Twice Loved by the War God

3 - By Halves

 "You laid a curse on Zeus that night," said Aphrodite. "That alone isn't surprising, insofar as his defeat was concerned. None of us have been strong enough to invoke true curses for a long time, but it's typical fare for things like this -"

"A curse?" I interrupted. She'd scarcely said more than a few sentences, and I was already confused. While I hated to stop her in the middle of her explanation, I knew that if I didn't ask for answers I needed right away, the rest of what she wanted to say would be utterly lost to me.

"Yes," She gave me a long, curious look before glancing behind me at Ares. He said nothing, however, and she looked back at me again. "You didn't know?"

"I - I don't even know what curse it would have been," I stammered, too surprised to string any intelligent words together. "Wait - you know about me, right? I've...been hiding all my life. I've never been able to do much of anything, not until Ares found me."

At the mention of his name, I felt him wrap his hand around my wrist and pull me closer. I had been standing next to the bed and leaning back against it so that I could face Aphrodite, but at his wordless urging, I perched on the edge of the covers and nestled my fingers tighter into his grasp. He felt warm next to me, strong and solid and safe.

"Well, whatever your past, you laid a curse on him for sure. It won't last forever, but you did strip him of his power for the time being. You shouldn't have been able to do that even with the power of the Ascension behind you, but it happened, and now we have time to prepare for his return." The goddess leaned back in her chair and shifted around in the seat with a sigh. "There's no telling how long we have, but it's better than nothing. Really, it's a marvel, what you managed. But you won't have the power to do that again, not for a long, long time."

My heart sank. That was the next thing I had been about to ask. "Why not?"

"The Ascension grants you strength exactly once, and it doesn't stay with you, either. No one really knows where it comes from, so there's no point asking and no point in trying to find a way to regain it. Some say it comes from the Oracle, and that it grants you a moment in the future when you're at the peak of your power, but I wasn't around for the last Ascension so I wouldn't know. Neither would Ares or Hermes, for that matter."

I frowned and dropped my head. The Oracle. That was right, now I remembered: the shards of shattered crystal lighting up like stars in the night under my feet. But then...

"The Oracle is broken, isn't it?" I asked. "That night..."

"It's all a bit hazy for us, but I suppose the most straightforward thing to say would be that it's gone. We have no idea where it is or what happened to it afterward. What's the last thing you remember?"

I gripped the edge of the bed with one hand and tightened my grasp on Ares's hand with the other. He stirred and pressed back against me as well, and I let out a long breath as I relaxed into the warmth of his shoulder. "I...I remember Apollo appearing," I said slowly. "He took Zeus."

"And Demeter."

I squinted and looked back up at her. "How come he couldn't take you with him?" I asked. "I remember why he couldn't make Hermes leave with him, because..."

"You'd made a bond with Hermes that superseded both his loyalty and his half-blood link to Olympian heritage. I don't know exactly how that would have happened since neither that little fish-mouthed troublemaker nor the big lunk next to you are good at being very descriptive about things -"

I smiled, despite the seriousness of the topic. It made me guilty that I felt relaxed enough to think Aphrodite entertaining to be around, but I couldn't help it. The familiar way she spoke of Hermes and Ares made me feel warm somehow.

"- but in any case, I'm an Olympian because I was gifted to the House, not born into it. I share no blood with Zeus and was only bound to the god pact through his authority over this place, nothing else. Once you revoked his claim on the House itself, he could no longer do anything to me. I'm sure Apollo still wanted to take me with him, but while his gifts are aplenty, he can't drag me out by the hair and expect to get away unscathed. So he left without me. But make no mistake, he's hovering somewhere in the world, just waiting for his chance."

I grimaced. I didn't know exactly what Apollo's powers involved, but I knew he was powerful. He was Zeus's favorite son, after all, wasn't he? He had to have something that would attract the affections of such a ruthless and bloodthirsty father. That said -

"What about Artemis? Where is she? Is she with Apollo, too?"

Aphrodite glanced above my head and shared a meaningful look with Ares, but when I turned around to see for myself what kind of expression he wore, all I found waiting for me was a stone-hard stare and nothing else.

"What?" I asked, and I turned back around. "What's wrong?"

She sighed and crossed her arms again, the other way this time. "She's missing. We need to find her, too. That's one of the things we need to talk about."

"Find her? Do we have any idea where she is?"

"No. Once she hides herself, she's as good as gone. Even Apollo can't find her when she's like this, not anymore. Whatever connection they used to have as twins is long gone; she's a loner now."

Ah, I thought. That was right. Apollo and Artemis were twins, not merely siblings. There was something about godly blood and heritage that gave such relationships special power, but if it was true that they were parted now...

"That's good, right?" I asked. "It's better that she not choose a side at all than for Apollo to be able to find her."

"That's assuming Zeus won't be able to summon her to his side and bind her as before once he's recovered." Aphrodite crossed one leg over the other with a flourish. Somehow, the motion conveyed her frustration better than words possibly could. "In any case, we need numbers. It comes down to simple arithmetic in the end, sometimes. The side with the greater numbers usually wins."

That I could understand. And if it was true that I couldn't rely once more on the inexplicable power I had attained that night against Zeus, then the simple fact of the matter was that I would be useless when he returned. I would be unable to protect Ares, Hermes, Aphrodite - and Hestia I had already failed to save. I hoped still that she would make it through this, but if Zeus returned and hurt her again, there was no chance at all that she would survive.

I wouldn't give up, but I wasn't conceited enough to think they could rely on me unconditionally. This was my House, something whispered inside me. This was my responsibility, and so was everyone who took refuge in it. If I couldn't protect everyone alone, then I needed to find a different way.

Artemis was powerful. I knew little else about her except that she was a fierce huntress, but she had helped Ares once already. I had to believe that just like the day she had come with Hermes to rescue him from the Aloadae, that she would do the same now...even if her family was now split in two.

But surely she wouldn't ally herself with Zeus, given the choice, even if her brother had decided to do so...?

Maybe she could convince him to see reason.

"Astraea?" Aphrodite leaned over and waved a hand in my face. "Hello?"

"Sorry. I was just thinking - does that mean Apollo will be looking for the others, too? I know he'll want to find Athena, but what about -"

"Hera, certainly," she said with a firm nod. "Zeus treated her terribly to keep her pressed down and subservient, but technically she's one half his power. If they're together, his strength will grow exponentially. She's his consort and his queen even if they no longer reign over this House. He needs her even more than he needs Athena."

"Even though Hera is bedridden?"

"Even so. The greatest power is never realized alone. And I'm not saying that just because I have a share in the domain of sacred union - it's undeniable truth. It's why Zeus married Hera as soon as he Ascended, and why Cronus married Rhea as well. Technically, Gaia married Uranus too, even if their union was a bit different from ours. It's about balance and the harmony of the halves and such. But that's another reason why Artemis and Apollo are so formidable, and why we can't let Zeus have them both. They're siblings, not wife and husband, but as twin gods, their power together is..."

She didn't have to explain any further. The specifics would only confuse me, and besides, I could imagine how bad that would be for us. Very bad.

"There's another thing, though," Aphrodite added before I could say anything else. "It's not just the curse you laid on Zeus, but the fact that you revoked his inheritance from Gaia. I don't know exactly what happened between you two, but Ares and Hermes managed to tell me bits and pieces about what happened. Or what they think happened, since apparently they only heard it from you. Later, you'll have to tell me more."

"I will."

"But the disinheritance stands. This is an even bigger problem - because what that did was release Zeus's demigod children that were under his control. Well, not control - but they couldn't fight him, not directly."

"Because of the blood relation?" I asked.

"Right. They're only half-related, so you might think that spares them - but not so. Because most of his demigod children have human mothers, and all humans already born are of Gaia's domain, whether she's gone now or not. And Gaia bequeathed the domain of the world on Zeus a long time ago, so for eons, he had two parts authority over them."

"Two parts? What do you mean?"

"Again, this is the principle of power by halves. One half of the demigods are of Zeus's blood, but the other half was also bound to him because humans are also within his domain. Except they're not anymore. The moment you delivered her disinheritance and revoked his claim to the human world, you broke that compulsion. Now, even the blood relation between Zeus and his demigod children isn't enough to keep them in line. It's only one half, after all. From that point onward, they became half yours, and your claim at the very least negates his."

My eyes had gone so wide that I could feel them bugging out. "Mine? My claim?" I repeated, aghast. "What does that even mean?"

"No idea. You're a new god, the first of your kind. There's no telling what it might mean, whether now or in the future. Not to mention that this is completely unprecedented in the first place."

I sat in silence, utterly stunned and trying to make sense of everything. Think, I told myself. Think of something useful -

"What about Artemis and Apollo?" I managed to say. "Their mother, was she human? Does this mean they're free from the god pact?"

"Their mother wasn't human, no. She was a daughter of the Titans, too close to Zeus's bloodline for them to be free. They're not as trapped as they would have been if they were born within the marriage union, though, so that's something. Maybe Artemis can be saved a little more easily than we expect...provided we find her."

Born within the marriage union. She was talking about Ares. I looked back at him, and with a cold thrill of fear that filled me like ice shards in a storm, I suddenly remembered something else from the night of the Ascension:

"Apollo said they'd come back for you," I whispered. "Is that true?"

He said nothing, but I saw the answer somewhere behind his dark red gaze. I sucked in a sharp breath between my teeth and stiffened like a board. So not only did I have to worry about Zeus's imminent return itself, I had to be afraid of what they would do to get to Ares. Apollo might even try to come for him first, perhaps with other dangerous allies. What if he found Athena and came together with her? What could I do to protect Ares from them?

"Worry about one thing at a time," he said in a low, rumbling voice, and he reached up to take my chin between his thumb and forefinger. "Aphrodite is right about the demigods. They'll come in force. They've been waiting for a chance like this for a long time."

"Aren't their grievances with Zeus?" I protested. "Why are they coming against us?"

"Because power is power, and if they get you on their side, they can go after Zeus next whenever he appears again. And also because they've always hated all the old gods, not just him." Aphrodite crossed her legs the other way now. "It's not just about grudges, Astraea. They want to Ascend just like you. They want to become part of the new godhood."

I sighed and dropped my head. "This is too complicated."

"That's how the Old World works, my sweet. It's a lot of complicated and not a lot of common sense. If everyone would just calm down a little bit..." She shrugged. "But they won't, and now it's a problem. But we'll deal with it."

I must have looked doubtful.

"Astraea," she said firmly. "We will."

What choice did I have but to agree with a gentle nod? I wasn't about to give up, after all, no matter how out of my depth I felt.

"What now, then?" I asked. "And where's Hermes? Isn't he back yet?"

"Soon, I'm sure. He's probably out seducing one of my nymphs again. But in any case, there's one other problem. A tiny one, nothing to fret about. Yet, I suppose."

I sighed again. "What is it?"

"Oh, well, the humans are all massacring each other."