This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(73)

My skin prickles. Whatever she’s here for, it cannot be good. Every fiber of my being longs to get away from her. “If you’ve brought a message from him,” I begin, and she laughs, an unpleasant sound.

“I’m no messenger goddess,” she assures me. “I’m not here for Ares. I don’t do his errands.” Her tongue darts between her teeth, its little point caressing her lower lip in a movement so hungry and sensuous it both repels and fascinates me.

“We’re all at odds with one another already,” I tell her. “Me with Ares, him with Hephaestus, Hera with all of us. Surely even you can’t find any more strife to stir up, so what do you want?”

She tilts her head, amused. “Now’s the moment, Aphrodite,” she says. “Olympus is ripe for me. It’s like a rotten pear, bloated and stinking and swollen, ready to fall apart at the slightest pressure.”

I sigh. “Of course, you must be delighted with the way things are.” If Olympus is a rotten pear, she’s a wasp, burrowing into the fetid sweetness, drunk on its fermented flesh, sucking out every last drop until it collapses in on itself, an emptied husk shriveling away to nothing. “Are you here to try to stir things up again between Ares and Hephaestus? Or are you hoping I’ll challenge Zeus?”

She’s almost radiant with happiness. “Neither,” she smirks. “Neither will be necessary.”

I shouldn’t let her goad me into probing further. Whatever she knows—if she knows anything at all—it will be worse if it comes from her than any other source.

And yet, I can’t resist. “Just tell me,” I say. “You can hardly wait to.”

“The contest,” she purrs, “is over.”

My stomach lurches. “It is?”

She nods, contented. “Hera is free.”

It can’t be. No one can have unlocked those fetters; it isn’t possible.

“And”—she lingers over the words, finding it all so very delicious—“you have a husband, Aphrodite. At long last, after all these centuries.”

I stagger to my feet, my breath choking in my throat. “No. You’re lying.”

She springs up too, sleek as Dionysus’ leopard. “You know I’m not.”

I have a fistful of her cloak before I know what I’m doing. “Tell me.”

“Oh,” she says. “I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t want to miss your reaction.”

My reaction. That’s what she came for. Slowly, I unclench my fists, letting her go.

“Dionysus gave Hephaestus wine,” she says. “It made him so much more persuadable.”

“Do you mean—do you mean, Dionysus is the winner?” I choke.

“Oh, no,” she answers. “He wouldn’t take the credit.” Her eyes sparkle in the morning light, the sky washed through with coral behind her. “Hephaestus unchained Hera himself.”

“Hephaestus freed her of his own volition?” It doesn’t make sense.

“He did,” she says. “Zeus has restored him to Olympus and declared him the winner.”

The words die in my throat.

“You swore the oath,” she says, “and so it’s decided. Hephaestus will be your husband.”

I turn away from her without a word, blind and unheeding, stumbling down the shore. If she carries on talking, I don’t hear it.

Hephaestus. Hephaestus. I turn his name over and over in my head until the syllables fall apart, until it becomes meaningless.

Out in the bay, the waves crash against the lone rock that rises above the water, foaming white spray whipped into a wild froth.

When the blood of Ouranos spilled here, when his own son castrated him above the place we stand right now, I wasn’t the only immortal given life through his agony. Giants walked here; the Furies too. My brothers and sisters, awakened through violence, seething like the wrathful sea. The Giants plunged themselves into war, tearing themselves apart in battle. The Furies have devoted their eternal lives to punishment and torment, their greatest satisfaction found in cursing others with the torture of our broken father.

I thought of them always as the shape of his pain; his howling fury given form.

When I followed them from these waters, I knew that my way was better. I heal, I soothe, I mend all suffering with love. It’s a greater force than rage, I know that.

But at this moment, it doesn’t feel that way.

Was this marriage what Hephaestus had intended all along? I think I hear Eris laugh again, but I don’t care now how much pleasure she takes from this. Let her revel in it all she likes.

I’m going to find Hephaestus, and, when I do, I’ll give her all the strife she craves.



* * *



—

I half expect his forge to be empty. All the way here, I pictured him restored to the heavens, enthroned at Zeus’ side, protected by the Olympians he’s managed to impress with his ruthlessness, with his conniving, with his chaos.

And, yet, the image of him smirking on a golden chair blurs and softens in my mind’s eye, and I see him laid low in an empty volcano, abandoned by everyone. Slumped at his brother’s feet, unable to withstand another blow.

Presenting me with a necklace, jeweled and sparkling, never asking for anything in return. Standing outside a mortal forge in the autumn air, listening to me talk, his warm gaze as comforting as the woodsmoke on the breeze.