“No,” he said, but he heard something in his mother’s voice: a soft grinding, like a heel twisting against gravel. “I thought Athena and the girl killed you.”
“Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.” Hera paused. “Well. Perhaps not greatly. I’ve missed you, Ares. The child of my husband.” As she spoke she came into the light. It took everything he had to keep from shrinking back, not to recoil when she put her hands on his shoulders, her right fist heavy stone and the left warm flesh with fingers that squeezed him.
The perfect silhouette in the dark was a lie. It hid the awkward way her legs moved to compensate for the weight of stone across her shoulder and right side. Her body was a wreck of rock and fused flesh. But her face was the worst. Hera’s beautiful ivory cheeks were all but gone. Most of her jaw and lower lip had turned to mottled stone. It ground against her teeth when she spoke. Bits of cracked marble and granite rolled in her cheek like joints or cogs in a grotesque clockwork.
“It’s not so bad,” she said, and tried to smile. “It barely hurts.” The stone pulled at the edges of her skin until Ares thought her lip would tear away and bleed.
“And how are you?” Hera touched her stone hand to his bandage. “Are you weak from lack of blood?”
“No. It’s not bad. Not yet.”
“He’s strong,” said Aphrodite. “Still strong. And I found him.”
“You did,” Hera said. Her eyes rested on Aphrodite and lost focus. “Death robs her of her mind, and me of my beauty.” She shrugged. “We’re lucky that it isn’t the other way around.”
“Don’t be cruel,” said Ares.
“I won’t be. Not ever.” Her expression softened as much as was possible. “For all of our past differences, I love her now. As much as if she really were my daughter.”
Aphrodite wasn’t listening anyway. She swayed slowly back and forth to unheard music.
“You sent her to find me,” said Ares. “Why?”
“We’re all we have left,” Hera replied. “And Athena would see us dead.”
“From what I understood, Athena was just protecting mortals.”
“She places mortals above us,” Hera said. “Above her family. Even though there are so few of us left, and billions of them.”
“We’re dying,” Ares said. “And it doesn’t surprise me that Athena’d spend her last days playing protector. It was always her favorite cape to wear.”
“So you’ll let her win?” Hera asked. “I thought you would fight.”
“We’re dying,” he said. “What’s the point?”
“Such a defeatist attitude,” Hera clucked. “You’re the god of war. If you’re going to bleed to death, wouldn’t you rather it be all at once?” Her jaw worked, and small stones clacked together like dice in a palm. “Wouldn’t you rather not die at all?”
“What are you talking about?” Ares asked.
Hera turned away. Her movements were rough and crippled. Ashamed.
“That girl really did kill me,” she said. “That day by that lake. When they killed your uncle Poseidon, they killed me, too. The rock crept over my lungs and into my heart. It felt like…” She paused and laughed. “It felt like turning to stone from the inside out. I saw the granite spread over my eye. I was inches away from death. Moments.”
“But you’re not dead.”
“I didn’t tell him,” Aphrodite sang from the corner. “You said not to tell him, and I didn’t.”
“I know, my darling,” Hera said. “We couldn’t tell him until we knew whose side he would be on. But he’s my son. And he’s your lover. We can trust him.”
“You can trust me, Mother. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if it hadn’t been for them, I would be dead.”
“If it hadn’t been for whom?” he asked.
“They healed me. And if I please them, they’ll heal me more. Until all this rock is gone.”
“Who?” he asked. “Who could do that?”
Aphrodite slid behind Hera and wrapped bruised arms around her ribs. Her cheek pressed against Hera’s stone shoulder.