This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(72)

His words settle like stones in my chest. “No,” I say, “I’m not.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I glance toward the door.

“You aren’t going to him, are you?” He pauses, then chokes out a gurgling little laugh. “Even after this?” He shakes his head, painfully. “What would it take for you to see what he’s like?”

“I’m not going to Ares,” I snap. “Though if I were, I wouldn’t have to explain it to you.” A flush creeps into my face. It feels so oppressive in here, the stifling burn of the furnace and the stinging scald of his judgment. “Are you going to give me what I asked? Will you tell me how to free her?”

“No.”

I want to ask him how he dares to expect my friendship, then, but I bite my tongue. Ares has shown me that force isn’t the way, that Hephaestus won’t be broken by threats. As desperate as I am to claim back my freedom, I’ll give him time and he’ll have to see that I’m right about this. “I won’t stay,” I say. “Just think about what I said.”

And I leave him again.





21


There’s no trace of Ares outside the volcano.

Instead, Dionysus is waiting. Brimming with vitality, his eyes bright and clear, as though he’s enjoying the spectacle.

“Oh,” I say wearily. “You.”

“I saw you coming,” he says. “I thought I’d give you the chance to talk to him alone. You and that war-god of yours. He left in quite a rage, didn’t he? I take it your plan didn’t work?”

I press my hand to my aching eyes. “Why did you come here?” I ask.

“I told you. I was curious.” His tone is friendly, edged with amusement. “But, when we talked, I realized that we truly are brothers. Both of us Olympian gods denied our place in the heavens.”

I was fooled by his love of merriment, by his dedication to pleasure. I underestimated his attraction to chaos.

“You could have charmed Zeus on his behalf,” I say. “You could have shown Hephaestus how to win back his favor. Not use him to take revenge on Hera without risking yourself.”

He shrugs off the accusation in my words. “Hephaestus did what he wanted to do,” he says. “And he’ll get what he wants out of it.”

“So far, all he’s gotten is a beating,” I hiss. “And worse to come, if he doesn’t submit to Zeus.”

“Why should he?” I can hear the wildness of the moonlit grove in his voice, the seductive undertow of intoxication spiraling into reckless danger. “Why should he do what you want?”

“I want him to be safe,” I insist. “You don’t know what Zeus can do.”

Dionysus scoffs. “Hephaestus can take care of himself.”

“Then leave him alone.” Rawness frays the edges of my words. “Don’t go back there. Not unless you make him undo this.”

His brow creases. “I didn’t think that you’d be so afraid.”

“I’m afraid,” I say, “of losing someone I love.”

There’s a flicker of understanding in his eyes. “Zeus won’t destroy Hephaestus for this,” he says. “If anything, it’s the kind of action he respects.”

“You don’t know him as well as you think,” I say. “You haven’t been on Olympus very long. It’s always better to stay out of Zeus and Hera’s way.”

“And if you can’t?” he asks. “What then?”

I glance back at the smoldering volcano. “I think we’re about to find out.”



* * *



—

I sit on the rocky shore of the bay where the Titan Kronos split our father down the center. The land that my feet first touched, the home that first welcomed me.

I let the night pass here, allowing the darkness to envelop me in its jasmine-scented embrace while I contemplate what to do next. Wisps of pink cloud, warmed by the rising sun, float in the sky. I picture Hera in the heavens, her face taut with pride, refusing to acknowledge the bite of shackles against her skin.

When Zeus hears that Ares has failed, he’ll make good on his promise to open the contest to all the gods of the world. I wonder who will come. Weather gods arriving on Olympus in a shower of hailstones, cheeks puffed full of icy breath. Rustic gods of the mountains, goat-legged or horse-hooved. Gods from the deepest fathoms of the ocean, gilled and fish-scaled, their squid flesh cold and clammy.

I shudder.

“What’s wrong?” a voice asks me, and I recognize that sly tone, that taunting chill. Eris.

She appears by my elbow, a ghastly smile stretching her pale face. “Did Ares send you?” I ask, ignoring her question.

She shakes her head, and dark hair tumbles over her shoulders, spilling across her black cloak. Everything about her is wrought in shades of midnight and moonlight—the abyss of her eyes, the bone-white delicacy of her face, the onyx stones that hang on a silver chain around her neck. Even in her sourness, she’s beautiful. Like a viper: graceful and coiled. “He doesn’t know I’m here,” she says, a singsong whisper in her voice. “Such a rage he came back in from Sicily. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him so magnificent.”