Chapter 21 #2
“No, not exactly. I don’t think so.” Hephaestus furrows his brow, the effort of searching through his fragmented memories too great. “We were drinking. First, it soothed the pain, after Ares. It was like floating away on a cloud.”
My heart beats wildly. Any sympathy I had for his injuries has petrified into solid rock.
“I know that’s no excuse, I’m just telling you what happened. He didn’t persuade me, he just let me talk. I was angry and then maudlin, and somewhere along the way I decided it was all too much effort to keep up. I decided to let her go.”
“So it was just an impulse?” I ask. “A drunken act of spontaneity?” I shake my head. “And you didn’t think, not for a second, about what it would mean? After I was here, after Ares beat you into the ground, you didn’t think about what freeing her would do?”
He doesn’t meet my eyes. There is a long and painful silence.
Into it, I whisper, “You did know.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” he says quietly. “And after so much wine, it seemed like the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
He lets out a shaky sigh.
“The answer to what, Hephaestus?” I ask again. “You knew that going up there, letting her out and telling Zeus it was your decision would make you the winner.”
He still says nothing.
“Why?”
He keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. “You know that I stepped in front of Hera when Zeus was beating her, just to stop you from jumping in his way.” His fingers flex around the handle of his staff, nervous and twisting. “I saw that you were about to do it, and I couldn’t let you.”
My heart is racing, my anger acid in my veins. “Is it revenge?” The words tumble out, jerky and painful. “Because you were hurt saving me, even though I never asked you to? Or is it about Ares? Is this some kind of sick way of winning—beating him in this contest—is that it?”
His eyes widen. “No,” he protests. “No, it’s not about Ares.
” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “Maybe. In part.” He must register how I tense my body, my fingers curling into fists, and he hurries to finish speaking.
“Not like that, not for revenge. But…but I warned you about him. And you stayed with him. Even after you saw what he did to me, everything that he’s capable of, you still love him. ”
“Do you think you can stop me?” I demand.
He slumps his rounded shoulders. “Not now. Everything seemed different then. It was bravado. It was idiocy. I just thought that maybe you’d see.”
“See what?”
Finally, he meets my eyes. “That I love you. More than he ever could.”
I know he believes what he’s saying. But if he’s appealing to my heart, it has already shriveled to ashes in the furnace of my wrath. “And this is how you get what you want.” The harshness makes him flinch.
He shakes his head, frantic. “No.”
“You’ve trapped me into marrying you.”
“You don’t have to.” He sounds desperate.
“But I do.” I can’t take back what I did. “You know I’m bound. You know I have no choice.”
The color drains from his face at the truth of what I’m saying, and tears rise in his eyes, slipping unheeded down his cheeks. I’ve seen him shattered, first by Zeus, then by Ares. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him so bereft as this.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
And, in the stunned silence, I walk away.
—
Last night, in the aftermath of the fight between the brothers, I stayed away from Thrace. I didn’t know if the god I saw raging in that volcano was one I wanted to keep.
But in my devastation now, Ares is the only comfort I crave.
He hurries out into the gloomy courtyard as I approach, as though he’s been listening for the soft beat of dove-wings, and I know I made the right choice. There’s no sign of the wrathful god he’d been when he stalked out of the volcano, and no sign of Eris either.
He folds me into an embrace, the worn leather of his tunic soft against my cheek, the familiar scent of earth and bronze anchoring me in place.
“No breastplate,” I murmur into his collarbone. “No spear, no helmet. I thought I’d find you ready for war.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t have to be a fight,” he says.
I pull back, looking up at his face in surprise. “Do you mean that?”
He slides his hand through my hair, letting it fall between his fingers. “It’s not that I don’t want a war.” His voice lowers. “It’s not that I don’t want to march on Olympus and make Zeus suffer for this too. But I won’t, unless that’s what you want too.”
“So, you’ll just…accept it?” I don’t believe him.
“Accept what?”
“The marriage.”
His arms tense around me, and I take a step backward.
“You do know, don’t you?” I ask. “Eris told you that Hephaestus let Hera go, that he’s the winner?”
“I do,” Ares says. His arms fall to his sides, and the light quenches in his eyes, leaving them wary. “But surely you aren’t going to marry him?”
“I don’t know what to say.” I cross my arms over my chest, holding myself. There is a dreadful shaking in my center, the first tremors of what I fear is to come. Cold flutters across my skin, not just the icy air of these grim mountains, but the inkling of a disaster greater than I anticipated.
Ares reaches for my hands, gently but firmly pulling them away from my body, holding them in his.
“Aphrodite,” he says. “I know the punishment for oath-breakers is exile. But I’ll go with you.
We’ll leave Olympus together. We’ll take the Horae with us, the Graces too, if you’re afraid of what Zeus will do to them when we’re gone. ”
I wrest my fingers free from his grip. “You know we can’t leave. If you come with me, Zeus will exile you too. You’ll lose everything. We both will.”
“No,” he says. “We won’t lose each other.” His fingers curl around empty space. “You can’t marry Hephaestus.”
“I can’t not marry Hephaestus.”
“You don’t mean that,” he says.
“But I do! I swore on the Styx.” I shake my head, disbelieving. “I can’t break the oath. It was only you, Ares, who was arrogant enough to think I could, and that was only if you’d been the winner.”
He stares at me. “It was you who was arrogant enough to make the oath in the first place.”
“It was,” I admit. “I was sure that Hephaestus would do what I asked, and that I’d silence Zeus on the subject of marriage once and for all. I was wrong.”
“Then we’ll fight,” he says, decisive. “If you want to stay, I’ll go to war against Zeus, and Styx as well if I need to. I’ll bring him down, even if it means allying with Hera. Olympus can be hers, or yours. You can have your freedom that way.”
“And what if Zeus wins?” I ask.
His hands rest on my shoulders. “We run or we fight. Those are our choices.”
“I thought about fighting,” I say. “My brothers, the Giants, challenged the gods. My sisters, the Furies, let anger consume them so that it’s all they feel.
” I take a deep breath. “I won’t make that mistake.
I wanted to, when I went to Hephaestus, but now I see there’s another choice. One that takes more strength.”
“More strength than war?” He’s disbelieving.
“Yes. I can keep the peace.”
“Aphrodite—”
“I can keep the oath and my power. It’s better than fleeing into exile or destroying Olympus in war. Yes, it means Zeus gets what he wants. It’s a humiliation, but it’s one I’ll get over.”
He’s silent for a long moment.
“But I won’t.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“It was always you who held back,” he says.
Bitterness bleeds into his words. “You always insisted what we have together isn’t lasting.
It was you who told me that you were free to take other lovers.
” He drags a hand through his hair. “I didn’t ask anything different of you, I never would.
I never wanted to control you. I never pretended I could change you, or that I’d want to. ”
“But I never did take any other lovers,” I protest. “I know what I said, but I never acted on it.”
“You never acted on it until now,” he bites out. “Now you’ve agreed to marry someone else.”
My voice rises in frustration. “Believe me, this wasn’t the outcome I wanted.”
His eyes are defiant with the challenge. “You’re a powerful goddess, more ancient than Zeus. You don’t have to do as he says.”
“We all do.”
“We don’t. This is your choice,” he says. “You can stand up to Zeus and I’ll be with you no matter what happens.” His eyes flicker over me. “But instead you choose to marry my brother and lose me.”
I feel my heart collapse in my chest, leaving a hollow in its place. A black void yawning open, its inexorable pull sucking me into the depths.
“If I lose you,” I say, my voice shaking, “that’s your choice. Not mine.”
“You want me to stay for my brother’s wife?” he asks.
“No. I want you to stay for me.” I can hear the edge of desperation in my words. “You’ve hardly regarded him as your brother before; why would that matter now? Is this just about your pride?”
He shakes his head, his eyes flat and cold. “You choose,” he says again. “Between me and him.”
But that’s not the choice. If I’m expelled from the heavens, they’ll tear down my temples, my statues, my sanctuaries. What happens to my worshippers then? What becomes of a world devoid of Love?
Time slows to a terrible crawl. I’m trapped in this moment, watching us fall apart, not knowing how to save us. Like watching a ship sinking into the ocean, engulfed by wave after wave, until all that remains is the empty horizon.
I’ll know who I am if I’m without Ares. I won’t know who I am if I’m no longer the Goddess of Love.
If I marry Hephaestus, I’ll lose Ares.
The enormity of it is like a blow to my chest. It can’t be. I can’t lose Ares.
But if I don’t marry Hephaestus, I’ll lose everything else.
“I already told you,” I say. “I won’t break the oath.”
Ares looks away. “I never asked you to change a single aspect of yourself, despite your wanting me to be completely different.”
“That isn’t true.”
His laughter is hollow. “You hate what I am. You never wanted to be with a war-god.”
I can’t deny it.
“I thought you might come to see me in another light,” he goes on.
“I thought you might understand. And, even if you didn’t, I thought it was worth it to have you.
You passionately hated war, but you were just as fervent that you wouldn’t marry.
That, you’re suddenly willing to change.
That’s what you’ll compromise on—just so you can stay on Olympus.
” His voice rises in volume, but then he visibly reins himself in and shakes his head.
When he speaks again, it’s quiet and soft.
“But I won’t stay with you. Not this time. ”
Snow drifts in tiny flakes, delicate flurries billowing across the dark stone.
Above us, the towers pierce the gathering clouds, and I hear the rasp of the vulture’s croak, its squat body hunched on the rooftop.
Somewhere in the shadows, the Keres will be lurking, indifferent to whether I’m here or not.
When I’m on the other side of the iron gates, this place won’t miss me at all.
“Why not?” I implore. “I would stay for you. Nothing would make me leave.”
“Would you?” His smile is tight and bitter. In this moment, he feels almost unrecognizable. A stranger in the place of the god I love more than any other I’ve known. “I don’t think you’ve ever been here at all. Not really.”
I swallow, absorbing his words. “That isn’t true,” I say slowly. “I’m here with you. I don’t want to run away. I don’t want war.” I want him. That’s all I want.
I know he wants me too.
But it isn’t enough.
His eyes flash bronze. There’s a flicker of anguish, an echo of the sorrow I feel building like a tidal wave, ready to crash over me, but he says nothing. I think I can hear my heart beating in the silence, painful and pounding.
“You’ve decided, then,” he says, just as the empty space between us becomes impossible to bear.
“And so have you.”
He inclines his head. “I have.”
Even as I turn away and he does nothing to stop me, I don’t believe it—that I’m going to leave Mount Haemus and marry another god. This cannot be how it ends. But, step by step, my feet move, and I can sense Eris’ hungry gaze on the back of my neck, savoring every painful second.
I’m Aphrodite, I remind myself. There are shrines in my name from Cyprus to Corinth, Sicily to Athens, and every island in between. I won’t leave here weeping. I’ll sweep myself into the sky and soar away as though my heart is as light as the wings that carry me.
And only I will know that it’s shattered into fragments beyond repair.