This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(76)

He shakes his head, his eyes flat and cold. “You choose,” he says again. “Between me and him.”

But that’s not the choice. If I’m expelled from the heavens, they’ll tear down my temples, my statues, my sanctuaries. What happens to my worshippers then? What becomes of a world devoid of Love?

Time slows to a terrible crawl. I’m trapped in this moment, watching us fall apart, not knowing how to save us. Like watching a ship sinking into the ocean, engulfed by wave after wave, until all that remains is the empty horizon.

I’ll know who I am if I’m without Ares. I won’t know who I am if I’m no longer the Goddess of Love.

If I marry Hephaestus, I’ll lose Ares.

The enormity of it is like a blow to my chest. It can’t be. I can’t lose Ares.

But if I don’t marry Hephaestus, I’ll lose everything else.

“I already told you,” I say. “I won’t break the oath.”

Ares looks away. “I never asked you to change a single aspect of yourself, despite your wanting me to be completely different.”

“That isn’t true.”

His laughter is hollow. “You hate what I am. You never wanted to be with a war-god.”

I can’t deny it.

“I thought you might come to see me in another light,” he goes on. “I thought you might understand. And, even if you didn’t, I thought it was worth it to have you. You passionately hated war, but you were just as fervent that you wouldn’t marry. That, you’re suddenly willing to change. That’s what you’ll compromise on—just so you can stay on Olympus.” His voice rises in volume, but then he visibly reins himself in and shakes his head. When he speaks again, it’s quiet and soft. “But I won’t stay with you. Not this time.”

Snow drifts in tiny flakes, delicate flurries billowing across the dark stone. Above us, the towers pierce the gathering clouds, and I hear the rasp of the vulture’s croak, its squat body hunched on the rooftop. Somewhere in the shadows, the Keres will be lurking, indifferent to whether I’m here or not. When I’m on the other side of the iron gates, this place won’t miss me at all.

“Why not?” I implore. “I would stay for you. Nothing would make me leave.”

“Would you?” His smile is tight and bitter. In this moment, he feels almost unrecognizable. A stranger in the place of the god I love more than any other I’ve known. “I don’t think you’ve ever been here at all. Not really.”

I swallow, absorbing his words. “That isn’t true,” I say slowly. “I’m here with you. I don’t want to run away. I don’t want war.” I want him. That’s all I want.

I know he wants me too.

But it isn’t enough.

His eyes flash bronze. There’s a flicker of anguish, an echo of the sorrow I feel building like a tidal wave, ready to crash over me, but he says nothing. I think I can hear my heart beating in the silence, painful and pounding.

“You’ve decided, then,” he says, just as the empty space between us becomes impossible to bear.

“And so have you.”

He inclines his head. “I have.”

Even as I turn away and he does nothing to stop me, I don’t believe it—that I’m going to leave Mount Haemus and marry another god. This cannot be how it ends. But, step by step, my feet move, and I can sense Eris’ hungry gaze on the back of my neck, savoring every painful second.

I’m Aphrodite, I remind myself. There are shrines in my name from Cyprus to Corinth, Sicily to Athens, and every island in between. I won’t leave here weeping. I’ll sweep myself into the sky and soar away as though my heart is as light as the wings that carry me.

And only I will know that it’s shattered into fragments beyond repair.





22


From the summit of the highest peak on Cyprus, I look out across the world for battles. A skirmish rages here, a clash there, and I lean out further, searching each conflict for a familiar figure striding through their midst, listening for the echo of his yell.

I see only Eris, flanked by her sisters.

I wonder if Ares stays alone in his mansion, withdrawing from the world entirely. Too angry even for war. Perhaps he fears what he’ll do if he encounters Zeus.

Or perhaps it’s me he wants to avoid.

“Come away,” a soft voice says. “You don’t need to watch that.”

I turn to see Hesperis, Dysis and Auge gathered behind me. “I know,” I sigh. “I just wondered if I’d catch a glimpse of him.”

“What good would that do?” Hesperis says, with just a touch of gentle scolding. “Didn’t you say when the Dryad Phigalia grew tired of me that it would only hurt me to keep thinking of her? You stopped me from wandering her mountain in the hope of seeing her again. You turned my eyes elsewhere, remember?”

“I did,” I say. The recollection coaxes a smile from me. “I seem to recall you moved on to one of the Aurae rather quickly?” A lovely nymph of the breezes; I can picture her flowing hair and wild grace, the way she moved through the air as though she were dancing.

“That’s right,” says Dysis, extending her hand to me. “Isn’t that what you’ve always advised us to do? When one affair comes to an end—”