The Beloved of the God of War

8 - Unfeeling

I wanted to go home.

I wouldn’t belong in this place even if I weren’t being held prisoner in it. It was grand, it was beautiful, it was a palace made of all the stuff of dreams. But knowing that in the halls just above the cave I had been thrown into, walked a god so cruel, so inhumane - how could I stop to marvel at any of it?

Chained to the wall, I could do nothing but huddle on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the bitter chill of the wind that whistled down here like the moan of a dying animal. How long had it been? I couldn’t know for certain, but it had to have been several hours now. And all the while, even more tortuous than the wind that chafed my skin was the terror of knowing that my mother was in danger.

How could he have done that? I knew Ares was fearsome;  knew he was cold, ruthless, never to be trifled with. But I had never thought he was evil. I had been there when Hermes and Artemis had lifted his chained, broken form out of the Aloadae’s urn. He may have been a mighty immortal, but he still suffered just the same as any other living soul. He was alive. He could feel. How could someone who have suffered so much feel no empathy for others?

Ares had given up my mother so freely to Zeus, giving in to his demand so easily. She had never done anything to deserve this. She had never done anyone wrong in her entire life, had never hurt anyone, had never been unjust or unkind. Her only mistake was to raise me safely and to cherish me as her child. And now, because of me, because of Ares and Zeus and their age-old vendetta against the thing that I was, she was lost to me forever. I had seen the look in Zeus’s eyes. If I didn’t bend to his will - and maybe even if I did - he would destroy her without a second thought.

I buried my face in my knees. I didn’t even have the strength to cry anymore.

Suddenly, the clinking of metal against metal began to echo into the belly of the cave where I sat chained. I looked up, straining to listen. Was it coming closer?

It was. I scrambled to my feet, and the chains that manacled my wrists and my ankles clattered against the rough stone floor. My heart hammered away in my chest so violently that I could barely breathe.

When Ares emerged from the darkness, still clad in his golden armor, I felt my stomach twist in frozen dread. He came to a stop just beyond the edge of the shadows, however, and he remained staring at me so intently that I drew back against the cave wall. The chains clanked against each other again, and I saw his eyes drop to the thick, metal links. His jaw clenched, and in the dim light of the torch that flickered on the wall a few feet away, I saw his eyes flare a deep red.

I shivered. I wished I were brave enough to dream of fighting my way out, of pushing and pushing no matter what stood in my way until I found freedom, but I couldn’t see past Ares’s broad, armored shoulders and the hot, dangerous glare that he fixed on me. He was so large, I thought. He could crush me like a gnat.

And then he walked toward me. I pressed myself back into the wall, cringing away reflexively from his approaching form, but there was nowhere I could run. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away, waiting for a blow. A single strike from any of the old gods could m**m a man, but someone like Ares, with the strength of a hundred, would surely reduce me to nothing but dust.

After six years of the old gods walking in their midst, all the mortals knew well to flee in their wake. I should have done the same, I thought, instead of courting disaster as I had three years ago. That incident, my intervention, had been my undoing - and now my mother’s, too.

But how could I regret saving a life? My hunched, trembling shoulders sagged as even the fear left me now, leaving only a resigned hopelessness that pooled inside me like a dark fog. Maybe Zeus - maybe all the old gods could be so cruel, could turn away when someone was suffering so deeply, but not me.

I accepted now that I hadn’t had a choice. The moment I had heard Ares’s tortured howls from the urn, the moment the Aloadae’s mother had spotted me on the cliff and then began to approach me to confess the atrocity her sons had committed, I had been bound to this path - even if it was the path of self-destruction. Even if it cost me the one I loved most in all the world.

My mother would have said the same, because that was the kind of person she had taught me to be. To help others who could not help themselves, to raise them up when there was nothing for them to grab onto. Mortal or not, god or not, the choice I had made that day was the right one even, if it had ultimately led to this moment now.

I had to believe that. I had to.

When he grabbed one of my arms in his rough grasp, my eyes shot open. Before I could even look down to see why he held it, I felt the manacles fall away and hit the stone floor with a deafening clank. I flinched at the sound and jerked away, realizing too late that the heavy links had nearly fallen on top of my foot. I was still wearing my worn sneakers, but the manacles and chains were heavy - they would have certainly left bruises to match.

“You’re to follow me,” said Ares, and his voice sounded as rumbling and threatening as Zeus’s in the echoing confines of my cave prison. I didn’t dare answer right away. I remained silent as I slowly rubbed the circulation back into my wrists, but I sucked in a sudden breath when I felt his hand rise to my shoulder and press me back into the wall. Hard. I stared up at him, paralyzed anew with fear.

“Did you hear me?” he asked. His eyes burned brighter than the flickering torch light around us, and he towered over me with his black hair falling over his forehead as he stared down at me.

I forced myself to speak somehow, given the panicked strength to do so by the terror that had just benumbed me seconds before. “Yes,” I whispered. “I heard you.”

He continued to press me into the wall, his iron strength continuing to test me for a long moment. I thought I could feel the bones in my shoulder starting to creak when he finally released me, and he leaned away as if nothing had happened. I felt the breath I had been holding siphon out of me as the paralyzed sensation drained away.

But he didn’t walk away: he dropped down to the ground in a kneel, making me jump in surprise. The same movement made me realize why he had done so, however: the weight around my ankles reminded me that he had only undone the restraints around my wrists. Those, too, fell away, and then Ares rose to his feet. He didn’t spare me another glance before abruptly turning away and heading toward the cave exit with strong, heavy footsteps before I even had time to react.

“Hurry up,” he growled, and the menacing timbre of his voice galvanized me, like an electric current stinging my every nerve. I hastily followed after him, stumbling every few steps until my blood began to circulate through my cold feet once more.

------

“Where are we going?”

Ares didn’t even look at me. “Down the mountain,” he said shortly. “The other side, this time. We’re going by sea.”

That explained nothing, but at least I understood what he meant by ‘the other side,’ roughly. I had heard something about it - how Mount Olympus straddled the planes in such a way that it bordered several different lands despite them all being thousands of miles away from each other. One of those boundaries had to be the sea, then - but where were we going?

I didn’t dare ask again, however, and only glanced down at the hollow horn he held under his arm. He had been holding his helmet there before, but now that was nowhere to be seen. For now, at least. As with any part of his godly Aspect, he could surely make his fearsome helmet vanish temporarily until it was needed again.

The rocky path bruised my feet through the worn soles of my shoes, but I knew there was no point in complaining. Ares was not here to coddle me. I was here in his service, not the other way around - and if I irritated him, I was sure I would face vicious consequences. So I kept my lips firmly sealed, not daring to disturb him until he required something of me.

But what could he possibly want from me anyway? What was it that Zeus so adamantly ‘needed’ me for, if he was simply searching out his missing fellow Olympians? I hadn’t even known they were missing to begin with, and I had no idea where to start searching.

My stomach turned. My mother’s life hung in the balance, resting on whether I could complete the impossible task or not. And I had no idea what to do.

“Don’t look back,” said Ares suddenly, and my head jerked up to look at him as I trailed behind. Don’t look back? I didn’t understand why, but I wasn’t a native resident of this domain. I didn’t know any of its laws...and it wasn’t my place to question him even if I did. “Did you hear me?”

I didn’t realize I hadn’t said anything in response. “Yes,” I said hurriedly. “I heard you.”

“Can you run?”

I blinked, confused at the sudden question. “I...” I began to say slowly, reluctant to deny him anything when I didn’t know what the consequences would be. But such was my nature: I could not lie. It has always been impossible for me, and on sacred, godly territory, the compulsion to speak plainly was even stronger than usual. “I can’t,” I said finally after a futile struggle against my natural inhibitions. “Not very far, at least.”

I was tired. No, I was exhausted. There was no way I could make it farther than a few hundred steps, if that.

All I received in warning was a hard scoff before I was swept off my feet. I found myself clinging to his broad, hard chest as he carried me forward in his arms, one strong arm under my neck and the other hooked under the back of my bent knees.

I didn’t even have time to register the shock before he quickened his pace to a run - and soon, he was charging forward down the mountain path at such a speed that the wind whipped around me with cutting force.

All I could do was curl up and cower against his chest, and close my eyes.