This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(71)
“And you’ll undo it!” Ares seizes him with a swiftness neither one of us saw coming. His spear drops, unheeded, to the floor and he’s gripping Hephaestus by the neck of his chiton. The Cyclopes stir, the four of them in a line, their hulking shoulders and clenched fists an intimidating sight, but Hephaestus manages a jerk of his head that tells them no.
The lava boils, the Cyclopes stand watchful and ready, but Ares is intent on Hephaestus alone.
Hephaestus stares back at him. Then very clearly and deliberately, he speaks. “I won’t.”
Ares flings him backward, and he crashes into the rock face with a sickening thud. A thin crack splits its surface, tracing up from the impact of his body, and his staff drops from his hand, clattering to the ground.
“That’s enough,” I say, but neither seems to hear me. Ares is striding toward his brother, suffused with deadly purpose, and Hephaestus shoves at him. His broad chest and the vast muscles of his upper arms give him strength, even against the hard bronze of Ares’ breastplate, and he knocks him off course. But while Hephaestus is powerful from centuries of toil, Ares possesses unstoppable momentum as the God of War. The river of molten fire is rising in waves, bubbles swelling and bursting in seething jets of smoke and sparks, but Ares is relentless, yanking Hephaestus and slamming him against the wall until the whole mountain shudders with the impact.
Stones tumble from above, pebbles shaken loose and scattering, and a rumbling growl reverberates from deep in the ground.
Hephaestus’ face is contorted with rage, ablaze with a fury he’s never expressed before—but Ares is incandescent. Terrible and awe-inspiring, vivid with divine wrath, alight with the dynamism of the battlefield in this cave that cannot contain it. I’ve heard his war-cry stream across the plains, a dreadful shout that holds within it a multitude of horrors, and, when he flings back his head here and lets it free, it leaps from wall to wall in a grotesque crescendo. I see the Cyclopes falter and pale, pressing their gigantic hands to their heads, buckling at the onslaught of sound that shrieks and rattles my brain inside my skull without mercy or respite.
Hephaestus, for all his bulk and determination, is crumbling under his brother’s blows. He shrinks against the wall, his arm across his face, smears of golden blood trickling down his skin. Then he rallies, swinging his fist around to connect with Ares’ face, his knuckles smashing into the side of his helmet, crumpling the bronze as though it’s nothing. Ares doesn’t seem even to notice.
I look from side to side, searching for something to hurl between them, for any way I can stop them long enough that they might hear me. The forge bristles with weapons—gleaming swords, heavy hammers, vicious-pointed arrows and double-headed axes—but closest to me is the spear Ares abandoned. I duck down and seize it. The ash wood is smooth in my grip; it’s weighty but balanced with a deadly blade. I lift it, aiming to the side of the grappling brothers and hoping I don’t hit either one of them.
I fling it and it flies past Ares, skimming his shoulder. He turns in surprise, shocked into stopping at last, before it crashes into the rock and jerks back, landing beside Hephaestus’ staff.
Hephaestus lifts his head, his eyes dull.
I’m sure that Ares is only momentarily deterred, but it’s enough of an opportunity for me. I draw myself up, letting power crackle through my body. I remind myself: I was born from the destruction of a god. The Sky itself shattered for me.
My power isn’t diluted by the generations of Titans and gods that came before Ares and Hephaestus; the ichor in my veins flows directly from Ouranos, who was shaped by Gaia herself at the very dawn of the world.
The gods who came after me might have cruder weapons, more brutal violence and a willingness to break the world apart in pursuit of their desires, but I was here first and I’ll be here until the end. It will be me, every time, who pieces it back together. Me, always, who is the reason for life to keep going in the face of disaster and ruin. Me, who walked out whole from underneath the collapsing skies and brought happiness in my wake—brought love, ever-replenishing and never defeated.
“You’ll leave Hephaestus now,” I tell Ares, in the breath of silence that follows the fallen spear. “He won’t do as you say, no matter what you do to him. You’ll stop. Now.”
The air pulses with violence. I can taste it like the iron and salt under the Thracian moon, vivid in the blood-drenched twilight where they sacrificed the bull in Ares’ name.
The longing is powerful, a reckless desperation to throw it all to the wind, to give in to the desire to crush and conquer a foe. It’s palpable, almost irresistible, and for a moment, when I look at the wildness in his eyes, I think he’s going to ignore me.
Instead, he wrenches himself away with an effort that makes me wince.
Without another glance at his broken brother, he stalks toward the exit and is gone.
Hephaestus stares after him, his gaze clouded and stunned. “Did he leave?” he croaks.
I swallow. “Yes.”
His eyes shift to me in an effort that seems as monumental as the one that Ares mustered to walk away from the fight. “He listened to you.”
“He did.”
“He gave up.” Hephaestus heaves himself to sit up against the wall, his hand groping for his staff. His breath wheezes from his chest as he speaks, but there’s a wondering light gathering in his face, a kind of dazed epiphany. “He gave up, and Hera still isn’t free.” His drifting gaze fixes on my face. “She isn’t free. And neither are you.”