Ares hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. But he’d made it this far, so deep into Olympus that he could no longer tell whether they were nearer the summit or the belly. Right up to the Fates’ door. The Moirae. Clotho, the spinner of life. Lachesis, the weaver of destiny. Atropos, the shears of death.
Aphrodite placed a hand on his.
“I won’t stop you,” she said. “But take care. They’re weakened. But they’re still our gods.”
“Hera’s inside,” he said. Half-question and half-deduction. He hadn’t seen her in almost a day. And Olympus, despite its endless size, had few places where a god could truly disappear.
He pushed the door open, and a strong draft of herbal smoke hit him in the face. Braziers. Hera must’ve burnt herbs of offering. Or maybe she’d burnt them to cover the smell. Decay, sweet and sinister, clung to the walls, and not the smell of a rotting battlefield, the kind Ares enjoyed. This was the scent of sickness.
His eyes swept over the marble floor. Hera lay near one of the gold braziers, her eyes open, sweat on her chest and face.
“Mother!”
“Ares?” she asked. Her arms trembled against the stone floor. He picked up her granite fist to stop the rattling.
“What happened?”
“Healing me,” she whispered. Stone molars clacked against her upper teeth as she shivered. “Trying.”
They must not have tried that hard. Aside from a slight softening on her neck, she seemed worse: in more pain, feverish, and exhausted. Silk rustled behind them. He thought it was Aphrodite, finally brave enough to come inside, but Hera braced herself and pushed up onto her elbow, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Smile,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Smile,” she hissed. Her lips stretched as well as they could, pulled taut against her stone jaw. “They like it when we smile.”
“I don’t smile,” Ares said. “I look ridiculous.”
(ARES)
The voices hit the center of his brain like a truck. Hera cupped her hand under his chin to catch the blood that fell from his nose. He put his palms to his ears, but it didn’t matter. The voices weren’t in his ears.
(JUST FOR YOU)
The voices backed off by decibels. Because they could. Now that he knew what they were capable of.
(WE WOULD BE GENTLE, BUT WE KNOW YOU LOVE THE BLOOD)
“Not my own blood,” he said. “Or at least not as much.” He licked a little of it, strong and salty, and pressed his mother’s hands together. The Moirae stood at his back, and suddenly he wanted to keep them there. To never, ever lay eyes on them, and rewind straight out of this hot, firelit room. He would forever lie happily wounded with Aphrodite on their ruined bed.
But it was too late for that. The Fates put their hands on his back, and an electric shock passed through his skin and through the blisters of blood Cassandra had burst. It burned. It sliced with more pain than when the girl had done it in the first place. Their fingers dug like insects, sharp legs burrowing and embedding into the muscle. No wonder Hera lay panting on the floor. If he hadn’t been the god of war, he would have cried like a tiny baby.
“This is your healing?” he gasped.
(PRICES FOR EVERYTHING. THAT IS THE WAY. THAT IS THE LAW)
“The law is for me to feel every scrap and fiber stitching itself together?”
“Ares,” Hera whispered, and he shut up. Because they could always make it worse. They could make it worse, and they could stretch it out. They could refuse to help him at all.