This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(91)

“I didn’t know you were here.” She smiles, radiating contentment.

Kissing Adonis in the woods did what it was supposed to do: it reminded me who I am, and the world is remembering it too.

“Walk with me,” I say to her.

We stroll companionably around the ponds. Pink roses perfume the air, and birds sing from the tree branches. Any mortals who look at us will see two young women, arm in arm. They won’t see her spreading gold wings or our immortal radiance.

There’s just one question I need to ask. I can’t keep it in any longer. “Iris,” I say. “I know Zeus sent you to look for Ares. Do you really not know where he’s gone?”

She shakes her head. “I saw no sign of him.” She eyes me tentatively. “I’m sorry,” she adds.

“Don’t be,” I say. “I only wondered.”

“I’ll keep looking.”

“Not on my behalf,” I tell her. “If you find him, tell Zeus. I don’t want to know.”

“If you’re sure,” she says.

“I am.” I breathe out, feeling a weight lift from my heart. I change the subject. “It’s nice to see you and Auge back together.”

She nods earnestly. “I’m glad too.”

When she soars into the sky, a rainbow shimmering in her wake, she leaves me with a contentment I haven’t felt for a long time, confirmation that I’m doing what needs to be done. Putting Ares in the past where he belongs and turning to the future. Restoring love to the world, piece by piece.

Starting with me. But before I go back to Adonis, there is something I must do.



* * *



—

“You came back.”

I can’t tell from his tone how he feels. “This is my home, Hephaestus,” I say.

He comes to stand beside me, looking out to sea. Here, the landscape is formed from the cooling of molten rock, twisted and warped into shape. “I hoped it would be,” he says.

He looks contemplative, leaning on his staff, his gaze steady and calm.

“Are you going to tell me again that I can leave?” I ask. “Is that what you want?”

“I wanted you to love me.” He laughs, but it’s so sad and rueful that it cracks my heart down the center. “I thought you might, with time. When you stayed, I let myself imagine that might be what you wanted too. But I knew that it wasn’t, not really, and so when you acted as though it was at the council…”

I wince. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It isn’t that I could never have loved you. I could have, if things were different.”

“If you didn’t love him first. I know.”

I shake my head. “Not just that,” I say. “This marriage, the way it started…”

“It was poisoned from the start,” he says. “You did it because you were forced into it. Nothing good could grow from that.”

“I couldn’t make it real,” I say. I can dream of a happy life unfolding with Hephaestus. His devotion, his solidity and his faithful nature would give us centuries of harmony, divine children that would flourish in the sunlight of his love, a peaceful existence.

But that’s all it is. A pleasant dream.

“So will you go?” he asks.

“I think,” I say, “that it’s time.”

“You did what Zeus asked,” Hephaestus says. “And you kept the peace. Olympus is better for it.”

“But you aren’t,” I say. “And I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

He shakes his head slightly. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It was mine.”

I put my hand over his on the staff. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I don’t know what kind of goodbye you make to a husband when the last, tenuous strands that held you together have been snipped. I made no attempt to learn wifehood; far less do I know how to extricate myself from the role with grace. My endings have always been clean: move on and don’t look back.

It isn’t so simple now. When I leave Lemnos, I won’t be the same as when I first arrived, still dazed with heartbreak. This is where I began to heal.

Flowers bloom beneath his staff, below our linked hands, winding their stems around the wood he carved, the same vivid orange spikes that fascinated him once before. They look like birds—the bright-headed crane that he loves. This time, nothing fades away. They stay vibrant, quivering with hope.

I squeeze his fingers one more time, before sliding mine away. I want to tell him that the world awaits him, but somehow I don’t think he needs me to. With the end of our marriage, both of us are released from the bonds that trapped us.

Hephaestus is going to be fine without me. Better, in fact, just like Eros said.

And I’m ready to live my life again, exactly the way I choose.



* * *



—

In the forest, Adonis waits.

Yesterday, I was a bashful nymph, sweet and unassuming. This time, I don’t bother with that kind of restraint. I launch myself into his arms, kissing his handsome face so that he stumbles under the weight of my enthusiasm, and we fall together into the grass. I’m lying on top of him, both of us laughing, and he tucks a tendril of my hair behind my ear with an expression of tenderness and wonder.