Chapter Nineteen Aphrodite #2
Apotheosis, the process by which a mortal becomes a god, required a two-thirds vote of the Olympians—eight of twelve. According to Hephaestus, Dionysus’s vote had been unanimous. Even Hera had voted in his favor, probably out of pity that he’d lost his mother.
The vote was distinctly less certain in Aphrodite’s case.
Aphrodite wished she could run and bury her face in Hephaestus’s broad chest, but she forced herself to stand tall, tipping her chin up as a goddess would. She ignored the way the Olympians all stared at her, their gazes filled with either lust or envy or some combination of both.
Then the tiles were flipped over, one at a time.
Every male god voted in Aphrodite’s favor.
She hadn’t met any of them except Hephaestus and Zeus, but she found that she could tell them apart easily enough—Poseidon carried a telltale trident, and Hermes had a mischievous smile.
Aphrodite’s eyes had lingered for a beat on Hephaestus’s brother Ares, but he glanced away as he flipped his tile white side up.
The women were decidedly less welcoming.
A black tile from Artemis. A black tile from Demeter, and Hestia, and even Athena, Hephaestus’s own sister. Then it was Hera’s turn.
Aphrodite’s future hinged on this moment. One more vote against her, and she would remain mortal.
The queen of the gods had exchanged a glance with Hephaestus, then turned her tile white side up.
And so it was done. Hestia fell from the divine Pantheon to a slightly lower status, making room for Aphrodite among the twelve Olympians. Then Aphrodite married Hephaestus and became the goddess of desire.
That initial moment of support when Hera had flipped her tile in Aphrodite’s favor? It was not indicative of how their relationship would progress. Not that Hera ever insulted Aphrodite outright. Her scorn was more subtle and far more insidious.
She invited all the other goddesses over for a dinner party but pointedly didn’t include Aphrodite, claiming that it was a potluck dinner and she’d had no idea Aphrodite even knew how to boil water.
She raised her eyebrows at Aphrodite’s clothing choices, watched her behavior like a hawk at cocktail parties, made seemingly innocent remarks about the “very modern” way she’d decorated her and Hephaestus’s home.
Most cutting of all was the constant implication that Aphrodite shouldn’t have been there, that she was lucky Hephaestus had deigned to marry her.
“You were his choice,” Hera would say, with a little shrug that indicated just how baffling she found this choice.
She was reducing Aphrodite to a cipher, forcing her to inhabit the role they had cast her in: goddess of desire, wanton, worthwhile for her beauty alone.
Once, during a moment in bed that felt particularly intimate, Aphrodite had voiced these concerns to her husband. She always felt closest to him like this: when she was pressed up against him, her back against his rib cage. Feeling his heartbeat, his breath.
“I don’t think the other goddesses like me,” she’d murmured, afraid to name his mother in particular.
Hephaestus had just pulled her closer and kissed her. “Of course they do,” he’d argued. “They just take a little getting used to, that’s all.”
No, they didn’t. They thought of her as an interloper, the goddess who had stumbled into divinity because of how she looked. Sometimes Aphrodite wondered if they could still smell it on her, even after all these years: the stench of mortality.
Perhaps, on some subconscious level, that was why she’d slept with Ares. If the other goddesses were all going to hate her anyway, she might as well give them a reason.
It happened after a particularly vicious council meeting at Olympus. Aphrodite had never cared for their annual retreat, though she pretended to, for Hephaestus’s sake. She felt at her loneliest here, as if she were a human again, wearing her vulnerable mortal skin.
As usual, Aphrodite’s proposal to the Olympian council had gone ignored. Then she’d watched the other gods dismiss Ares out of hand, too.
The moment the council meeting ended, Hera cornered Aphrodite to ask about their travel home. Zeus wants to stop by Paris, Hera explained. Do you and Hephaestus want to join? I was going to book us rooms at the George V. Aphrodite promised to go find Hephaestus and ask him.
Even the thought of Paris, her favorite city in the world, wasn’t enough to break through the darkness that had overtaken her.
She felt suddenly and unbearably lonely, so desperate for a moment of connection, of love, that she was trembling with it.
And then she’d bumped into Ares, and it all seemed so simple.
The longing that filled her spilled over onto him without any effort at all.
I don’t have to be alone, she had thought, with something like wonder. Here was Ares, who felt just as isolated among the Olympians as she did. Maybe they should feel alone together.
He was her husband’s brother, but in that moment, Aphrodite could only think of how painfully attractive he was.
Her eyes darted hungrily over his chiseled shoulders, the fullness of his lips.
She reached playfully for his hand and started tugging him toward her spot on the beach, relishing the rough scrape of his palm on hers.
When she felt Ares hesitate, Aphrodite didn’t think twice. She unleashed her magic into his mind. There was a part of him that did want her, and Aphrodite let the full force of her magic amplify that desire, flaring it from a tiny flame into an all-consuming blaze.
· · ·
“It is my distinct pleasure to introduce our guest of honor!” The museum director stood with a broad smile. “Mr. Eliasson, thank you for joining us!”
So the artist himself had shown up to this dinner. Aphrodite twisted in her seat, tossing her curtain of hair over one shoulder as a man with hipster glasses approached. Predictably, his eyes flicked to Aphrodite first.
Everyone always looked at her first—man, woman, child, it didn’t matter. That was the way of things.
Then, to Aphrodite’s surprise, Julia leaned forward. Her smile was warm and completely genuine as she said, “Herra Eliasson, ég elska listina.”
“You speak Icelandic!” the artist exclaimed.
“Only that particular phrase,” Julia replied modestly. “I used to give art tours in the Mediterranean.”
“Well, if you’re going to learn a single phrase in a foreign language, you chose a good one. Loving art is a universal emotion indeed.” The artist looked to Aphrodite again, then dismissed her, turning back to Julia.
Irrationally, Julia’s triumph made Aphrodite want to scream. No one was supposed to outshine her. Especially not a mortal who had memorized a single phrase in a language spoken on one island. People were supposed to look at her. She was beauty incarnate, after all.
Aphrodite reached for her wineglass, fighting off a new, sickening thought. What if Hera hadn’t just invited Julia here to mess with Aphrodite?
What if she genuinely supported Ares in his quest to make Julia a goddess?
When Aphrodite had eavesdropped on them, back at Olympus, she’d heard hesitation in Hera’s voice. But maybe the queen of the gods had changed her mind. Maybe, for some impossible reason, she approved of Julia.
Hera’s had been the deciding vote back when Aphrodite became a goddess. If Julia had Hera’s support and became one of the Olympian Twelve…
Aphrodite refused to finish that thought. Julia would not be staying, would not force another goddess from the Pantheon. Aphrodite would make certain of it.