The Stone Queen

by Winters, Jovee

  But—and I hadn’t told anyone this—I knew it was partly my own fault too. I was loath to admit it, but the oracle’s words of a century ago had begun to haunt me as of late.

  I was constantly distracted by a woman of snake and stone, constantly thinking on what she’d said, always wondering who this creature could be.

  And also knowing that whoever she was, she was finally here. I’d felt a shift in my own time line a couple of years ago. Returning from battle one day, bloody, sore, and bruised, I’d been thinking about Dite’s breasts and a warm tub of jasmine-scented water when I’d stumbled, as though one of the mighty Titans themselves had shoved me from behind. Such a minor thing to most people, but I was not most people. I was the god of war. I never tripped. Never. Of course, when I’d looked, there’d been no one there.

  I’d stood in that empty field, my blood-tipped sword raised, with dirt and debris upon my face, staring at nothing at all but feeling as though my very innermost being had been exposed and flayed wide open. Gasping, panting for air, I’d looked around in a panic as my mind’s eye had suddenly exploded with an image of a little girl child with snow-white wings.

  And ever since that blasted day seventeen years earlier, I’d not been able to shake this pending sense of dread and doom. Part of what was happening to Dite and me, I knew, had to do with my own problems. I was distracted more often than not. In nearly one hundred years, I’d not thought much or often about the oracle’s words, but in the past seventeen, it seemed to be all I could think about anymore.

  Initially, Dite had asked me why I always seemed so preoccupied and bothered, but I’d not wanted to trouble her with my problems. I’d wanted to keep her out of the mess in my head. Simply wanted to hold and worship her, to love her as she’d deserved. But that very need to preserve what we had was also becoming the very thing dividing us.

  Dite could not abide lies in myself or in others. She was constant, true, and pure. And she expected that of her mates as well.

  It wasn’t that being with another woman would be the death knell for us. If only it were that simple. Aphrodite had a legendary appetite for the carnal, so much so that no one being could satisfy her needs. And on most days, I was okay with that arrangement.

  Not having a clinging woman was both a blessing and a curse, because it meant that I was free to do as I needed. But it also meant that I was always aware I was never enough for her either. If I wasn’t enough, then no one else could be, surely. And that, in a convoluted way, was a strange sort of comfort.

  But now there was this mess brewing with her and Hephaestus that had me on pins and needles, because though I loved my brother, he was my brother. And I wasn’t necessarily keen on Dite dragging him into her world of seduction and carnality. Hephaestus wasn’t like me. He didn’t understand that sharing her was the only true way to ever be able to keep something as wild and proud as Aphrodite. But mired up in all of that was a sense of shame and guilt, too, because I had my own problems she was not privy to.

  Tapping my fingers on the table, I glanced at my brother. “I’m not going to lose her, mate. She means too much to me.”

  He shrugged. “Then don’t go looking for answers you might not want to hear. I’m telling you, brother, it wouldn’t be the first time a human oracle was mistaken.”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew he was trying to be comforting, but we both knew that oracles were rarely wrong. They were the mouthpieces of the gods themselves. And unless the god chose to be petty and cruel, the oracles were usually one hundred percent accurate. Usually.

  It was that minute possibility that had me on edge, though. What if I was wrong? What if that stumble I’d suffered had been just that, a stumble? I was never clumsy, but everyone was at least once in their life, no?

  And it was that shock—that thought that I could be just the same as the rest of them—that’d caused my mind to latch onto something so ridiculous and impossible. And the image of the child with snow-white wings was nothing more than a wild imagination at play.

  My stomach grew unsettled, and I clenched my jaw tightly.

  “I see that look in your eyes, Ares,” Dionysus said with a soft tsk and shake of his head. He took another long slug of his wine.

  “What look?” I frowned, but I knew what he referred to.

  “The one that says foolish or no, you’re going to go see them damned bloody Fates. You know if you do, though, nothing will ever be the same again. Never is with those bitches.”

  I snorted and planted my hands on the table, standing in one smooth motion. “I hate that you’re right, but damn you to Tartarus, you are.”

  He chuckled. “Always am. Well, since you’re a stubborn ass and going anyway after the brilliant advice I just gave you, do me a favor.”

  I lifted a brow.

  “Give Lachesis my love.”

  One of the three Fates—and in my opinion, the kindest of the bunch—the measurer of the life string was definitely not a female to be trifled with. “Careful with the Fates, brother. You think I have problems. I hope I’ll not discover you’ve been dipping your quill in that ink.”

  “Pft.” He rolled his wrist and eyes. “She only wishes.”

  But there was something in his gaze that hinted at more than he was letting on. I narrowed my eyes. “Dionysus, you—”

  His chin thrust out, and his eyes went glacial. Everyone on Olympus knew Dionysus as only one thing, a good-time man with a taste for the finer things in life. But there were two sides to my brother, including one that others rarely saw but that I had seen a time or two in my life.

  “Don’t meddle, War. Worry about your own fucked-up mess.”

  I got it, what he was trying to do. He’d always relied on humor when things began to get too real for him. Whatever it was, Lachesis was at the heart of it for him. But that was clearly none of my business. Clearing my throat, I pretended that I hadn’t made the connection. For a god of drunks, he had his pride.

  I shrugged. “Whatever you say, you shit-faced sloth.”

  His normally pinkened cheeks turned a deeper shade of crimson, and the veins in his neck throbbed with his exuberant guffaws.

  “Shut your fat trap, you fucking prick. At least I don’t get off from watching steaming intestines roll.” He mock shuddered.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it, brother. Squishy and soft, just like fondling a good pair of breasts.”

  He grimaced, turning a tad green around the gills, and I grinned.

  “You’re fucking sick, you deranged pervert. How the hell does Dite stand it?”

  “Shut your face, loser. You’re just jealous.” I winked, enjoying our verbal spar about as much as he was.

  He and I could go at this literally for days if we got too carried away. Each of us always tried to outdo the other by going even more over the top than before, and very little was off limits.

  Dionysus had reached the stage of massive inebriation. He could still carry on a conversation, but his use of profane language became legendary at this point. I grinned, sensing that whatever hornet’s nest I’d inadvertently disturbed had settled back down.

  It was impossible to hate the idiot. Well, unless one was a psychotic, jealous bitch like Mother. Dionysus might be a raging alcoholic, but he was fun. I would give him that.

  He sniffed. “Go, then. Before I really start creaming your pansy ass and make you cry like I did last time.”

  I snickered. “Don’t you wish, you flatulent ass-licking knob.”

  His mouth had been opening, no doubt a retort ready on his tongue. But instead, a strange sound spilled up the back of his throat, which quickly devolved into a great big peal of laughter that would have woken the dead if we’d been in the Underworld.

  As it was, everyone turned to look at us. Even Pan had ceased his infernal racket.

  I chuckled, knowing I’d scored a victory with that one.

  “Ass-licking knob, you goddessdamned son of a bitch. That was funny!” Dionysus pounded his fist on t
he table, and before I knew it, another round of Ambrosia had been served to the masses. Everyone except me reached for their cups.

  Ambrosia was one of the few things that could knock me flat out with just one drop.

  “Get your stupid ass out of here, Ares. Stop being such a baby and just figure this out. For fuck’s sake.”

  That was about as deep as Dionysus got. With anyone. Ever. The fact that he would go there with me let me know that he did care. Deep down, the drunkard cared, though he wasn’t sure why. His was a sentiment I could match.

  With a snort, I shook my head. “Wish me luck.”

  “Suck my hairy balls,” Dionysus shot right back.

  “Gods almighty,” I muttered. My brother was blotto. Opening a time portal with a wave of my hand, I stepped through without so much as a backward glance. After a hundred years, it was definitely more than time to nut up and figure out why the oracle had cursed me as she had.

  I was stepping out of the tunnel into the isle of Gnósi when a shadow came upon me. Always just a hair’s trigger away from aggression, I bowed up, clenched my fists, and felt the flames of war begin to wind serpentine around my body. I glowered at whatever the hells it had been.

  But my aggression instantly melted away when I spotted my uncle Poseidon. The flames were swallowed back into the black armor of war.

  “Move aside, boy,” he growled.

  I frowned. Poseidon wasn’t my favorite uncle, but he usually made an effort to at least pretend he was. Everything about Olympus was political, and since I was Zeus’s and Hera’s favored son, I’d always been fawned over, even by those I knew detested the very sight of me. I moved less than a millimeter to the side, an insult, which he no doubt picked up on judging by the hard smirk on his flattened lips.

  Dressed in a steel-gray suit and tie—a style choice that wouldn’t come into fashion amongst the mortals for at least another seven hundred years—he stared me down. He was an impressive male, just as Father was. Zeus and Poseidon had a neutral alliance of sorts. They didn’t out-and-out hate one another, not the way they did my other uncle, Hades, but they weren’t friendly by any means.

  I frowned and gazed over his shoulder, checking to see if he was alone. Poseidon tended to be surrounded by a bevy of sycophants, much like Father would. They had enormous egos that needed constant stroking, but he was completely alone today.

  Glancing back at him, I wondered why he’d come to visit with the Fates.

  “You’re not so big that I can’t pick you up and lay you over my knees. I said move.”

  Poseidon growled the words, and only now did I notice the agitation that’d tightened fine lines around his eyes and mouth. Whatever had brought him here had to have been serious enough for him to bother leaving his waters.

  For a wild moment, I suffered a need to encourage him and not necessarily because I liked my uncle all that much but because he and Father could be clones of one another, they were so physically similar. Except for their eyes. Father’s were a radiant heavenly blue, whereas Uncle’s were a dark and stormy gray.

  Apart from that, though, their true god forms could be carbon copies. Both had long aquiline features, sharp cheekbones, and a sophisticated arrogance that dripped off every inch of them. It was an unfortunate trait that tended to happen to us greater gods, though I’d fought like hell not to act the douche that came so naturally to them.

  Still without uttering a word, I stepped to the side and swept my arm out. He sniffed, dusted off his sleeves, and marched past but not before giving me a hard shoulder check.

  Normally, anger was an emotion all too close to the surface for me, but I was more shocked than upset by his behavior. I stared at his retreating back, trying to make sense of what could have turned my all-too-politically-aware uncle into a downright bastard.

  Coming up empty, I thinned my lips and turned back to my task. Anyone who came to Gnósi without being a full-fledged god would be forced to run a gauntlet before they could seek the counsel of the Fates.

  After whipping out a small dagger that I always kept tucked inside my boot, I quickly pricked my finger until a welling of golden blood drew to the surface. I tipped my finger over and watched as the droplet fell. The land rumbled, accepting my offering, and the maze that would appear for nearly all did not come for me.

  As gods, most of us were offended by the very notion of being forced to extract even a drop of our golden blood. We were gods, and we were not used to being told no. To anything. But no one, not even Father, argued with the Fates.

  For they had the rare ability to control not just mortal life but immortal as well. I heard they’d never done it. Yet. But there was always a first time for everything. If one wished to speak with them, then one had to follow the rules.

  The lush Mediterranean garden surrounding me quickly morphed into something else. Where before I’d been standing amongst colorful anemones, crocuses, and hyacinths, now I stood inside an antiquated stone chamber with vials full of things. Some were familiar, like crushed gemstone powders, and some were not at all familiar.

  They looked foreign and alien, no doubt coming from a time or a world, even, that was not my own. All gods could traverse realms, planets, and even time continuums. It was how we knew so much. Mortals believed we were either omniscient or prophetic, mostly because we never bothered to dissuade them of the notion. But the truth was far simpler. Very few of us were naturally prophetic, and those of us who were still didn’t know everything. If we had a mind to know something, we would simply ride the stars to discover it. Some of us were better able to navigate time travel than others. And there were some drawbacks to this method of learning. In order to know when in time to go, we had to have some point of reference. Otherwise, we would get lost and wind up only the Fates knew where with very little hope of returning precisely to the point we’d left. If one wasn’t careful with time travel, one could lose great big chunks of life, never to retrieve it again. It was punishment, I would wager, by the hand of Cronus himself for our daring hubris.

  I personally enjoyed time traveling, despite the inherent risks associated with it. The air smelled damp and musty, usual for this setting. But there was also the bitter sweetness of crushed grape skins. The Fates made the best wines in all of Olympus, a fact that must have made Dionysus jealous, but they never shared, which made all the rest of us just as mad as my perpetually drunken brother. But none of us dared say a word to the three about it.

  With a tight frown, I glanced around the strangely scientific-looking chamber full of bubbling beakers and boiling cauldrons. Usually, the Fates were already come when a god came to call.

  The fact that not even one of them was around was unusual.

  “Sister Fates,” I called out, cupping my hand around my mouth. “I come seeking counsel.”

  I didn’t have to announce myself, but it was the polite thing to do. A quick shuffling of sandaled feet sounded, then a head popped out from around the wall.

  She blinked, and her mouth parted into a tiny O of obvious surprise. “Ares,” Lachesis said as she quickly rounded the corner, her arms full of books.

  I rushed toward her and grabbed the books, getting ready to take a tumble. The Fates had a book about literally everything in their ancient library, which would make even the great library of Alexandria weep with envy. The Muses were the scribes of our world, but here was where they stored their greatest treasure.

  “Brother War, why have you come?” she asked as I finally sat the books upon an empty table. Shoving locks of nutmeg-brown hair out of her golden eyes, she gazed at me in obvious confusion.

  She was in her mother form, looking older and wiser than she would in her maiden form, with a few extra wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and a general softness overall, but she was no less beautiful for it. Normally, she wore a crown of blazing stars upon her head, but today, she was dressed unceremoniously.

  I cocked my head. “Did you not expect me?”

  “Well, I hadn’t
gone looking, if you must know. I don’t just wake up with knowledge pouring through my head, if that’s what you wondered. I’m the goddess of the present. If you wanted foresight, you should have gone in search of Atropos.”

  I grinned at her clear annoyance. “You’re vexed with me.”

  She rolled her eyes, but I could sense a loosening in her tight limbs. “Yes. And you reek of the drunkard’s wine. Smells worse than cat piss.”

  I snorted. Well, well… someone didn’t like my brother, or at least she wanted me to think so. Funny that Dionysus and Lachesis both seemed to circle back to one another. It made me wonder what I might be missing out on.

  “Why are you here, boy?” She tugged on one of the massive tomes, causing a plume of dust to rise up in the air like a mushroom cloud. Coughing, she covered her mouth with one hand and waved her other hand before her face.

  “Damn Clotho, I told her to clean last night. This place is a bloody pigsty.” She growled and whipped out a rag from thin air and began to manically dust, whipping up the gods only knew how many decades of dust in the process. I sneezed. As did she.

  Stepping back, I grimaced. “Can’t you do that another time, Lachesis? What’s got you in such a frazzled way this morning?”

  Giving me a soft growl full of sharp little teeth, she finally hung her head and braced her hands on the counter. “What do you want, boy? I’m busy.”

  The Fates, as usual, weren’t the overly affectionate or friendly type. But they weren’t always this abrasive either.

  Jerking a thumb over my shoulder, I said, “I could always come back another time if it would suit…”

  With a heavy sigh, she looked at me, her golden eyes burning with literal fire at their centers. She was beautiful in her own unique way. Though for almost fifty years I’d shared my bed with the most beautiful woman in all of the cosmos, there was none finer than Aphrodite herself.

  Waving the hand that still held the rag, she shook her head. “No, you’re here. Might as well get your answers, though there’s a price.”