His lips twitched. “I think I would like your mother. I think I would like knowing how it feels to have one who cares.”
Percy had no mother. After receiving a prophecy in which something terrible had been spoken about him, she’d promptly tossed him into the sea, hoping a monster would eat him. Percy hadn’t told me what the prophecy was, but it must have been terrible to make a mother decide it was better to kill him than to let him live.
Leaning forward, I went to give him a quick hug, but Percy surprised me and wrapped his gangly arms around my middle and hugged me tight. Air quickly escaped my lips, but I enjoyed the press of his body against mine and sighed before patting his chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow, my friend.”
“Thank you for the fish, Medusa,” he whispered huskily, tucking an errant curl behind my ear, his attentions suddenly seeming more intimate than they had before.
My entire body flushed warm at the contact but not so much with pleasure. I couldn’t quite make sense of what it was, other than that I knew it was time that he released me.
Hiding my strange feelings behind a false cough, I pretended to fidget with my tunic and nodded. “Of course. What are friends for?” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Without giving him a moment more, I turned and quickly sped off, wondering about the strange feelings that coursed through me. I wasn’t normally a seer, but for a peculiar and very unusual moment, I could have sworn that Perseus had meant me great harm.
Which was ridiculous. He had seemed quite besotted by me, actually. Maybe I would have to touch him less—and set the rules that he should not touch me quite so much. Let him know in no uncertain terms that he and I were just friends.
My stomach unsettled by nerves, I turned my thoughts toward my ruined dress and what Mother’s reaction would be when she saw it. I had a good mother, but I also had a grumpy one, especially when it came to me breaking the rules.
Thinning my lips, I muttered a prayer. “Poseidon, celebrated god of the waters deep, if you can hear me, please keep Mother occupied. You are a god of the water, as is she. Please hide my secret from her.”
Winging quicker toward home, I suddenly felt I’d stayed out too long. Nyx had practically overtaken Apollo already in the great race for domination of the sky. If Poseidon chose not to hear my prayer, I was going to be in big trouble. Not to mention that I still couldn’t shake the unease of whatever had plagued me back there in Perseus’s arms.
But when I landed and spied Mother and my sisters standing upon a rocky bluff behind our home and staring at a spirited group of dolphins and whales frolicking almost magically through the waters, I knew that the golden god of the deep had answered my prayer. I might not care for all of the golden ones, but Poseidon was kind.
After slipping in unnoticed, I quickly bathed and changed, hiding my ruined tunic behind my bed. I would try to clean it tomorrow when Mother wasn’t looking. I wouldn’t meet with Percy tomorrow. I needed a little time and some distance. Hopefully, whatever I’d felt today had simply been the result of eating too much.
Plastering on a false smile and smelling clean once again, I went to join my mother and sisters upon the rocky bluff. I hugged them tight, and they hugged me right back. By the time I settled down for the night, I’d quite forgotten about my strange premonitions.
Chapter 49
Ares
Three years later
* * *
“You’ve a serious problem, my friend,” Dionysus said, never slurring his words, though I knew he’d drunk nearly an entire barrel of wine by himself tonight—alone. No one could hold his or her drink quite like the god of debauchery.
Thinning my lips, I shook my head. “I did not come here to be preached to. I came here for advice.”
He snickered. “You want advice? I could give it, but you won’t like it.”
It was hard not to roll my eyes, and I wondered yet again what had made me think coming to the commons was a good idea. Generally, the only gods loitering about were the ones without something to actually do on a weekend, and tonight looked to be more of the same.
Hebe was here. Tall and slender and blond, she was perpetually covered in face pustules and snarling at us all. Not an uncommon attribute for Zeus and Hera’s daughter, goddess of youth. She was an eternal teenager with the temperament to match. My sister Eris was scowling in the corner and could give Hebe a run for “most unpleasant” tonight. She held a cup of Dionysus’s private stock, but not even that could wipe the unpleasant mask off the face of the goddess of discord. Eris was very useful in battle but not for much else. Also, Helios and Thanatos sat beside one another, pounding their fists upon the table as their cups sloshed over, both of them speaking in sharp, animated bursts, no doubt about how they’d been the first gods and had been overtaken by Apollo and Hades respectively in the minds and hearts of the mortals. Bitter minor gods who could not handle their lots in life, they would be no help to me at all.
Then there was a small semicircle of revelers surrounding a pipe-playing god with horns and hooves, Hermes’s son Pan. The life of the party, for one so unattractive and incredibly goatlike in mannerisms and even looks, he never wanted for female attention but, of course, never had a female to mate with. It was his perpetual curse, always wanted for parties but never to warm one’s bed. That was not a problem I suffered from.
Muses, nymphs, and even the graces clapped and sang along, dancing in time to the lush sounds of his woodland flute.
The Three Furies were also here tonight, and though they certainly weren’t lesser gods, it was also known that they would never interfere unless they were of a mind to. They were stubborn, willful, infuriating, and often cursed those they’d deemed unworthy to take their own lives. As goddesses charged with punishing crime, they were quite adept at what they did but also a little more bloodthirsty than what I looked for this evening.
I sighed heavily and stared at my half brother. My own mother, Hera, loathed the drunken god of the wine, but then she pretty much hated everyone. Of course, it would help if Father kept his dick in his pants more and stopped sticking it into pretty young virgins. Not that it was Dionysus’s fault, but Mother never saw things so rationally.
My brother downed the last of his mug and went to pour himself another dram but instead pouted when only a single drop spilled out of the barrel. So he had drunk an entire barrel of wine.
“Bah, bloody cask! I swear but my servants keep making them smaller and smaller!” He slammed his cup down with a bang, apparently startling Nemesis, who I’d not noticed until just now, reclined upon a chaise tucked within shadows. She jolted awake from where she’d clearly been sleeping off some of Dionysus’s stock.
I sighed again. Dionysus merely shook his head. “Honestly, Ares. You want my advice, then I’ll give it. Go to the Fates. That oracle was wrong. She was mortal. What would she know, really? Everyone knows your destiny is to be the mate of Aphrodite. No?”
He dipped his head, staring at me through narrowed eyes as though trying to read my mind. And incidentally, he was one of the few gods who actually could read the thoughts of others but only if one were really drunk. I was not. It took more than two or three cups of wine to knock me on my ass. My metabolism would burn up the alcohol almost the instant it hit my bloodstream. Liquor had very little effect on me, sadly. Ambrosia, though, now that was another matter entirely. The only one immune to its darkly seductive powers was Dionysus.
“You’ve dark lines under your eyes, brother. You’re not sleeping well,” he said wisely.
I grunted and shifted on my seat, frowning at him. Ironically, for a god known to always be deep in his cups and three sheets to the wind, he was impressively perceptive.
“I’m fine,” I grunted. Though it was a lie, and Dionysus clearly knew it, he didn’t push. He merely thinned his lips and snapped his fingers.
In an instant, the empty barrel was replaced with a new one, and my brother wasted no time in refilling his cup. Wi
th a satisfied sigh, he took a long pull from it.
He was right. I was fated to be with Aphrodite. In fact, it had been foretold ages ago that she and I would be entwined throughout time and history.
But it was also fated that ours would be a messy and convoluted affair. And it was. Part of the issue, no doubt, was mother’s disdain for her. Hera made Dite’s life absolute hell, inserting herself constantly between the two of us, and I was so fucking pleased that Dite never rose to the bait.
Not only was she the most divinely beautiful creature in existence, but she was also kindhearted to her core. All who knew her loved her, including my own brother Hephaestus.
Dite and I had been together nearing fifty years now, and I could see the way the two of them looked at one another when they thought I wasn’t aware. Dite would never cheat on me. That wasn’t her way. Goddess of lust she might be, but she was honorable and true. Still, I felt her slipping away from me. And I didn’t like it.
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 the 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.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 61
