“I bet you’re happy.” She glares down at Hephaestus. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I wanted to be one of the Thirteen.” He pushes off the bed and carefully stands, but on his first step, his knee buckles.
I move on instinct, catching his elbow and keeping him on his feet. It brings us startlingly close. Close enough that I can smell Eris and sex on his skin. Jealousy and something infinitely more complicated sink their fangs into me.
I love her. I’m quickly having to admit that I’m attracted to him. The thought of them fucking, of them sleeping together, claws at my insides, knowledge I can’t escape.
Hephaestus’s gaze drops to my mouth for one charged moment and then he shakes me off. “I got it.”
We watch in silence as he moves slowly into the bathroom and shuts the door firmly behind him. I turn back to Eris almost reluctantly. I didn’t think he would still be here, or I never would have come.
Except that’s not the truth, is it?
When I heard the news about Athena, I didn’t stop to think. I was already walking through the lobby to Eris’s building by the time my brain caught up with my body. I can barely process the relief I feel over her being okay when this is what I found. It feels like she stabbed me in the gut, and I don’t know what it says about me that I can’t just be happy she’s alive and well in this moment. I can barely look at her. “You slept with him.”
“He’s my husband. I’m allowed to fuck him.”
She’s being intentionally difficult. I clench my jaw. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. You slept with him, Eris. What the fuck?”
“Adonis—” She stops short and sighs. That sigh feels like a hook in my chest, dragging what’s left of my jagged heart out into the open between us. It’s only been a couple weeks since she broke it off, and it’s never been so final between us. My brain knows that it’s over. My heart hasn’t quite caught up.
“Don’t.” I don’t know what I’m protesting, only that I’m already the walking wounded and I can’t take her kicking me in the teeth right now. “Just don’t.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” She speaks so quietly, none of her normal sharp edges present. “We fought and we fucked and I haven’t slept in days. That’s all it was.”
Except we both know better.
Eris doesn’t sleep well. She hasn’t for as long as I’ve known her, which is most of our lives. She’s given dozens of answers over the years to explain it away, but I suspect the truth sources back to growing up in Zeus’s household. It’s bad enough to know her father murdered her mother—and got away with it—but he put all his children through trauma I can barely imagine. My parents can be difficult and stubborn and strict, but my home was a safe space. It still is a safe space.
She never had that.
She still doesn’t, though she’d fight me to a standstill if I suggested it. Eris doesn’t see what she and Zeus are doing as anything other than necessary, but marrying the enemy and going through torment to bring them down? That’s not normal, even for Olympus. It’s certainly not safe.
“Eris.” I catch myself. Eris might be who I fell in love with, but she’s not that person anymore. “I suggest you expand your security detail, Aphrodite. Maybe your husband won’t dare hurt you, but there are plenty of people in Olympus who are willing to kill for your title.”
“Adonis…”
She starts to rise, but I shake my head. “No. I’m done. Coming here was a mistake.” I keep expecting the pain of losing her to dull, but it’s as sharp as ever. Before, even when we were on a break, we were still friends. That isn’t true anymore. I can’t be just friends with this woman. We’ve been ingrained in each other’s lives for too long. Maybe we could never quite make it work in a permanent way, but we had our history binding us together.
Or at least we used to.
“I’ll leave my key on the kitchen counter.”
“Wait—”
I walk out of the bedroom before she can find the words to keep me there. She will. She always has in the past. What I need to do is leave immediately, but I find myself moving through the rooms of the apartment. There are so many good memories here from over the years. Evenings spent trying to cook whatever new dish Eris found on the food blogs she refuses to admit to anyone else that she loves. Lazy mornings strategizing on the political moves others are making and how she wants to either disrupt or assist. Nights where she fell asleep on my chest, her dark hair silky against my skin.