This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(59)

The twelve golden thrones, one for each of the Olympian gods.

Except one of them is vacant, its former owner now king of an empty volcano. There’s a covetous gleam in Dionysus’ eyes, and I feel a shiver of foreboding.

Just how far do his ambitions reach?



* * *



—

The moon is a silver coin shining in the darkness. I’ve been on Mount Haemus long enough for it to shrink to a sliver and swell round again, and only now am I about to step into my chariot in the stony courtyard. My doves are straining on their harnesses, eager to leave at last. The poor creatures hate it here, shrinking from the shadows and burying their faces in their plumage every time the Keres drift past them. “I won’t bring you next time,” I promise them.

Ares wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulling me back into him. “Don’t go yet,” he murmurs into my hair.

I luxuriate in his warmth, breathing in the earthy scent of him. “I wish I could stay,” I say. “But surely you have a war to fight by now?”

I feel him shrug. “I’ll send Eris.”

The shift of his body against mine makes my skin tingle, a shiver of pleasure that makes me ache for more. I’ve been happier in this gloomy place than seems possible, more so than I could have dreamed when I first saw it—but we can’t hide away here forever. “I should go back,” I say, “before everyone notices we’re both missing.”

“No one will notice I’m gone,” he points out. “Or care. And they wouldn’t know you’re with me. You could be going to Naxos with Dionysus.”

I slip around in his arms to face him, linking my hands behind his neck. “Is that where you think I’m going?” I ask.

He hesitates, just for a moment. “Are you?”

“Would you mind if I were?” I hold my breath.

“I told you that I wouldn’t.” I can’t read in his eyes if he means it or not.

“Well,” I say, “I’m not so sure that no one would think I’m with you. I think the other gods might be noticing us. I know Demeter has already.”

He tilts his head. “Maybe it’s inevitable,” he concedes. “However self-absorbed they all are, the gods love to uncover each other’s secrets.” He frowns, then softens again. “But if they do—if they already have—we won’t let it be a problem.”

“Really?” I ask.

He pulls me tighter against him. “It’s either that or we end this. And I don’t want it to end.”

My heart thrills. “Neither do I.” I reach up to kiss him. “But I do have to go,” I say reluctantly. “I never like to be away from Cyprus for too long.”

“Fine,” he says. “I probably do have a war somewhere anyway.”

He frames it like a joke, but I know how seriously he takes his worshippers. He wants to be back with them just the same as I feel the pull toward mine.

I kiss him goodbye, letting go of him against my every instinct, and stepping into my chariot. The vulture croaks, its baleful eyes malevolent on me. Ares tosses it a chunk of glistening meat and it quietens. My doves let out an anxious trill.

“Don’t stay away too long,” Ares says. With no breastplate or helmet, no spear or shield in his hand, there is an ease about him, as startling as a blade of sunlight breaking through storm clouds. So often is he brooding, his shoulders squared against the world. It feels like a rare and precious thing to see him this open.

“I won’t.”



* * *



—

Before I go to Cyprus, I stop at Olympus to ask Charis how Hephaestus is.

“Why don’t you go back there?” she says. “See him for yourself.”

I hesitate.

“He’d like to see you,” she urges. “No one is keeping watch there. You’ll be safe.”

Sweet Charis. A more conniving goddess would encourage me to stay away, but she truly cares for him. If she says he wants to see me, then he does.

Anxiety gnaws at my stomach as I think of how I left him. I don’t want to see him hurting and alone again.

But perhaps I can help. “I’ll go,” I say. “Will you come with me?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You go by yourself. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.”



* * *



—

The entrance to Hephaestus’ volcano has changed. When I went before, it was a clumsy opening punched through the rock. Now it’s shaped into a smooth archway, concealed by one large boulder so that it’s not visible to any passersby.

The narrow tunnel has been widened to a domed passageway, the roof high above my head, filled with signs of Hephaestus’ workmanship. It’s lined with statues, each carved with such painstaking detail that they look as though they could take a step forwards at any moment. I smile, admiring them as I walk, my heart lifting with the evidence of my friend’s recovery everywhere I look. This is what Charis wanted me to see. Hephaestus is getting better, and so I hope the bitterness will have drained out of our last encounter, letting us be friends once more.

I step into the cavernous interior of the volcano, and it is transformed. Before, Hephaestus had shaped his fiery prison into a hollow cave using streams of lava that surged under his control. Now he’s channeled them into one lake of fire on the back wall, caged within an iron grate. The smoke rises through a chimney cut into the rock all the way to the top of the volcano, where soot and ash spray from the crater. An anvil stands in the center; hammers and tongs hang on hooks that line the curved walls, along with axes, swords, chains and arrows. My eyes run from one work to the next: here a shield set with ivory bearing a monstrous face worked from shining metal and blue glass; there stacks of gold and silver wine-bowls, bows and arrows, shelves of jars and chalices, a seven-pointed crown set with fabulous jewels.