The Beloved of the God of War

4 - The Divide

I remembered him. Not as he was now, looming like a thundercloud over me, but as he had been before:

Brass chains manacling his limbs, rusted and filthy. Hollow cheeks and sunken eyes that looked like the darkness had taken and kissed the light from them. A body that had wasted away and withered like a blossom fallen off the tree, marred with new gashes and old scars and angry welts caked in blood long dried. There hadn’t been enough unbruised flesh to lay a hand on, even if I’d had the courage.

I had wanted to, though. I had wanted to trace my fingers over every cut, every ridge, and soothe the anguish in his bones. But I had thought the slightest touch might collapse him, like fragile glass webbed and veined with a thousand, thousand cracks.

I had thought I might shatter him, that he might cut me when he broke.

Fear deadened my tongue when I felt Ares’s hand drop away. I couldn’t even breathe. I couldn’t move, either, with his other hand pinning my shoulder to the wall and trapping me like a specimen in a beetle collection. And I felt like one too, the way he stared down at me: I couldn’t look away from the indefinable intensity swirling in his deep red eyes, like a storm barely curbed.

“Tell me who you are,” he said, and the roughness of his voice reminded me of brambled thickets and hard stones. When I failed to answer, his hand moved up from my shoulder, and I flinched when I felt his muscled forearm press into my throat. He leaned forward, threatening to choke the truth out of me if he had to. “I said, tell me.”

“Please let me go,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know what you’re apologizing for?”

His question sent an arctic fear washing through me like a cutting wind. He knew, I thought, how could he not? “I’m sorry,” I said again. My hands shot up when he leaned his weight against my throat even harder, but I couldn’t slide my fingers under his forearm to push it away. Too strong. I felt faint already.

He didn’t seem to notice. “There’s a story I know,” he told me, and I trembled at the hoarse rasping of his voice. His head dropped, and then he was nearly eye-to-eye with me, just centimeters away. I could feel his breath ghost over my lips, so hot it was almost searing.

“There was an immortal who lived among Man once during their Golden Age, created long before I was born. She was said to walk the divide between the dusk and the dawn, her right hand cultivating innocence, and her left sowing peace. When Zeus finally overthrew Cronus, she refused to reside in his House under his rule, and hid herself among Man instead. But they betrayed her. They turned to war. They turned to violence. They learned a passion for wickedness and misery.”

I wheezed, struggling to breathe around his forearm against my throat.

“So she left them and fled to the skies, but she promised that one day, she would send her soul back to Man when they needed her most, when it was time for them to break the yoke upon their shoulders and rise from under the shadow of the gods.”

I was still struggling, still trying to free myself. I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.

"Before she gave up her spirit and ascended, she left her oath in the stars as a reminder. A promise that she would be reborn before the End of Days and come to purge the gods and their corruption. And that oath is the constellation of Virgo we see in the skies, down to this day. A winged woman bearing an ear of wheat in her left hand, marked by the brightest star.”

I stopped fighting. Whatever else he wanted to say, he would say it: I couldn’t stop him.

“Her name was Astraea," said Ares, and I trembled at the dark accusation I heard thrumming in the depths of his voice. "She who walked the divide between the dusk and the dawn."

I felt his eyes boring into me like a dull blade, crushing me slowly instead of granting a merciful end.

“I know who you are,” he said. “Welcome back, Astraea.”