Chapter 31 #2
In the morning, a soft breeze floats through the half-closed shutters in the hazy glow of dawn.
I put on a pale-pink dress, letting it settle around my body, and take a look at the wide bed and painted walls; the haphazard collection of stoppered bottles and glittering jewelry scattered across the table.
Last night, I begrudged this place for not being open to the stars, for not being a rough tent, for being scented with rose petals instead of grass and flame and smoke.
But it’s beautiful here, and it’s mine. It’s what I chose for myself and I don’t regret it.
I’m about to open the door, when it swings out toward me.
It’s the last god I would ever have imagined coming here, so impossible that I’m sure he can’t be real, that I must have conjured the vision of him.
I blink, light-headed, half expecting that he’ll vanish. “What are you doing here?”
Ares is all hard angles: rigid breastplate, firm jaw, tensed arms. His black eyes are smoldering. “You came to my home first,” he says. “Uninvited and unannounced.”
I stare at him. “I thought you were never coming back here.”
“And all this time I thought you were living in my brother’s house, doing Zeus’ bidding.”
My jaw drops. “I told you before you left that it wasn’t going to be like that.”
“I didn’t believe you.”
I feel a fluttering in my chest; a swirling sense of vertigo. He’s right there in front of me, close enough to touch. I take a step back, shaking my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “What would it have to do with you if I were?” I demand. “You left without a word. Why are you here?”
“You’re right,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with me. I’ll go.” He wheels around to leave without giving me any indication of what brought him here.
I grab his elbow, pulling him back to face me.
It’s the first time I’ve touched him since I lost him. It’s moonlight spilling pure and silver across the salt sea; it’s flowers blossoming in the spring; it’s life surging in my veins so wild and strong that I’m afraid my heart can’t contain it.
“You can’t just walk out,” I whisper. “Tell me why you came.”
For an agonizing moment, he doesn’t speak at all.
I see the struggle on his face, the battle to haul the words from his throat.
“Because,” he says, and the silence between us stretches and quivers until I think I can’t bear another second.
“Because since I saw you in Scythia, I haven’t thought about anything else. ”
There doesn’t seem to be enough air in the room to breathe.
I still have hold of his arm, as if without the solidity of him under my fingertips he might just disappear.
I can’t fight it. I can’t deny it. “You’re all I’ve thought about too,” I admit.
Since he thundered into the battle. Since he told me we were finished.
Since I jumped into his chariot on a moment of impulse and he took me home with him.
He’s been in my head and in my heart for decades, and if a hundred more centuries pass, he’ll still be there.
He stares at my hand where it touches his skin. My pulse quickens as his eyes lift, his gaze burning into mine.
We’re kissing before I know which one of us moves first, and it’s only now I have him here again—his skin hot against my palms, his mouth hungry on mine—that I realize how much I’ve wanted this, how unbearable every moment without him has been.
My fingers slide the catches of his armor, smooth and practiced even after all this time, stripping away every barrier between us.
I was a fool to think I could live for eternity without ever knowing this again.
It’s impossible to imagine. I need this like air, like nectar, only more.
He is the only thing I can’t be without.
My dress is on the floor with his breastplate and his tunic and I’m pulling him down onto the bed that felt so empty last night.
There’s no thought in my mind but him, no words or questions, only the feel of his heartbeat against mine, mingling until they’re one and the same, like we could never be parted again.
—
Golden sunlight spills through the shutters.
The brightening of the day outside feels impossible.
That time is passing, every precious second as real as the one before, and still Ares’ arms are around me.
His heart beats under my cheek, one hand lazily stroking my hair, and this isn’t a dream or a cruelly convincing memory.
The past mingles with the present and this feels new and familiar all at once.
All I know is that I don’t want it to end, not again.
“So you really never knew I was in Scythia,” he says.
“I told you, I didn’t know where you were. Only that you were gone.”
His hand pauses, and I lift my head to look at him. “Did you wonder?” he asks.
There is nothing guarded in his eyes. All I see in him is what I feel inside. A simple desire to know, to sate a hunger we’ve both suppressed so long. To feast on the answers to all the questions we’ve pretended we didn’t have.
“I tried not to,” I tell him honestly. “It was a torture I didn’t need.”
He nods, reaching up to cradle my face. “You thought it was better to forget.”
“Did you?” I ask.
A half-laugh, half-sigh escapes him. “How could I? I knew exactly where you were, all the time. I could never forget how easy it would be to come back.”
“Come back?” My eyes widen. “From the Amazons? From your life?”
“You were my life,” he says simply. “Always.”
“But, Ares.” I fight the urge to bury my face in his neck, to inhale his warmth and the precious scent of him, to lose myself in him all over again. “I never felt it. I never heard you. Your heart was silent, even when I saw you again in Scythia.”
“You know,” he says, “how well I can hide myself from the gods. How hard I worked at it until I had it perfected.”
I remember. I remember when I was the only one he didn’t shut out.
“When I thought we were over,” he goes on, “when I thought you were still married to my brother, I couldn’t let you hear how I longed for you.
Even when I saw you again, even when you told me your marriage was over, you said you hadn’t come to find me.
You were there, in my home, but not for me.
I buried my feelings deep, so that you’d never know. ”
My heart twists at the thought. I understand why he kept his love locked away inside, why he disappeared so far beyond my reach. But it stings to know that when I thought he was gone forever, all the while he was thinking of me too.
“But your daughter,” I say. “After she was born—”
“She made it easier,” he agrees. “She gave me a reason to stay away.”
I hesitate, not knowing how to frame the question that trembles on my lips.
A hammering on the door interrupts me, frantic and urgent. Ares leaps to his feet, grabbing his spear from the floor. I’m sitting bolt upright, clutching the furs to my chest, bewildered when the door swings open and Charis is there.
“Sorry,” she says, and I’m struck by how flustered she looks—her hair tumbling from its clasp, her breath coming fast. “I had to tell you, before Zeus gets here.”
“Zeus?” I ask.
Her eyes dart to Ares, then back to me. “Poseidon’s son, the mortal, he’s stolen the Sea Chariot. The stable-nymph told me to come and warn you.”
“Warn me of what? Why would I need to know?”
“Because when Zeus and Poseidon ran to the stables, they saw that Ares’ chariot was there. They know he’s on Olympus.”
“You came here by chariot?” I stare at him. “And left it in the stables?”
Ares tosses his spear on the bed and picks up his tunic. “Don’t worry, Charis,” he says, pulling it over his head. “Thank you for the warning, but I didn’t care if they saw it.” He glances at me with a half-smile. “I don’t need to keep this secret.”
“Oh,” Charis says. “I thought—”
She remembers the days when we concealed our affair from the eyes of the gods, and loyally she’s come to tell us we’ve been discovered.
I too assumed Ares had come here by stealth, that he’d vanish back to Scythia without Zeus ever knowing his errant son had been so close.
I’m as surprised as she is to find out he’s returned so openly, so brazenly.
Unless this means he intends to stay. That he’s come home to Olympus, like I told him he could.
“So why has his son stolen Poseidon’s chariot?” Ares asks. “Haven’t the mortals learned from the example of Phaethon?”
A mortal son of Helios, who steered the Chariot of the Sun off course and it burst into flames.
I shake my head. “Halirrhothios is arrogant,” I say. “He’d never learn. You should have heard him talk of the Amazons.”
“The Amazons?” Ares asks. He’s frowning. “What was his interest in the Amazons?”
“He said he wanted to go to Scythia,” I say. “He wanted to see them.” Suddenly I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Charis, do you think he’d be reckless enough to take the Sea Chariot there?”
She winces. “I’m sure he would.”
“He’ll get himself killed,” I say. I goaded him at the feast, but I never imagined he’d actually attempt to go.
“When did he take the chariot?” Ares asks.
Charis gives a baffled shrug. “No one knows exactly. He must have sneaked out in the night. The stable-nymph said the Sea Chariot wasn’t there this morning, but she didn’t know that Poseidon wasn’t the one to take it until he went there just now.”
Ares sighs, taking up his helmet and spear again. He’s fastened his breastplate back on, and it gleams in the afternoon light that spills through the shutters. “I’ll go,” he says. “I’ll retrieve Poseidon’s son.”
“You will?” I ask.
“I know Scythia better than anyone else,” he says.
“But you don’t care about Poseidon,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “But you don’t want the boy to die.”
My heart flutters. “You’ll intervene?” I ask.
“I’ll bring him here,” Ares promises. “When I find him.”