The Death King

by Jovee Winters

  My nostrils flared as I dug my fingers into the palms of my hand so hard that I felt the nails break through the soft, tender skin. I told myself not to be goaded, that she was trying to draw me into her web for reasons I couldn’t fathom. But I was tired of everyone thinking they had my measure when they didn’t know me at all. I stomped my foot and leaned forward.

  “You all think Love so weak,” I spat. “But it is the strongest power in the worlds. A power that can move even the coldest and evilest hearts to action. Do not mock me, Lachesis, for you would not wish me as your enemy. That I can promise you.”

  She laughed, tipped her head back, and chuckled deeply. Confused by the sudden burst of humor, I glared at her. But inside, I was a giant ball of bewilderment too. What was wrong with the woman?

  Wiping her eyes with her knuckles, she shook her head. “As I said, you are just as I’d imagined you would be.”

  Scoffing and feeling dangerously close to tears—though I had no bloody idea why—I turned my face to the side so that she would not witness the shame in my eyes. I’d come here determined to act every inch the haughty and hateful bitch everyone claimed I was, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t think I could pretend to be anymore.

  I hated this new version of Aphrodite. Hated and loathed her. She was evil and cruel and not me… not me at all. I dropped my chin to my chest, feeling cold all over and bone tired. So, so tired.

  A cold hand dropped onto my shoulder, and I flinched, startled that I’d not heard Lachesis draw closer. I stumbled on my heel, nearly losing my balance in the process.

  “Damn you, Fate!” I wheezed, clutching at my chest. “Damn you all. I’m so sick and tired of all of this. I… I hate this place.” And horrors of all horrors, I felt the traitorous tears begin their shameful slide down my cheeks.

  All the pain and heartache and feelings of abandonment came to head then, and a bloody, crazy Fate got to witness the spectacle that was Lust completely losing her sense of self.

  I expected her to jeer, to ridicule me, to be as cruel as the rest of the pantheon had been to me. But she wasn't. Instead, she reached into a tiny pocket on her skirt and pulled out a lacy ecru-colored handkerchief.

  “Here,” she said softly, thrusting the crisp square of cloth at me. “Take this. Clean yourself up. I had to make certain, you see. I apologize, goddess. Clotho was not with me today when I felt your presence quicken upon the ley lines, and I could not ask her which version of you I’d receive. I am glad to learn it is truly you. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”

  I frowned, still rubbing miserably at my nose. “Excuse me?”

  She sighed and pointed to a chair that had suddenly appeared from thin air. It was a jeweled throne with lush red fabric and ornate gold framing. She pushed me into the chair, then took a seat opposite me on another throne that had suddenly appeared before me. This one was shaped like a timepiece with grains of sand sliding through its narrowing opening.

  “My sisters and I foresaw this, you see. All of this. But we were helpless to stop it and could no more speak of these matters than the others of your time who also knew.”

  I frowned, leaning so far forward that I was barely sitting on the edge of my seat. “Excuse me. You foresaw this? And what do you mean by that exactly?”

  She inhaled deeply. “I mean that we knew what was to come.”

  I jumped to my feet, trembling with barely checked rage. “So why didn’t you stop this? Why didn’t you warn us? Any of us? How could you just let this nightmare occur?”

  She looked unmoved by my fury, and once the words were out, I felt a lethargy creep over me, taking the last bits of strength from my knees and causing me to fall back with a heavy plop. All pretense of a haughty goddess were entirely gone now.

  Lachesis pursed her lips. “I know this is hard for you, Aphrodite. In truth, this was one of the few times in my own life when I wished I’d not been able to read the threads of time. But as I said, I was not the only one who foresaw this. You may not believe me, but Hades and Calypso did as well.”

  I blinked. And then I blinked again and heard a strange whirring sound in my ears. I was fairly certain I was in shock, but I seemed incapable of doing anything other than taking a breath and blinking. I felt my jaw go slack. If I could have spoken, I would have cursed her for lying. I would have told her that neither Caly nor Hades would be so cruel as to not let me know what was to come.

  But as I blinked like a doll with broken eyes, I thought not as a hurt mortal or even as their friend, but as a goddess. I thought of what I would do if I’d learned of something so terrible, something that I clearly would be unable to stop. Deep in my heart, I knew that if Caly and Hades had known of this, they would have done all in their power to stop it. So the fact that I was here today, sitting across from a fate, speaking of a time few remembered, meant they’d not been successful. And if they’d not been able to stop this, then truly, no one could have. Maybe by not telling me, they’d shown me a kindness, an act of mercy in a sense, because I’d not carried the weight of the destiny on my shoulders as they clearly had.

  I finally looked at Lachesis, and she looked right back at me.

  “Your mind is a very convoluted and twisted thing, but essentially, Love, you are correct. They did wish to spare you the pain.”

  I breathed deeply. “I would ask you how you know all this, but it’s pointless because obviously you knew.”

  “And you’re not angry with them?” She seemed genuinely curious by my lack of the emotion.

  I shrugged, and a heavy sigh spilled off my tongue. “I’m hurt more than anything. Hurt that they felt the need to hide this from me, that they didn’t think they could trust me with it. I am their best friend. Together the three of us—”

  “Could have done nothing,” she said softly. “You know this. They could no more tell you than I could have, goddess. You have a keen mind and a kind heart. Surely, you know this already.”

  I thinned my lips, but acknowledged that she was right. I wasn’t anywhere near as bright as Calypso or even Hades, for that matter. If they’d not stopped this, I could have done nothing. I was beautiful, but beauty was a silly, foolish thing to boast about. It was a superficial, stupid power at best, and we all knew it.

  I closed my eyes, fighting to bury that lump trying so desperately to work its way out of my throat.

  “How could the other gods and goddesses not realize who you really are, my dear?” she asked softly.

  I opened my eyes, looking at her curiously and losing my battle to hold back my tears. Mortified by my weakness, I tried to scrub them off my cheeks, but no sooner did I rid myself of those tears than even more took their place.

  Though she did not cry, she mimed dabbing at her cheeks, reminding me that I still held her handkerchief in my hand. She said nothing, giving me time to collect myself again.

  Once I did, she gave me a small smile. “Sometimes I think those of us who remember truly have it worse, do we not? To know all we lost is a pain beyond endurance. I am truly sorry for what’s happened to you and Hephaestus. I know that your love for your mate was very true and real.”

  I shrugged, wishing to stop speaking of things that hurt me so very deeply and did not at all matter when it came to recovering my friends’ memories.

  “That is neither here nor there. The only thing that matters is making Hades and Calypso remember one another.”

  “Well.” She took a deep breath. “I wish I could say that you were right, but being the goddess of love, it is a very dangerous thing for you to lose faith in it. So don’t let yourself become compromised in that way. If you want your friends to remember, Aphrodite, then you must be their staunchest advocate. That means there can be no room in you to lose faith in who you really are.”

  I glanced down at my fire dress, feeling silly all of a sudden. And very, very hopeless.

  “I’ve tried for weeks to awaken Hades’ memories of her. Even of me. But he is so different from the male he onc
e was. Even in the previous world, before he met and fell madly for his queen, he wasn’t so closed off and cold. I simply don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, lucky for you, Love, I do.”

  My head whipped up, and I stared at her half in dread and half in hope. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the reason you can’t reach him is because he has no heart.”

  I snorted, leaning back on the throne and kicking my leg out. “And here I thought you were wise. He has a heart. Of course he does. Of all of us, it is Hades that has always felt the deepest and the most.”

  She rolled her eyes, reminding me a lot of a parent exasperated by a child. I thinned my lips.

  “I mean in the most literal sense, Aphrodite. He literally has no heart in him. Neither he nor Calypso do. They bound themselves to each other, and he has hidden their hearts away in a place not even I can see.” Crossing her arms, she glowered down at her sandaled feet, looking put out.

  Glad to see I wasn’t the only one confounded by this strange new world, I couldn’t help but smirk.

  “And suddenly, a lot of things are becoming clear. It is no wonder I couldn’t reach him. The fool tore his heart from his chest. What was he thinking? What were they thinking? The seed of control, of our destruction, is in the ownership of our hearts. What would make them do such a reckless and foolhardy…” But as I said it, I already knew the answer.

  Love.

  Love of the deepest, fullest kind. Love so powerful that the loss of it cut deeper than even the loss of their hearts. This was their fail-safe, how they’d planned to find one another again.

  I pursed my lips.

  “Now you get it. The key to unlocking all the rest of the happily ever afters destroyed by this monstrous curse rests in them. I think somewhere deep down, they knew that. They are not foolish, Love. They are—”

  “Idiots.” I sighed. “But they’re my idiots, I suppose.”

  “Hmm.” Time sniffed and nodded.

  “And as the goddess of love, I also wager that they banked on the fact that, one way or another, I would help them to rediscover that which they’d lost.”

  “I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”

  “There’s only one problem. If you don’t know where they’ve hidden their hearts, and neither of them remembers doing it, how exactly am I to help them unlock this mystery? I am love, not omniscience.”

  She tipped the vial in her hand. “That is where this potion comes in. I was given this recipe many lifetimes ago, it seems. I was told that someday you would come to me, and that when you did, you were to drink from it. That by doing so, this potion would guide you to where it all began for them. Or rather, where it ended.”

  “And who told you this?” I asked, curious.

  She grinned for several long seconds, but did not answer. And when I realized she had no intention of answering, I asked a different question.

  “And there is where I’ll find their hearts?”

  “Oh no. No. No.” She shook her head, causing the star wreath upon her head to shimmer and shine. “Hades hid their hearts deliberately, ensuring that not even we Fates would know where to find them. My hope is that this will be the genesis to unlocking his memories, or at least the ones that are relevant.”

  “Why him? Why not Caly? Perhaps she is the key to unlocking—”

  “She is not, and well you know it. She is water now and thinks only as such. It will take her many weeks yet before she can take the form of a woman, let alone reason like one. Wherever this guides you, it will be to unlock him and restore his memories, at least partially. Hades was always a divine chess player.”

  I grinned. “You played chess with Hades? Why did I not know this?”

  She shrugged and grinned back at me. “I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, Love. I needed to find something to fill the space, and well… perhaps he wasn’t the only one setting the chess pieces in play for a time such as this. I earned his trust, and in that other world, he gave me this—the first piece of the puzzle to give to you.”

  Warmth stole through me. No, they’d not told of me the destruction of the world we had all come to love, but Hades had trusted me after all.

  He’d trusted that I would save him. And so I would. I would follow this guiding potion to wherever it might lead, and I hoped that when it was all said and done, at least one of us could rediscover our happily ever after.

  I took the bottle carefully from her hands and unstoppered it. A whiff of the potion reached my nose. It smelled faintly of roses and lemons.

  I wet my lips and looked at Lachesis.

  “What payment do I owe to you? You never did say.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Not this time. Believe it or not, sometimes a gift can be given with no thought of reward in return. Just save them.”

  I frowned. “I don’t wish to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  She snorted, and I grinned, realizing my inadvertent reference.

  “But why are you doing this? The Fates give nothing without expecting something in return.”

  “Sometimes people can surprise you, goddess. Now go. Go and save him. Save us all.”

  “Bottoms up, then.” And with a nod of thanks and farewell, I tipped the vial back and drank it all down.

  4

  Aphrodite

  When I opened my eyes again, I was in hell.

  Literally.

  Magma fields bubbled up from the desiccated ground, burbling and hissing, making me cringe as I felt the intolerable heat blast against me with such strength and ferocity that had I been anything other than a goddess, merely breathing in this sulfuric-tainted air would have suffocated me instantly. As it was, my skin felt dry, void of any kind of moisture and even my tongue felt like sandpaper on the roof of my mouth.

  Glancing up, I noted the bright-red sun hanging in the sky, giving off minimal heat. But it didn’t need to give off any. What radiated up from the ground was more than enough to make me know I wanted nothing more to do with this place.

  Whatever this place was.

  Frowning, I twirled in a slow circle, studying the landscape. Oddly enough, there was landscape. And not just a sea of boiling lava, like I’d first imagined. I stood in the center of a trail made up of dried lava rock. To either side of me were boiling fields of magma, but interspersed throughout were enormous trees with bark that crackled and sparked like orange flame, with massive boughs made up of thousands of burning blue leaves.

  Above me, I heard the shrill cry of a bird, but when I looked up, it was to spy a flaming streak of red and white—fire in the shape of a bird. Or rather, a phoenix, legendary creatures born from within the heart of flame. The powerful-looking bird wheeled through the air right above me, letting me know with its constant shrill crying that it saw me.

  I frowned, realizing I actually did know this place, though I’d never personally been here.

  This was Fyre. And also Fiera’s domain. The primordial goddess of the eternal spark, she was also one of Caly’s sisters. But where Caly had been connected to water, Fiera had forged her connection to something much hotter.

  Hardening all my flesh, including my eyeballs, until all of me shone like a polished diamond, I took small, measured breaths. I no longer felt as though I was a dried out husk. But I also looked like a walking disco ball, which was probably as ridiculous looking as it sounded. Still, I didn’t want to melt into a swampy puddle. I began to walk down the path slowly, hoping it would lead me to wherever Fiera was. Surely, she had to know I was here, which meant she was watching me, taking my measure to see what I was up to.

  The primordials weren’t exactly known for being gregarious like us Olympians were. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they were extremely private and secretive at the best of times. Still, Fiera had been a part of our love games, unlike her and Caly’s other two sisters, who could have cared less whether we lived or died. Fiera, like Caly, was a little more curious about the outside world than the
rest of their clan.

  Still, Caly and Fiera weren’t exactly the closest of siblings, so I couldn’t figure out why Lachesis’s potion had brought me here. She’d said that the key would be found here.

  And if that was the case, then Hades had come here before me. Did that possibly mean then that Fiera was trustworthy? I wished I knew more about Caly’s sibling. The only thing I actually knew was that their relationship was not only strained but contentious.

  As I was mulling things over, I spied a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. When I turned to look at it full on, I spied a horribly ugly little monster staring back at me. I frowned, realizing that though the name currently escaped me, I had knowledge of this thing. I’d known it before, but not well, for I could no longer remember its name. But certainly I’d seen it before.

  It had hair of flaming-blue on its head, and its body was twisted and covered in wrinkles. Its face looked hideously old, but its mannerisms made me imagine something more akin to that of a curious child the way it peeked out from around the massive tree trunk and studied me.

  It smiled broadly. With its bald head and liver spotting, I couldn’t make out whether I looked upon a boy or a girl. Though it wore no clothes, its skin was so loose that not even that could help me determine sex. The prettiest thing about it was its eyes. They were a glittering shade of lavender so clear that it reminded me of sea glass.

  Its smile grew wider, revealing two menacing rows of fangs. It was a carnivore for sure. But I was not afraid of it, because I suddenly recalled where I’d seen it before.

  I knelt, and my hair, which was no longer soft and supple but ropes of glittering gold, poofed around my form like a bellowing skirt. I used all my powers to make myself as attractive as possible.

  In truth, one of my greatest strengths was my beauty. Few people—gods or mortals—ever wished to bring harm to those they deemed beautiful. You could have the ugliest heart imaginable, but if you were beautiful, many men and women would willingly lay down their lives to keep you from harm’s way. There were times I wished I’d been gifted the powers of intellect or kindness, something other than a quality as superficial as mine. But there were moments where it definitely came in handy to be so attractive to others.