Chapter 22
From the summit of the highest peak on Cyprus, I look out across the world for battles. A skirmish rages here, a clash there, and I lean out further, searching each conflict for a familiar figure striding through their midst, listening for the echo of his yell.
I see only Eris, flanked by her sisters.
I wonder if Ares stays alone in his mansion, withdrawing from the world entirely. Too angry even for war. Perhaps he fears what he’ll do if he encounters Zeus.
Or perhaps it’s me he wants to avoid.
“Come away,” a soft voice says. “You don’t need to watch that.”
I turn to see Hesperis, Dysis and Auge gathered behind me. “I know,” I sigh. “I just wondered if I’d catch a glimpse of him.”
“What good would that do?” Hesperis says, with just a touch of gentle scolding.
“Didn’t you say when the Dryad Phigalia grew tired of me that it would only hurt me to keep thinking of her?
You stopped me from wandering her mountain in the hope of seeing her again.
You turned my eyes elsewhere, remember?”
“I did,” I say. The recollection coaxes a smile from me. “I seem to recall you moved on to one of the Aurae rather quickly?” A lovely nymph of the breezes; I can picture her flowing hair and wild grace, the way she moved through the air as though she were dancing.
“That’s right,” says Dysis, extending her hand to me. “Isn’t that what you’ve always advised us to do? When one affair comes to an end—”
“Find another. I know.” I link my fingers through hers.
It’s what I breathe into the ears of heartbroken worshippers too.
I’ve always felt most tenderly toward those who never learn; the ones who keep falling headlong into their next adventure, only to find themselves over the remains of a fire, sending the smoke of their charred hopes up to me once more. Next time, I promise them.
I only wish that I could find the hope in a next time for myself.
The Horae hope for me, though, their soothing ministrations as sweet and loving as a mother spreading honey on a child’s cut knee. They’ve been here for every ending.
Even if no other ending ever felt like this one.
They lead me down the slopes, the four of us walking back toward my sanctuary together.
“I just can’t understand how it all went so wrong so quickly,” I say. It won’t stop churning in my mind, the way everything spiraled out of control.
Hephaestus, setting out to trap Hera and ensnaring himself along with me.
Dionysus, drawn irresistibly to chaos, urging him on.
Zeus, a petty tyrant cunning enough to spot his opportunity and ruthless enough to take it.
Ares, too intractable to compromise, too stubborn to be persuaded.
And me, reckless enough to swear the oath.
“You were brave,” says Auge. “Maybe rash too. But what else could you do?”
“Ares said we could fight,” I answer. “Run or fight, those were his choices.”
“Isn’t it braver to stay?” Dysis counters. “To see it through?”
“If anything,” Auge says, waspish, “it’s Ares who’s the coward.”
I wince. “That’s not true.”
“Then why can’t he show his face?” she asks.
“Hurt pride,” Hesperis says.
I shake my head. “I think it’s more than that,” I say. It’s an effort to drag the words up from deep inside, to haul them from the aching hollow that’s opened up since we parted. “I don’t think he ever believed I loved him as much as he loved me. I think he was always waiting for it to fall apart.”
“Well,” says Hesperis, caution elongating the word as she glances sidelong at me. “You could try talking to him one more time. If you really wanted to.”
“I don’t think,” I say heavily, “that he’ll ever accept my marrying his brother.”
“Why not?” she asks tartly. “It’s worse for you, isn’t it?”
“You’ve always found a way to protect your realm,” Dysis interjects, calm and measured. “Zeus has always trusted you enough to leave you alone. This is a sacrifice, but it means Zeus gets what he wants and Olympus stays peaceful. Ares can understand that when he gets past his anger, can’t he?”
“And, if he can’t,” Hesperis says, “you’ll know it’s really over. Then you can move on.”
Their words are like sunlight. I absorb them; the warmth and the glow of this precious friendship encouraging tiny shoots of optimism to sprout in the barren desolation that Ares has left behind.
Maybe it isn’t over between us. Maybe it never will be.
I look between each of their hopeful, tender faces.
If they think it’s worth trying—if there’s any chance at all—I should do it.
I nod. Through the fog of dreary exhaustion that’s enveloped me, I feel a flicker of energy return.
A little spark of belief; a fragile light in the darkness.
“I’ll go back,” I say. “I’ll try again.”
But when I get to Thrace, his mansion is empty.
The stables are deserted, the floor swept clean, and the Keres gone along with the horses and bronze-wheeled chariot.
I wander across the courtyard, searching for signs of life.
It’s always been a quiet, lonely place, but the solitude feels different, abandoned.
There’s no sound at all, not even the croak of the vulture or the scrape of its clawed talons against the stone.
I push the heavy doors open, but the house is in darkness. No torches lit, no fires burning. I walk through the corridors to his bedchamber and find nothing there either. No furs left heaped on the bed, no spear leaning against the wall, no sign that he was ever here.
It’s as though he never existed. As though our love was something I only ever dreamed.
I step out onto the veranda. The sparse leaves I once summoned into life have dropped from the tree, curled and brown and dead on the floor. When I reach out and touch its withered branch, it doesn’t stir or shudder under my fingers as it did before.
With a mounting sense of panic, I hurry back through the dark hall and out into the courtyard.
I stoop to touch the ground, willing it to breathe and open up to me, to yield itself and burst into bloom once more.
I want those strange and sinister flowers; I want to feel this place give in to me like it used to.
But it doesn’t happen. There’s nothing here but rock and dirt, lifeless and cold.
Ares is gone.
—
In my chariot, the wind whips against my face, a stinging and relentless cold that rakes across my skin. I barely notice what lands and seas spread out beneath me or how the clouds coil around me, ghostly wraiths that cling on, a damp chill that permeates my flesh all the way through to my soul.
It’s then, alone in the skies, that the truth breaks me apart.
It’s a brutal clarity; a flash of lightning that illuminates the wreckage of us, and there is nowhere I can hide from it.
The sobs overtake me in a storm of grief, racking my chest, startling the doves, who jerk and rear upward in consternation, but I can’t stop.
I’m left holding on to the wooden rail, exhausted and drained, as I open my eyes to the familiar shores of Cyprus ahead.
“Now I know,” I say to Hesperis when I land. “You were right. It’s over.”
They don’t need to ask what happened. They can see my red-rimmed eyes and hear the catch in my throat.
Auge’s voice is soft with sympathy. “So what now?”
I draw in a long, ragged breath. “I can’t avoid it anymore,” I say. I have to go through with this marriage.
I bathe, dress, let them brush my hair. Other gods might laugh, think me vain, but those same gods would be merciless if they ever saw me less than beautiful.
It’s my armor, my protection against their mockery and their judgment.
I can feel my strength return with every flower they weave into my crown, every jewel they fasten around my throat and wrists and in my ears, every cream and paste they dab into my skin.
Aphrodite again, unchanged on the outside, no matter what ravages I feel within.
With the Horae at my side, I return to Mount Olympus. I’m prepared for Zeus to gloat about the wedding. What I’m not prepared for is Charis hurrying from the rooms before I can even get a word out.
I turn to the other nymphs. “She must know this isn’t my fault. I’m not taking Hephaestus from her by choice.”
Hesperis ushers me to the couch, pulling me down to sit. “That might make it even worse,” she suggests. “You have what she wishes for, and you don’t even want it.”
“If I could give it to her,” I say wearily, “I would.”
“She’ll get used to it,” Dysis says. “Give her time.”
“You look better,” Auge says, her eyes lingering thoughtfully on my face, and I know she’s not just referring to her own handiwork. “What is it? Was it going back to Thrace? I know it was painful—”
“It was,” I agree. “But it was the right thing to do.” I can’t torture myself with the idea that I could’ve changed my mind. I can’t run away with Ares now, even if I want to.
I’ve realized, with no possibility of denial, that there’s no choice but to move forwards. I just have to decide how to do it.
And I can see a chink of light in this prison of my own making. I railed against the prospect of marriage all of my existence because I never wanted to be caged, but now I realize I don’t have to be.
I won’t be a wife like Hera, her spark extinguished in bitter frustration, an emblem of what women must suffer in marriage.
She’s reluctantly faithful to a philanderer she cannot love and brutally punished when her defiance goes too far, never able to openly challenge him when the rules that bind her don’t hold him at all.
Not so for me. I won’t give in to unhappiness. I’ll treat marriage with the same regard that Zeus does. I’ll keep my promise, to maintain peace and escape exile. But Zeus won’t win. I’ll keep my word, and nothing more. I won’t give up my freedom, and I won’t let marriage crush my spirit.
I’ll behave like a god because that’s what I am.
—
Demeter finds me at the gates of Olympus. Beneath us, a conflict seethes, Eris swooping above it like a malevolent bird of prey.
“She’s getting worse,” Demeter remarks.
I glance at her. Her lips are pursed, a crease deepening between her brows as she takes in the scene. “Much worse,” I agree. “This battle—it’s been going on for an entire mortal summer with no sign of abating.” A season in their world; a fleeting moment in ours.
Time is tumbling forwards so quickly, I can’t catch it or slow it down, only be carried on its current toward a future I didn’t choose.
Demeter looks around us at the empty snow-dusted slopes. “The other gods don’t care to watch?” she asks.
“Even Zeus has lost his appetite for it.”
“But not you?” Her voice is kind. “You never had much stomach for this before.”
“I still don’t,” I say. “I don’t want to see the suffering. I just wonder who will stop it now.”
“Won’t Ares resume his duties?” she says. “He’ll have to get Eris in hand eventually.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He told me once that it used to be his worshippers that kept him here, that he couldn’t leave them. But he’s left them now. I think that means there’s nothing else to hold him to Olympus.”
“Nothing?” she asks. “Not even you?”
I shake my head. “Not anymore.” I pause, absorbing the weight of it. “But surely you think that’s for the best, don’t you, Demeter?”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t think any of this is for the best,” she says softly. “I hate to see you like this.”
“Like what?” I ask, lifting my head high.
“You’ve always insisted you’d never marry,” she says. “I hoped you’d be able to stick to that. I never wanted you to be constrained.”
I hold her gaze. “I won’t be.”
She smiles slightly, though it’s tinged with sadness. “I’m glad,” she says. “Have you talked to Hephaestus, then? Come to some arrangement?”
Hephaestus. The sound of his name is a blow to my chest. “No,” I say. “He hasn’t been back to Olympus since it all happened.”
“And you haven’t gone to him?” she asks.
“I won’t,” I say shortly. “Not again. But it doesn’t matter, not really. My feelings haven’t changed. I’ll do as I said. I’ll marry Hephaestus, but if Zeus thinks that will make me any lesser—any different from how I was before—well, he’ll be disappointed.”
She nods. “I believe you,” she says, her warmth like the first sunshine of spring chasing away the winter chill.
“Come on,” I say. “Come inside with me.”
We leave Eris and her war behind us.
—
Over the following days, I lie in perfumed baths and banish Ares from my mind. I concentrate on the warm water and the scent of rose petals as Helios draws the sun across the dome of the sky and another twilight descends. Olympus is busy with preparations for the wedding.
Hephaestus stays in Sicily, not daring to show his face. But he’ll have no choice soon enough.
Anger crackles under my skin, a shield against the sadness that threatens to creep in if I let the memory of the War God rise treacherously in my mind.
I repeat a mantra to hold it at bay. I’ll keep the peace of Mount Olympus. I’ll keep my status. I won’t run away, and I won’t languish in exile. Zeus won’t burn my temples or destroy my statues. No one will forget my name.
My wedding day approaches, and I greet it with a smile.