Twice Loved by the War God

4 - Duties

"What do you mean!"

"Calm down, calm down." Aphrodite leaned over and patted my knee several times in a vain attempt to comfort me. "It's not as bad as it could be. And as sad as it is, this is typical fare for whenever there's a balancing of the scales. The state of mankind reflects the state of the House, and considering the sheer scale of the upset when you displaced Zeus -"

"Is this my fault!" I exclaimed, horrified.

"I'm not saying it's - listen, you can't blame yourself so easily, Astraea. You were in no condition to go out and attend to your duties. What, were you going to sleepwalk out there and appease the people that way? That would be a first, a comatose queen making her rounds."

But her chiding, soothing tone did nothing to calm me. I remembered just in time to make my movements careful and slow when I slipped off the bed so that I wouldn't disturb the sleeping Hestia, but once my feet found the floor again, I whirled to face the goddess with wide eyes. "Tell me exactly what's happened," I demanded, although I kept my voice to a hushed whisper. "What do you mean that the humans are -"

"It's war, same as always. Before, Zeus's authority kept things in check, but by now, everyone will have heard rumors that the god-king is no more. There are...a lot of people who don't like that and a lot of people who do, all for different reasons. Don't blame yourself, Astraea. The Ascension was always going to happen one way or another, whether a season ago as it did or a century hence. And you're a different breed entirely, so of course there was going to be opposition either way -"

"A season ago?" I held my hands up between us and waved them frantically, signaling her to stay her speech for a moment. "Are you telling me I've been asleep for..."

"Nearly three months, darling. It's the first month of the year now, though you might not be able to tell by the weather once you're out and about. It's becoming more and more unstable with the Old and New planes still shifting around and into each other, so when you're strong enough to go see to the people, you'll have to be very, very careful -"

What did I care about unstable weather? Three months! Three months I had slept, and everything had turned into chaos while I slumbered on completely unawares. I didn't know what exactly I could have done to prevent it, but even so, surely I would have been more useful if I had been awake. Three months!

"I have - I have to see my mother," I stammered. My hands clasped together in front of my chest, and I wrung them compulsively while glancing around as if I were about to pack my things right then and there and leave. Except I couldn't because there were people dying, Aphrodite had said, and I had to take care of that first before tending to my own selfish desires. I knew that. I knew it, and still I...

"Now's not the time to see her," Aphrodite said, and there was a gentleness in her voice that felt strangely firm and steadying. My pulse slowed, marginally. "You're the head of a new pantheon now. You have duties to fulfill, and you're accountable to a whole people now, not just yourself. Not only that, but now that you've Ascended, you need to be prepared for your fellow new gods to take up their mantles, too."

I blinked. Fellow new gods, I repeated silently. She was right. I was only the first - and the herald. For some reason, the full implications of that hadn't occurred to me until now.

"How will I recognize them when I find them?" I asked. "What do I...I mean, how exactly does that even happen?"

She shrugged. "Lots of ways. You know that Ares was the blood heir of Zeus and Hera, so he's been here since the beginning. Later, I came out of the sea and found my way here on my own without Hestia's help. Hermes had no intention of becoming attached to anyone; he got dragged up the Mount when Zeus told Apollo to bring and bind him. He was only a child then, so there was no chance of escape."

"Hermes never wanted to be here?"

"Of course not. If you've claimed him, you already know that he would never volunteer to be chained down - even before he ever knew about the god pact. But his fatal mistake was that he tried to rob the House by leading away a sacred cattle herd from one of the watchmen one day...and once he attracted Zeus's attention, it was all over for him. He was so young. He never even knew he was Zeus's son until after all of that happened. So small..."

I wasn't surprised. She was right; I could see all of that playing out in my mind's eye as vivid as a memory. It sounded just like him...And I felt a renewed rush of pity for the trickster god who must never have felt quite at home. Stolen away and forced to mingle with those he'd never met, bound to a father who was nothing but a cruel tyrant, how frightened he must have been.

Suddenly, I felt Ares stir beside me, and I looked up to see him staring down into my eyes.

"Don't pity him," he rumbled, voice as quiet as it was rough. "He wouldn't like that."

I smiled back. I knew this was Ares's way of trying to soothe me. But he didn't need to, really, and he shouldn't.

Because I'd promised to take care of Hermes, hadn't I? Maybe not in so many words, but the instinctual knowledge that came from inside me was unmistakable. He was the one I had stripped away from Zeus that day after the clash, the only one. Ares was still trapped between two Houses, still in dispute, and Hestia had simply been discarded. Meanwhile, Aphrodite had asserted her independence; I had nothing to do with that.

It was different with Hermes. I had declared him mine, had saved him myself with my own power. And despite him being far older than I was and certainly far stronger, I felt a rush of protective fear over him suddenly grow inside me.

"When is he coming back?" I asked. "And is he better now? Has he completely recovered?"

"He'll be here soon. Even if he really is staying out there to romp with one of my girls, he'll get bored quickly and come looking for Ares. But as for his condition - yes, he's better now. He's not quite as healthy as he should be yet, but considering that he went so long without feeding, it's a miracle that he's doing as much as he is. Especially now that our age is over, you'd think he'd still be limping around at least a little bit."

"Your age? Over?"

She raised her eyebrows at me. "In order for you to Ascend, someone has to come down first, no? Zeus is falling, which means anyone that was and is bound to him is weakening, too. I suppose Hermes is spared the worst of it since you adopted him into your House, though -"

"Weakening," I repeated. How could she say something so ominous with such unperturbed nonchalance? "Anyone that was bound to Zeus - wait. Wait, does that mean Ares is also...?" I looked up at him again and found him still watching me. But this time, he remained silent, and I could feel a growing fear twisting itself into a knot in the pit of my stomach. Since he refused to say nothing, I looked back at Aphrodite with an expectant but dreading grimace. "Tell me," I demanded, and it was the most forceful I had sounded yet since we had begun speaking. "Explain it to me."

"It's not something you should be worrying about right now," she said, but I knew she was hedging around the truth. While she wasn't lying, she wasn't being entirely honest, either, and when a twinge of something sharp and tangy rested on my tongue, I narrowed my eyes at her.

"It must be," I said pointedly. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be worried either."

She frowned back at me before glancing at Ares herself. "Well, this is inconvenient. I don't think I much like living together with someone who has the Truthspeak."

I was about to counter with the protest that if she would simply be open and honest with me, there would be no problem - but just as the words teetered at the tip of my tongue, I heard the unmistakable, telltale sound of sandals slapping along wooden floor, fast and panicked. I turned toward the arched double doors, eyebrows already knitting together in concern, just in time to see Hermes burst through the doorway.

"Problem," he gasped out, and although his voice had been reduced to a wheeze, the echo carried his words clear across the large hall. "Village is about to be massacred."