Naked and jeweled servants scattered when they caught sight of me. So much toned flesh everywhere I looked. She had a harem full of tight bodies. But I was not bothered by it.
And then I heard the murmuring. The heated whispers.
“Your mother is a goddamn bitch. You do know this. I can’t believe she’d ask this of me, after everything I’ve done for her.”
There was the sound of a growl, a playful laugh, and then a sharp tap that sounded a lot like slapping naked flesh.
“Woman.” Ares’s voice was sharp, hard. “We both know she is, but let’s not pretend you’ve done any of this because of some form of altruism. Because we both know that’s not you.”
She laughed. “True enough. Still, we’re partners she and I, and I deserve more respect. Especially after putting up with that bastard for so long. I’ve kept to my end, but this…this,” she growled, “she’s gone too far this time.”
He sighed deeply. “Then speak with her, Aphrodite, but what you’re asking of me isn’t right. Not this time.”
“Why!” she snapped, “It isn’t as though we haven’t already—”
“You know why!” He growled. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, not again. Not like this.”
There was a rustling of sheets and then she sighed dramatically, voice turning less screechy and more sultry and wheedling, “but honestly, Ares, who in the hell would ever believe it? Me and him?” She laughed lightly. “Give me a break. I’ve done everything in my power to make that asshole leave me since it’s the only way I can finally be free of him. But he stays. Revolting pig that he is, he just takes it and takes it, and I will not do this! I cannot!”
There was a long pause, and then he said, “Have you ever once considered that that revolting pig might actually love you? Though Cronus would only know why.”
She snorted. “As if I give a damn. I never wanted him. You know that. It should be you and I. We are the power. We could rule. But she wants to parade around this… this abomination to the world, and why? Because she hates me, that’s why. She wants to laugh in my face. I know her; I know the way her evil mind works. But I refuse to play this game any longer. Now we play by my rules.”
“What game?” he asked with some exasperation. “What I’ve never been able to understand is why in the hell you would continue on with this farce. I knew you could be mean, Dite, but I never thought of you as cruel. Not until now.”
She laughed. “Then you don’t know me at all, War. Besides, I thought you loved my darkness.”
There was a shuffling sound and then a startled cry before my brother’s words turned cruel, vicious.
“I see now. I finally get it. Gods, I’m such a fool!” There was a tremble and groaning, then I heard the frame of the bed shudder and splinter violently apart.
“Ares, wait, wait, I say! I love you, I do!”
“You love nothing. Nothing but yourself.” His words were sharp but even. “And I do not love you. Not anymore. You tell Hephaestus the truth. You do it, you callous bitch, or I swear to the elementals I will reveal you to one and all.”
She gasped. “You… you wouldn’t dare. I wasn’t the only one. You know this. I know things too.”
He snorted. “Yes, but everyone already knows I’m a fucking bastard.”
“You’ll rue the day!” she shrieked violently. “Rue it! I’ll end you! I’ll destroy you!”
She continued to scream obscenities at him, but I felt my legs giving out. Felt all the blood bleach out of my face. The world spun, and I was stumbling back.
Strong hands gripped me under the arms, and I looked into the dark, stormy eyes of my brother.
His lips were thinned, his face as indecipherable as stone. “You heard,” he said simply, even as my world literally shattered and collapsed down around me.
I couldn’t speak, could only look at him in a daze, confused, feeling as though I were dying. I felt like glass that’d just been shattered and was only held together because it didn’t have the sense yet to know it’d been broken.
I gripped his forearm. Croaking, awful sounds pouring out of me.
He closed his eyes. “The plan was mother’s doing, but deep down, a part of me always knew,” he whispered. “I can never undo what’s been done to you, brother. But I promise, I will try.”
I shook my head. “What? What?” I was incapable of making words, of putting my chaotic thoughts into any kind of coherence. Aphrodite and Hera, working together, and to some extent Ares too.
He shook his head, nostrils flaring. “There is… more,” he finally said, and some of that legendary control of his began to slip. His eyes gleamed like magma fields. The grip he held on my arm was starting to burn, to sizzle through my clothes and into my flesh.
I moaned. But not from the pain. That pain was nothing to what I felt in my soul. How could I survive this?
He leaned forward and pressed a bruising kiss to my forehead.
“Oh, don’t even try to play the martyr now, you fucking asshole!” Aphrodite stood there nude in all her shining glory.
More beautiful than any one creature should ever have a right to be. But there were cracks in that beauty now, and they were twisting her. Transforming her into something altogether different.
“You think you heart was shattered then… well, let me tell you the rest, you fucking animal. Hera, Ares, and I—”
The lights came on. The memory was gone. Everyone stood stunned, blinking and looking around.
“I have witnessed enough to pass verdict,” Themis intoned and then hissed as the terrible stench of scorching flesh drawn by an invisible hand marked her collar. It was the scales of justice, and she was biting down on her top lip, shaking and trembling powerfully, face now bleached bone white from the pain. But she stood there, tall and proud, without flinching, just as my Aphrodite had done the day before.
And that was it. The heavens became hell. Gods and goddesses hissed and snapped, turning into macabre forms of themselves. Raging at her. At each other. Lightning and thunder boomed.
The world around us shuddered most violently, as though the heavens itself would rip itself apart.
“You cannot do this! What did that bitch do?” Zeus thundered, causing a field of lightning to light up the world and blaze through the great hall, frying every inert thing it touched.
And whether he meant Aphrodite or Hera, I wasn’t sure. But I knew this… Themis might have ended the trial, but Ares was the sole reason behind it.
My nostrils flared as I turned toward Aphrodite. She was looking back at me. Burning just as bright as she had before.
She smiled softly, and I smiled softly back. The secret was safe. And though some might suspect, they would never truly know. She was protected, now and forever.
My knees shook, and it was all I could do to remain standing. The weight of what had just been done for us settled over me like a millstone, sapping me of strength. My goddess was safe. She was safe now.
And though I wished with all my heart that it could have been I who’d saved her, I was simply grateful that she had been.
“Enough!” Themis boomed, sealing the mouths of all, even the great King Zeus himself. “This is my court, and in here, my world is law! Aphrodite, goddess of Uranus’s seed, are you ready to hear verdict?”
She stood. Proud, regal, so lovely. “I am.”
My knees quivered. Her voice… gods, her voice would haunt me for an eternity. I loved this woman. With all my damn heart. I would always love her. She was so beautiful.
“Then I grant Hephaestus the annulment.”
“No!” I roared, seal over my mouth finally removed. “I do not wish it! I do not want it!”
Aphrodite looked back at me. But Themis was not done.
“May the great Elementals have mercy on your soul,” she intoned, and then there was the loud bang of a gavel, and just like that, I was back in my forge. Alone. And she was gone.
Outside my forge, the heavens opened up with a
deluge that would strip the flesh off of bones.
15
Aphrodite
I was free. Free of the enchantment and freed of my marriage.
I looked down at my hand; there was no ring on it. The one Hephaestus had forged for me with his own two hands in our other time. A golden band with an image of a dove wrapped around a hammer, it had been our symbols, joined for an eternity he’d told me. I could so clearly remember the love shining in his eyes when he’d looked at me, and feel the excitement of my own heart coursing through me from the memory.
I’d thought myself incapable of ever being faithful to just one, or even of remaining steadfast and loyal. But I had been. For hundreds of years, it’d just been Hephaestus for me, and even now, it was still only him that I yearned for.
I stood upon the highest peak of Olympus, watching as Nyx flew over Apollo’s domain, transforming day into night.
“Dite.” Caly’s voice, usually so powerful and full of verve, was soft now and gentle. “Let’s go home.”
That had been exactly what I’d wanted when I came up here this morning, to leave and to never come back. But I could not, in good conscience, leave now. Not like this.
“Go without me. I have someone I need to speak with,” I said, hugging my arms to my body.
“Do not chase him, Aphrodite. Either he comes to you, or he doesn’t. But stop making it so damn easy for that man. I’ll forgive the other one, since none had loved him before you, but this one has seen your great love. He knows. The ball is in his court now. So leave him to it.”
I turned toward her, smiling softly. “This is not what you think, Caly. Whatever happens with Hephaestus, I am at peace about it.”
She frowned. “Then what is this?” she asked, spreading her arms wide. She looked so young today, dressed in silky strands of braided kelp, with her octopi hair curled delicately around her stunning face.
I walked over to her, leaned in, and kissed her on the mouth. It was not sexual, because I did not feel that way for her. In fact, I would never feel that way again for anyone else but one. Impossible though it was, I’d tasted of everything. There was nothing left for me. But love. Only the very purest kind. That was all I’d respond to ever again.
She breathed, and from her mouth issued small jets of glittering pink. Her long lashes fluttered open, and her dark eyes turned to look at me.
“I see,” she said.
Hades moved to stand beside her and gripped her hand tight. “I think the goddess can handle herself just fine, my dark heart,” he whispered to her tenderly. “Just know, Aphrodite, that should you ever need us—”
“Oh, I’ll be back. Rest assured. As beautiful and glorious as the heavens are, my forever home is below with you both. If you will have me.”
“Don’t be an asshole.” Calyssa snorted. “As if you needed to ask.”
I lifted a brow, looking at Hades, and said, “She’s much more feisty in this world, isn’t she?”
He smirked back, eyes twinkling with a secret sort of mirth. “You have no idea.”
“And I don’t want to know.” I took a step back, holding up my hands. “Go home, Mom and Dad. I promise I’ll be good.”
They laughed and waved goodbye, and then I was alone again.
I squared my shoulders. I hadn’t wanted to see what would be played out today, and yet now I had questions that needed answers, and there was only one person that I could ask.
Closing my eyes, I whispered his name, “Ares.”
The travel tunnel picked me up, and when next I opened them, I was there. With him. In his room.
It was as black as pitch inside. But the design was refined and old-world elegant. He sat upon a wooden chair, one long leg sprawled out before him, just looking at me. His handsome face resting in his hand.
“You look as though you expected me,” I said.
A single lit candle on the table beside him flickered, casting a haunting yet hypnotic glow upon his devilishly handsome face. “I won’t lie to you.”
I snorted and looked around me then took a seat on the very edge of his massive bed. The bedding felt like sinking into thunderclouds. I smiled softly and patted the velvet soft sheet.
“You did always like your creature comforts.”
This time it was his turn to snort.
“You were not there today,” I said, finally getting to my point.
“And I’m guessing, Aphrodite, that you must know why.”
I shrugged. “I assumed. But why? Why spare me? What did I do, Ares? What did we do?”
He looked at me, dark, stormy eyes rolling over my face, and I felt myself tremble beneath his brooding stare. I had loved Ares once. Very much. And powerful feelings like those, they never completely faded. But they did become different sometimes.
He shook his head. “I see you, and I also saw your memories, and I know you are not her, yet reconciling the two is not easy. I wanted to destroy you,” he said simply.
I swallowed, bringing my hand back to my lap and curling forward over myself just a little.
He glanced down at my stomach.
“You know they are yours,” I said into the heavy yet not wholly uncomfortable silence that had stretched between us.
“Mm.” He nodded. “She tricked the seed from me. Though I suppose in the end I wasn’t entirely fooled either. It was my one rule, though we carried on the affair, I always told her I could not force bastards upon my brother. It is a sorrow to know that I wound up doing just that to him anyway.” He thinned his lips and shook his head. “I know what that makes me sound like, but I did love her, once. She was an addiction I could not shake, though I knew I should.” His stormy eyes found mine, roving over my face, down the column of my throat, before landing on my belly.
A deep sigh rolled off of him.
“You…” I breathed. “You do not need to claim them.”
He shifted on his seat, eyes still on my swollen torso before finally speaking in a lulling and drugging tone.
“I have considered it. Or, rather had. And then I decided to just lay your sins bare, expose you to the world. Even if it meant exposing my own deeds too.” He shrugged and tapped a manicured finger against his right cheek, looking weary and exhausted by all that had been revealed.
This Ares was not all that different from mine, save for one very important detail. This Ares no longer loved me. And I couldn’t help but wonder all over again why he’d done what he’d done.
“Those children,” he said in that lovely whiskey drawl of his, “are ours. And though I hated the monster you became, I bear no ill will toward them. I will claim them if that is what you wish.”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted, to be honest, but it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone in this, either, if I didn’t want to be.
I shook, closing my eyes. “Do you still hate me?”
He chuckled darkly. “Hate you? I don’t think so. Not anymore. But the truth is I do not know you.”
A wimpy smile stretched over my face. “Well, that’s a start, I suppose.”
His blunt fingers stroked his whiskered jaw. “But I would like to know you, Aphrodite. After all”—he cocked his head—“you are the mother of all my children.”
I giggled, and not because it was funny, but it kind of was. “And I don’t remember making any of them with you! Oh gods, what a mess I’m in.”
He chuckled, the sound deep and wonderful. It moved through my body and made me feel warm all over. I’d not felt affection for so long, and it was quite addictive, that feeling, yet I knew even still, I could never again settle.
“You sure know how to stroke a man’s ego. I’d like to think I’m more memorable than that.”
I licked my front teeth. “Well, memorable, certainly. But we did not have children in my time.”
“Because of him. You choose him.”
I dipped my head. “Hephy was always it for me. Even when I was with you, or others, he was always… the one. It just took me a while t
o realize my own heart.”
Stormy eyes held mine. “Do you really want to know what she did, Aphrodite?”
A part of me did, absolutely, but to what end? Her story wasn’t my story, and I would be forever haunted by the actions she’d taken. By the things she’d done to Hephaestus.
I dropped my head, stared down at my lap, and spoke softly. “I want a clean slate. I don’t want to think about the things a monster did in my name. Because I am not that monster, Ares. I am not that woman. I do not even know my children, who they are, what they like. Was I a good mother to them?”
He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.
I shuddered. “I don’t think I want to know. Because I do not want to be shackled down by the sins of another. I am not a perfect woman, Ares, but I am good. And I want to cling to that. My only fear is that whatever I did, I haven’t seen or heard the end of it. Will it haunt me going forward?”
I hadn’t heard him move, but suddenly, he was kneeling before me. His warm hand rested upon my knee. The dark to my light. So beautiful he was.
“Haunt you. Maybe,” he said in his deep voice. “I would not lie to you. But you will not be alone in that either, Aphrodite. It wasn’t just you. And though she was a monster, there were reasons why she became as she did. I’m not condoning her actions, mind you. They were abominable. But we all have reasons for becoming.”
I reached down for his chin and gripped it between my fingers. He felt the same. Spoke the same. And now, looked at me just as he once had. I smiled, and he turned his cheek, pressing a very small but delicate kiss into the meat of my palm.
“I can see why I loved you so much in that other world,” he whispered hoarsely, and I shivered. “But I also know that you and I were never destined. It never worked for us, not here, or there for you. Hephaestus deserves you as I never could.”
I smiled, feeling a lot like crying, but damn it all, I was done with those messy tears. I’d cried all I ever wished to cry for at least a lifetime.
Even so, his image wavered, and it took me a few deep breaths before I could speak properly. “Thank you.”
The Forge King (The Dark Kings Book 6) Page 21
