, but he tosses the bellows he’s holding on to a bench and opens the forge door, holding it for me to pass through to the inner room, the one where I first saw her.
There’s an empty space on the plinth where she stood, but the shelves that line the wall are crammed with his works.
“Olympus is much more peaceful that way.”
“Ares refuses him everything.” I’ve decided not to tell Hephaestus about my encounter with Ares the previous night, but somehow I can’t help bringing him up.
Hephaestus looks askance at me. “And the halls of Olympus regularly shake with his wrath.”
“Zeus’ wrath? Or Ares’?”
Hephaestus sighs. “Both.” He picks up a pretty silver jug from a cedar table and pours a cup of wine, mixing it with honey before passing it to me, and then doing the same for himself.
There are no serving-nymphs in his forge, no one to jump up and cater to his every whim.
Only the golden automatons he made himself, which do nothing more than roll from one side of the workshop to the other at his direction, carrying tools or diverting hissing streams of melted copper and tin.
I sit down on a carved chair, padded with plump cushions, and sip my wine.
Hephaestus perches on a three-legged stool too small for his bulky frame.
I swirl the liquid in my cup, releasing a sweet, heady fragrance that mingles with the scent of singed metal and charred wood that always hangs about Hephaestus.
“Maybe if we all stood up to Zeus sometimes, he’d be less insufferable. ”
Hephaestus looks more perplexed than he did when I brought up Ares. “I’d rather have a quiet life and let him rage. Ares too. When the storms pass, it’s all the same.”
I shift in my seat, uncomfortable. “That’s what I’ve always thought,” I say. And I’m right. Ares gets nowhere with Zeus. The two of them stay at loggerheads, locked in a struggle for power that never ends. Whereas I just convinced him to do what I want without his even realizing we were at odds.
“Well, then. Why change anything?”
Exactly. I don’t know where the thought came from in the first place.
I drain my cup, setting it back down with more force than I intend.
“Maybe I just need something to do. Phaon’s dead and I need to stay away from Pandora—I’m already making Zeus suspicious.
Maybe I should go and find some tormented passion, someone burning with unrequited love and desperate for my help—something I can really sink my teeth into. ”
After all, if it wasn’t for love, the universe itself would sputter into nothing and die.
“Let me think,” I continue. “Maybe Demeter is ripe for an affair. Or there’s Poseidon, maybe there’s a Nereid eager for the God of the Sea to notice her. Or you, Hephaestus, what about you? There’s all the goddesses in my retinue: the Horae, the Graces…” I’m thinking of Charis.
“I—well…” His face flushes.