I snarled and shoved myself onto a rocky outcropping in my waters. I did as I’d done every morning since coming to the surface. I watched the lesser gods, watched them laugh and revel and play with one another and with mortals. They accepted the mortals’ praises and adulations as if it were their due. As if they deserved it.
I watched as Apollo teased and made sport of the pretty men and women surrounding his throne of fire. I watched as he simpered and pandered to the plebs with his silly words and vain-filled smiles.
I watched as Zeus played with woman after woman, promising them the whole world—until he got what he wanted from them. Then, he’d toss them out of Olympus without so much as a fare-the-well, his lusts sated and his promises long forgotten.
I watched as Hera, in her pettiness against Zeus, took her vengeance out on those very same mortals, turning them into twisted amalgamations of both man and beast.
I watched as they all lied, cheated, and stole over and over again. The party never ended for them. Their lusts and desires were a bottomless pit that could never be sated.
And the resentment in my heart grew. It festered.
I hated them all.
Every last one of them.
Because if any praises were due, then surely they were due to life. Surely, they were due to me.
The waters around me began to boil.
You are wrong, Thalassa. You are so very wrong.
I hissed at the voice to shut up, and it did.
I shot up, still trapped in the memories, the nightmarish visions of what the man with the dark eyes had done to me. I looked around at the darkness of my home, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I’d not been sleeping, but somehow I’d been entranced.
And the moment I thought it, I saw the golden dust of Hypnos’s sleeping power flicker by on a current. “Stay out of my realm, Sleep,” I hissed. “This is the only warning you’ll get from me.”
I felt the absence of Hypnos immediately. He’d left without so much as a word of parting. The bloody, self-righteous lesser god had tried to trick me. But I would be on guard to his wily ways from now on. I curled my lips in disgust.
I’d never say it out loud, but the trance had done me good. I felt more centered and rested somehow, less manic. And I could recall in sharp detail every nuance of what had been shown me.
I recalled not just my dream lover’s elicit touch, which had made me burn with shameful, depraved desires, but also his words, softly spoken, but strongly worded.
“You are mine, Calypso, as surely as my dark heart will always be yours.”
That name was no longer my own, and yet it had once been connected to me. And if it belonged to me, then it also meant that the dark-eyed man would come for me. I covered my chest with my hand and pressed, knowing I would not feel the one thing I needed to be whole again, the one thing I would need before I could enact my plan—my heart, the final piece of me that the dark-eyed man had stolen.
I had no proof of that, but my mind was showing me all that I’d forgotten. It was telling me exactly where to go—into the underworld, toward a lesser god they called Hades. He was the dark-eyed man, and he was my true enemy.
I grinned as my anger rolled like fine whiskey all the way through me. Finally, I understood all that I was seeing. Finally, I got it.
He had to die so that I could finally, truly live.
And then, once I was done with him, I would turn my sights on the shining, golden ones of Mount Olympus and burn them all down.
Pathetic lesser gods. They thought all that praise was theirs, but I knew better. They were vengeful, spiteful children who did not deserve their pedestal. The worshippers deserved a better god.
And I would be that for them. It was my praise the Olympians stole. My worship.
I planted my hand on my chest and pressed hard, echoing with the same emptiness that stretched inside of me.
I knew once I claimed my rightful place, I would heal again. I would be made whole again.
I would be… happy.
The voice that was always with me did not speak, but my body burned with her emotion—hate. Violent, twisted, warped hate, and it wasn’t directed at the loathsome gods of Olympus, but at me.
She was my enemy now.
I snarled.
Aphrodite
* * *
I stood in my bedroom, staring at the diamonds encrusted on the walls and the floors made of polished ivory. Ribbons of sunlight streamed through the open French doors. My home sat on the second highest peek of Mount Olympus, a gift from Zeus for being so lovely, he’d said. In truth, he’d merely wished to keep me close that he might one day bed me, make me his conquest as he’d done to so many others.
But it had never worked because another had come before him, one who’d made my entire body burn and my skin tingle with deepest lust and desire. Hephaestus, the god of the forge and Zeus’ personal lightning maker. His body was a thing of deformed beauty and steely, rippling muscles.
His legs were crippled, his feet utterly useless. He walked with the help of a machine he’d crafted with his own hands. All the gods mocked him, ridiculed him for being less than perfect. But I was the pinnacle of perfection, and perfection bored me. Hephaestus had been utterly fascinating for me—gruff, surly, powerful. A lot like Hades.
And once upon a time, in another life, he’d been all mine. Yes, I’d had many affairs, but only because I’d been young, and as the goddess of Love and Lust, it wasn’t easy to turn off the thing that made me me. But Hephy had understood my insatiable thirst for more, and he’d never stood in my way.
It wasn’t until centuries later that I realized I’d stopped bedding others. It hadn’t been a conscious choice, but rather a subconscious one. The fact was that none had satisfied me quite as he had.
I’d fallen completely mad for my twisted male, and finally, we’d spoken of children, of building a life together, just us. Clutching the sheet in my hand, I collapsed on the bed, which was made up of nothing but silks and furs, and hung my head as I sobbed.
The words on the parchment were long and slashing, angrily written in his hand. Hephy had left me. For good, he’d said. Called me unfaithful, the Scarlet Woman, Jezebel. I cried.
The curse had taken so much away from us all. I was cursed to remember everything—remember his heated caresses, the way he made my blood sing and my flesh cry out for more and more of him, the way he’d cover me with his massive body and own me so completely, obliterate all other men or women from my mind and make me see, feel, and taste only him. Only ever him.
I also remembered my friends, my only true friends in this whole godsforsaken land—Calypso and Hades. My memories of them from the other time always brought me to tears, happy ones, but sad ones now, too, because of all we’d lost.
It would be so easy to turn my back on them. After all, it was my obsession with reaching out to Hades that had caused my Hephy of this time to sever all ties with me. He thought I wanted the god of death. After all, I spent all my time in the Underworld, trying to make Hades remember, trying to draw out the memories of her the only way I could, using the only powers I had at my disposal—that of the heart, of the soul.
Hephy had smelled the release of my Lust and had confused it with something else. He did not believe in me in this time. He did not know me because the past he remembered was one that had never happened to me, to the real me. He knew only of Aphrodite from this alternate and twisted time. The slut. The whore. The one who bedded men and women and refused his touch because he was a deformed and misshapen god who could never truly satisfy me.
My reputation on Olympus was as bad as it had ever been. There’d been a time in the previous world before the curse when I had been that woman. But my friendship with Calypso and witnessing the deep and abiding love that she and Hades had had for one another had opened my eyes to the truth I had buried in my heart all along. I’d simply not been equipped to understand it until then.
And now my Hephy, my true
st love, had abandoned me completely. I swallowed hard, shuddering violently as I stared at the home that was lovelier than any other, dripping with rare gems and ostentatious luxury. But I felt nothing at all for it.
I felt dead inside. Empty. Without him to fill my bed, all of this was just stuff. Inconsequential nothings that would never make me happy. A part of me wished I’d never started down the road I had or made the choices I’d made. And yet, I suspected that the outcome might well have been the same if I’d remained here on Olympus with Hephy.
Either way, I’d been doomed to this fate, and deep down, I think I’d always known it.
I’d tried for weeks to unlock Hades’ heart, but no matter how much I prodded at his mind, nothing seemed to work. I’d sacrificed any time I could have had with my own mate to try fixing what had been broken between my friends. And not just because I’d missed them, but because they were the key to unlocking the happily ever afters in Kingdom. It was more than just fixing Caly and Hades. It was literally the fate of everyone else too.
But not only had I not succeeded, I’d further widened the gap between Hephy and I and cemented for him that I was no longer worth the wait. Whatever the Dite of his timeline had done to him must have hurt him deeply, so deeply that he was unwilling to even give me, give us, another chance. Hephaestus had always loved me more than he probably should have, especially in my younger years, but he’d been kind and ever patient with me, giving me the space and time to grow up so that I could finally see the man, the wonderful male, that he truly was. I’d done a lot to him in my time, a lot that should have severed his regard for me then. But it hadn’t. So whatever I’d done to him in this time, I couldn’t even begin to fathom how deeply the hurt went, and though I’d had nothing to do with it, I couldn’t help but feel shame for it too. Whatever this version of me had done to him, it had to have been truly heinous to make him abandon me this way.
I’d lost everything. My lover. My joy. My friends.
If only I could have made Hephy see that I’d never wanted Hades at all. Yes, the dark god was a thing of preternatural beauty and allure, but his heart, body, and soul had only ever belonged to Calypso. I was the most beautiful in all the lands, but not even I could have swayed his heart from hers. Calypso understood Hades’s darkness in a way I never could or would. Not even Persephone had been enough to force the most secretive of all the gods to open up. Only Calypso, the quirkiest, oldest, and most powerful among us, could have done that.
I shook my head, dropping my hand to the bed and releasing the grip I had on the divorce decree. Hephaestus had publically declared his severance from me on Olympus. I was no longer Aphrodite mate, of the mighty Hephaestus. Now I was simply Aphrodite… nobody at all. I swallowed hard, feeling sick to my stomach, and clutched at the decree with nerveless fingers.
Hephy and I had never officially married, but we’d been together many lifetimes and had been an acknowledged pair amongst the gods, to the point that even Zeus had stopped pestering me for a liaison, knowing full well that I would never betray my forge king.
Well, in the past timeline, anyway.
In this one, it seemed I’d given my body over to Zeus many times and then some. Hera loathed me—she had never liked being second best. I had no allies here anymore. I had no reason to stay.
I swiped at my cheeks with my thumbs, wishing I could go to Hephy’s forge and explain it all to him, make him see, make him understand that the woman he thought I was wasn’t me at all. Make him see that in my world, he’d been the greatest and truest love of my life. But he would not hear me, not anymore. I’d done too much to him in this new world, though it hadn’t been me at all. The memories he had of me were vile and ugly, and I simply didn’t know how I could overcome any of it. His reality wasn’t mine. As much as I longed for him, the attraction in this new world was simply far too one-sided to overcome.
No, there was nothing for me here in Olympus anymore. But there was still Hades and Calypso. And though I knew Caly would never wish this fate upon me and would admonish me to fix my own affairs—I grinned almost able to imagine her high-pitched shrill that I stop being a jackbanana, because bless her, she’d never been any good at phrases—there was nothing that could be done. I’d tried so hard to make my Hephy see me for who I really was, but…
I blinked, as I suddenly thought of something else. There was a reason and a purpose to everything. One merely had to believe it. Of all the gods on Olympus, I seemed to be the only one who remembered the alternate time in its fullness.
I had never believed in coincidences, which meant that if I remembered the alternate timeline, then there must be a reason for it. I’d tried to appeal to Hades’s heart, but he was morose, despondent, not the Hades of my time. He was different now. But also not quite like the older version of himself from the previous timeline before he’d met Calypso, that Hades had been cold and even at times seemingly uncaring and unfeeling. He was more like the nascent version of himself. Like the kind he’d been before I’d been conceived from the severed penis of my dear old daddy, Uranus. My origin story was weird and slightly repulsive, but it was a god thing and rarely had to make sense to be so.
I sniffed, rubbing my swollen nose, feeling miserable but also slightly hopeful. I’d thought myself an island, alone and forever apart from the land in which I’d once felt completely at home. But what if I wasn’t the only goddess who remembered? What if there were more of us out there?
What if…?
I stood nude, clothed only in the long blond strands of my gleaming, golden hair. It swished thickly around my ankles, nearly dragging on the pristine white floor as my heart suddenly turned over in my chest, pounding furiously within me.
“Time! Of course, you silly fool. She would know. Surely she would know.” I paced back and forth, seeing nothing, though my eyes searched the room.
Why had I never thought of her before? Surely, if anyone would remember the alternate threads, it would be her.
I grinned, hopeful and focused on something other than my own misery and anguish. I might not be able to save my marriage, but by damn, I would not let Caly and Hades suffer the same fate.
Wetting my lips, I thought of a garment built of the winds and of fire. I would go to her as the goddess I was. I would force her to see me as a power unleashed, even slightly unhinged should I not get my way—not hard to do considering I was a jilted lover, and as the goddess of Love, that was a stain I would never soon forget. The gown billowed like flame around me, moving in the supernatural breeze I’d fashioned it from, and I grinned.
I would go see Time and ask her what I should do. But first…
I squared my shoulders. If there was one thing I’d learned in my time with Calypso, it was that sometimes, to get one’s way, one had to throw a mighty tantrum to remind those around them who they really were.
I would not roll over. For any of them.
“I’m the goddess of love, dammit all to the Underworld,” I snapped, and with my chin held high I winked out of this space of existence into the darkest forge in the hottest heart of Olympus itself.
A loud, rattling clanging exploded like thunder and lightning all around me. Magma-intense heat shoved against my body, making me break out in a sheen of glittering sweat.
I lifted my eyes, and there he was, my deepest, darkest fantasy and desires. He was stripped down to his waist, his withered legs on display as he leaned against the fiery forge that would incinerate a mortal in an instant. His massive upper torso moved with the strength and agility of a predatory cat, and for just a second, I shivered, remembering just how those roughened and callused hands would move over me as though I were the finest of satin.
He raised his arm, ready to hammer down on the crackling fissure of molten white energy, when he suddenly stilled and twirled, nearly dropping his hammer as he clutched at the railing beside him.
Hephy had never much cared for using the steel legs he’d crafted. He’d only ever used them when he’d been
forced to interact with the other gods. But with me, he’d always been free to be who he’d really been, trusting that I would never see him as less.
Setting his massive hammer down, he turned and reached for his mechanical legs. My heart squeezed. He did not trust me in this time.
I clenched my jaw, watching silently as he fitted the steel to his body, making him look half man and half machine. Normally, I was the taller of us, but with his steel legs, he towered over me.
His face was chiseled, so hard and severe that it looked hewn from stone. His jaw was square and looked as though it could cut paper. His nose was long and straight. His lips were full and the only soft part about him. I curled my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms as I fought the urge to rush him and devour his body as he’d once done to me.
Gods, I wanted him now more than ever.
“What do you want?” he snapped, causing his black eyes, full of lightning, to spark and roil. “I think I made myself very clear that—”
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” I snapped, taking a step forward and noting the way his spine went taut and rigid and his amazing pectorals tightened. His abs were sheer masculine beauty. Hades might be the more attractive of the two, but Hephy was harder, more severe, like steel wrapped in flesh. He could physically break me with his touch, he was that strong. And yet he’d never done other than cradle me with tenderness.
His nostrils flared and fury twisted his features. He’d never been what anyone could call beautiful or even all that attractive. What he’d been was sublimely masculine, hard like granite and so unyielding, save for me. He’d always been putty in my hands.
My pulse raced out of control in my body, making my ears ring with the rush of blood. To see him right in front of me and not be able to touch him or hold him was one of the cruelest fates I’d ever had to endure.
“You just can’t stop yourself, can you? You want to hurt me? Wound me? It won’t happen, Aphrodite. You’ve made an enemy of me, mocked and jeered me for the last time. We are through. Over. You will never hurt me again. Not ever.”
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 20
