Chapter 26 #2
When she soars into the sky, a rainbow shimmering in her wake, she leaves me with a contentment I haven’t felt for a long time, confirmation that I’m doing what needs to be done. Putting Ares in the past where he belongs and turning to the future. Restoring love to the world, piece by piece.
Starting with me. But before I go back to Adonis, there is something I must do.
—
“You came back.”
I can’t tell from his tone how he feels. “This is my home, Hephaestus,” I say.
He comes to stand beside me, looking out to sea. Here, the landscape is formed from the cooling of molten rock, twisted and warped into shape. “I hoped it would be,” he says.
He looks contemplative, leaning on his staff, his gaze steady and calm.
“Are you going to tell me again that I can leave?” I ask. “Is that what you want?”
“I wanted you to love me.” He laughs, but it’s so sad and rueful that it cracks my heart down the center.
“I thought you might, with time. When you stayed, I let myself imagine that might be what you wanted too. But I knew that it wasn’t, not really, and so when you acted as though it was at the council… ”
I wince. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It isn’t that I could never have loved you. I could have, if things were different.”
“If you didn’t love him first. I know.”
I shake my head. “Not just that,” I say. “This marriage, the way it started…”
“It was poisoned from the start,” he says. “You did it because you were forced into it. Nothing good could grow from that.”
“I couldn’t make it real,” I say. I can dream of a happy life unfolding with Hephaestus. His devotion, his solidity and his faithful nature would give us centuries of harmony, divine children that would flourish in the sunlight of his love, a peaceful existence.
But that’s all it is. A pleasant dream.
“So will you go?” he asks.
“I think,” I say, “that it’s time.”
“You did what Zeus asked,” Hephaestus says. “And you kept the peace. Olympus is better for it.”
“But you aren’t,” I say. “And I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”
He shakes his head slightly. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It was mine.”
I put my hand over his on the staff. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I don’t know what kind of goodbye you make to a husband when the last, tenuous strands that held you together have been snipped. I made no attempt to learn wifehood; far less do I know how to extricate myself from the role with grace. My endings have always been clean: move on and don’t look back.
It isn’t so simple now. When I leave Lemnos, I won’t be the same as when I first arrived, still dazed with heartbreak. This is where I began to heal.
Flowers bloom beneath his staff, below our linked hands, winding their stems around the wood he carved, the same vivid orange spikes that fascinated him once before. They look like birds—the bright-headed crane that he loves. This time, nothing fades away. They stay vibrant, quivering with hope.
I squeeze his fingers one more time, before sliding mine away. I want to tell him that the world awaits him, but somehow I don’t think he needs me to. With the end of our marriage, both of us are released from the bonds that trapped us.
Hephaestus is going to be fine without me. Better, in fact, just like Eros said.
And I’m ready to live my life again, exactly the way I choose.
—
In the forest, Adonis waits.
Yesterday, I was a bashful nymph, sweet and unassuming.
This time, I don’t bother with that kind of restraint.
I launch myself into his arms, kissing his handsome face so that he stumbles under the weight of my enthusiasm, and we fall together into the grass.
I’m lying on top of him, both of us laughing, and he tucks a tendril of my hair behind my ear with an expression of tenderness and wonder.
It’s an explosion of sweetness within me. I knew it when I first kissed him that he is the joy I crave.
Now, when I dip my face to his, it’s with intent.
His lips open under mine and I slide my tongue into his mouth, kissing him harder and deeper, none of the gentle niceties of yesterday holding me back today.
He responds, gripping me tightly against his body, and we roll together in the long grass, among spice-scented ferns and creeping vines.
I tug at his hunting tunic, eager to touch his skin and discover how beautiful he is unclothed.
I’m glad for my foresight in hiding my true identity.
While he thinks I’m just a nymph, he isn’t afraid—if he knew who I was, perhaps he’d be inhibited by the thought of the immortal lovers to whom I might compare him.
But he would have no need to worry. He might be just a man, but the most glorious one I have ever seen.
I smile, sitting up to lift my dress above my head, discarding it on the grass.
The awestruck look on his face makes my blood surge hot and fierce, hunger rising and arching within me.
His hands trace fire across my skin, sliding down to where I want him the most. The rush of the water, the bubbling song of the stream, covers the sound of our sighs as we move together.
This first time is so exquisite, so pure and new, like the dawn rising over a world remade, golden and beautiful and just for us.
Afterward, breathless and giddy, we lie by the stream.
Next to me, Adonis’ chest rises and falls, his head tilted back on the grass, gazing dreamily at the patches of sky visible between the canopy of leaves.
His eyes wander to mine and a wide smile spreads across his face, slow and sweet as honey.
He’s drunk with the same bliss that radiates through me.
His fingers slide across my stomach, pulling me into the curve of his body, cradling me as though I’m as breakable and fragile as he is.
For a fleeting second, I can’t help but think of Ares, as though I’m testing myself, like a human might poke at a bruise to see if it still aches.
But then I look at Adonis, twisting in his arms to take in the shape of his face and the sweep of his eyelashes, and he drives out any other thoughts.
“You’re perfect,” he whispers. “I was right the first time I saw you. You must be from a dream. You can’t be real.”
“But I am,” I say. “That’s why you’ll see me again. If I was a dream, I’d disappear.”
“You won’t?”
“I won’t.”
I kiss him again, and soon we have no more need for words.