This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(43)

We aren’t alone—other gods have rushed here too. Demeter covers her face with her hands. Hestia’s gaze is steady on Zeus, a flame simmering in her eyes. Poseidon looks grim; Athena cold and expressionless. Apollo looks away from the ugliness, and Hermes is uncharacteristically still and solemn. Only Hephaestus watches in open anguish, tears gathering in his eyes.

The storm rages around us, and above the shrieking wind and crackling thunder Zeus howls a stream of words almost incomprehensible. I catch the phrases jealous bitch and burned to death and then he slaps her hard across the face and she falls again.

She’s gasping for breath, her face white from shock and her eyes burning with defiance as she gathers herself up, supporting herself on her hands. The thunder dies away, the wind dropping, and she heaves in a long, shaking breath before she speaks.

“It was you, you fucking fool,” she rasps, and every word is distinct over the falling rain. “You killed your precious Semele, not me.”

Semele. The name hisses through my body, awakening every nerve with horror.

I didn’t divert Zeus’ infatuation in time. I didn’t act quickly enough. Now she’s dead, whether it’s through Hera’s machinations or Zeus’ recklessness or both, and he’s angrier with her than perhaps he’s ever been.

He rears back, towering above her, and I take a tremulous step forwards. I want only to interrupt him, to stop him from whatever he’s about to do. To admit my part in fueling his affair and deflect some of this rage before something truly terrible happens in front of us all.

Across the courtyard, Hephaestus sees me move and, despite his bulk, he’s faster. Before I can reach them, and before I can even think to stop him, he launches himself between Zeus and Hera, shoving Zeus hard in the chest.

A gasp rises from the watching gods, and I clutch my hands to my breast, feeling that blow as if it’s in my body. “Hephaestus!” I cry, but it’s too late.

Zeus’ murderous gaze settles on his youngest son. He looks nothing like the incarnations of Zeus I’m used to seeing. The affable god, drinking in the throne room. The prowling predator, eyes sliding over my body. The stern king, issuing commands. Or even the spluttering tyrant yelling threats at the War God.

This is different and so much worse.

The bolt hums in his hand as he lifts it, light leaping from its vicious prongs.

Hephaestus starts to speak. “Father—” he says, his voice hovering between conciliation and panic, but he doesn’t get any further.

Zeus raises his fist and lets the thunderbolt fly.

It strikes Hephaestus in the heart. The force lifts him off his feet, sending him hurtling across the courtyard, smashing through the low marble wall with a terrifying crash and then he’s gone with unthinkable speed. Vanished into the sky in a stream of light, like a monstrous shooting star.

It can’t be real. It’s too sudden, too abrupt. It grips me like a nightmare, pinning me to the spot, paralyzed with horror. Grief splits my heart in two, but I can’t move or speak or scream. I can only stare after him, the shock reverberating through my frozen body.

On the ground, Hera turns her face to the empty sky, bewildered.

“Get up,” Zeus tells her. It’s his voice again, hard and merciless but recognizable.

She obeys. It takes her a few agonizing moments to stand, but she draws herself up and lifts her head high, unflinching as she looks at him.

“Everyone,” he says. “In the throne room. Now.”



* * *



—

I wrap my arm around Charis’ shoulder as we follow the gods up the marble steps in somber silence. Her cheeks are drained of color, her body rigid against mine, and I squeeze her tightly. Even if I dared speak, I don’t know what I would say.

We file in and take our seats. Charis stands anxiously at the rear of the hall, half hidden behind a pillar. She has no place in this kind of council, but I know she needs to hear the outcome. I look up and down the table at the seats that remain empty. Zeus and Hera are still outside. There’s no sign of Artemis; she wasn’t in the courtyard so I assume she’s blissfully ignorant of all this, running through her forests with her arrows and her nymphs. Ares, of course, is making his way to war. And Hephaestus…there’s no knowing how far away Zeus has hurled him. And nothing we can do but wait to find out.

When Zeus enters the room, Hera is with him. She keeps her eyes on the floor and stays half a pace behind him. To all intents and purposes a chastened wife, obedient and demure.

But there is something about the scornful curl of her lip that hints at the fury seething in her breast, the rage she keeps cloaked and the danger it poses—not just to Zeus but to any of us reckless enough to get in her way.

Zeus gestures at her to sit and she does. The mark of his fingerprints on her face is ugly and brutal, but I know that by nightfall, she’ll bear no trace of his attack—not physically. She’ll drink healing nectar and her immortal flesh will restore itself to its usual perfection.

I have no idea if the same can be true of Hephaestus, struck by his thunderbolt rather than his fists.

Zeus remains on his feet, prowling back and forth, his restlessness jarring. I wish that I could grab him by the neck of his robes and make him tell me where Hephaestus is and in what condition. If he’s been blasted to fragments, if he’s been left whole, if a god can endure the full force of Zeus’ wrath and survive.