Twice Loved by the War God

2 - Living Things

Hestia, goddess of the burning hearth, of the realm of family and home. Of all the Olympians, she was the only one none could claim to have met in their travels - none of us from the New World, at least, because she was bound to the mountaintop, never to leave.

The first time I had ever seen her was when Ares took me captive and brought me to the Mount. She had looked different then. Maybe not happy, but calm and composed. She had exuded a wise serenity that had made me want to like her and trust her even though we'd never met before.

But now, I barely recognized her. Her skin was deathly pale instead of colored with the deep tan I remembered, as if something had cut her open and drained all the life from under her skin. Her hair that had been so richly auburn and full, now limp and a vague shade of gray-brown.  Her face had been motherly, the gentle curves of her cheeks soft and warm. But now, she was nothing more than a fading afterimage, a dull imitation of what she used to be.

I limped closer to the bed that was next to the crackling hearth dancing with orange flames. In the middle of this round, domed hall littered with dark pillars, the bed seemed very out of place, but I realized vaguely that perhaps it was because Hestia could not be moved from this room to any other. Besides being unable to leave the hearthside, she looked too fragile to be transported anywhere...

"Did Zeus do this?" I asked, taking care to keep my voice quiet and soft so that she didn't awake.

"He did." Aphrodite moved her hair back over her shoulder and pointed at the two chairs set at an angle by the bedside, indicating for me to sit first. "But not all of it. She might have recovered had she not spent the last of her strength to bring you and Hermes here that night."

I had just sat down, and I looked up with a quick, furtive glance at her face. Was she blaming us? It didn't sound like it - more like a neutral observation. But I wouldn't argue it if she was. In the back of my mind, I'd already known that Hestia had helped us get here in time to save Ares, that we hadn't simply managed it on our own with luck. Without her, we would have continued to wander the plains, looking, searching - and would have been too late.

 "But that's the price she paid to save him," Aphrodite added, echoing my thoughts almost exactly. It was unnerving, or maybe it was just the guilt that made me so uncomfortable. My decisions had made me choose between the gods, made me choose who would save.

I'd chosen Ares. As for Hestia...

But hat was the price Hestia had paid, as Aphrodite said, and I had to believe that she didn't regret it. My agonizing over it would do nothing for either of us anyway.

"How long will she be like this?" I asked. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No."

"...No?"

"She won't get any better. I don't think so, at least." Her words were so final and yet sounded little more than casual - I didn't grasp the full import of her reply, at first, and for a moment, I did nothing but stare at her, waiting for more. Surely that couldn't be it...?

"So, she'll be like this...forever?"

"Of course not," she said, and just as I breathed a sigh of relief - "She'll linger for a while, and then she'll disappear. It's the way of it."

My eyes widened. "You mean -?"

"Disappear, die, I suppose they're the same thing from your perspective." Aphrodite leaned forward and pulled the covers up close to the sleeping Hestia's chin. "The moment he broke her soul with the god pact, her immortality was gone. So now we wait, and then we send her off in dignity."

How could she sound so blase, so unaffected? Wasn't Hestia her family? Maybe I was simply missing the pain in her words, overlooking her grief. I'd always been good at understanding the unspoken, but I had felt out of sorts and disconnected from reality ever since I'd woken up. Maybe she was merely pretending to be strong, then. Maybe I was just - not hearing her weakness.

I wondered again if she blamed me. But surely she could understand the choice I had made to come here and face Zeus, to save Ares. She had been the one to direct me that night, after all. If she hadn't wanted me to make the choice I did, surely she would have chased me out or told me not to interfere, something.

Or perhaps she blamed me for inciting Ares in the first place, and faced with no other options, she felt as if she'd been pulled along in my wild, reckless scheme.

After all of that, it didn't feel right staying here, with Aphrodite and Hestia. I felt like an intruder. I had made choices for this family that had changed them irreversibly, and I had done it by force. I certainly hadn't stopped to ask them what they wanted.

It was then that I suddenly realized something. Fogged by fatigue, I had dismissed my confusion when I first awoke, but now was as good a time as any to ask. Aphrodite was watching Hestia sleep in quiet contemplation and nothing else; surely she wouldn't begrudge me a few answers while we sat here.

"If Hestia is here," I said slowly, "then this is...definitely still the House." I looked around at the unfamiliar ceiling and walls that were made of wood rather than the marble and granite they should have been. Even if I was still woozy, I remembered at least that much. "But - none of this looks familiar. I don't understand. What happened?"

Aphrodite shrugged. "I've never witnessed an Ascension in person, but things like this are supposed to happen. You're the master of the House now, so of course it'll change to reflect you. It's a living thing, with spirit."

I pressed my lips together. Rough wood instead of smooth stone, cramped corridors, and low, clumsily sloping ceilings. Before this, under Zeus's rule, the House had been a grand thing, beautiful and massive and colorful. But now? I didn't know what to think. If the appearance of the temple truly reflected me, did that mean all of this was a monument to how much weaker and more inferior I was? It seemed the House's spirit preferred its former master after all, then.

"Don't overthink it. You have a lot more things to worry about than your vanity. I assure you that neither Hermes nor I have had time to complain about our new lodgings, and Ares - well, he's him. I don't need to explain how little he cares about decor, do I?"

I looked away from her. Again, it felt as if she'd read my mind...both uncanny and embarrassing.

"Hestia will wake soon. She'll have felt you by now, but it takes a moment for her to rouse herself. Grab the Horn there, will you? You can help her drink, she'd like that."

I obeyed without hesitation and turned in the direction of her pointed finger to my left. And there it was, on the plain, boxy wooden nightstand that sat low by the head of the bed. I picked up the Cornucopia with careful fingers and set it in my lap.

"What do you mean, feel me?" I asked. I glanced back at Aphrodite for a brief instant before returning my gaze to Hestia . She hadn't stirred yet.

"She's the link from our House to you, isn't she? The hearth and the home, that's her domain, so of course she can feel you. Anyone who comes and goes, she knows, always. Oh, look. She's waking up -"

Just as I saw Hestia's eyelids flutter open, I heard something else, too: the sound of heavy doors creaking open with a fierce whine behind us. I winced at the sound: yet another reminder of the deplorable condition of this temple, this place that should be the magnificent home of the gods. I'd never heard of any with rusty hinges.

But if someone was joining us, there were only so many people it could be. My heartbeat quickened, and I rose to my feet with the Cornucopia in my hands so that I could look behind me -

"Ares!"

I didn't recognize my own voice when I called his name: not only did it c***k and send a searing pain through my throat, it was far more weak and hoarse than it had been when I'd been speaking with Aphrodite just a second ago. I held onto the Horn with my left hand while my right flew to my neck to wrap around it and try to soothe the stinging inside.

Somehow, Ares's tall, broad form went from standing at the open double doors, to inches in front of me in the time it took for me to blink away the pain. I nearly stumbled back against Hestia's bed when I saw him looming over me suddenly, but he caught me with his hands gripped tight on my upper arms.

"Ares, don't startle her like that when she's still..."

I could hear Aphrodite beginning to scold him, but the rest of what she said was lost to me: Ares shoved aside the chair I had been sitting in, nearly sending it toppling, while I all but fell forward into his arms. Here, a voice whispered in my thoughts. Here he was, finally. I didn't know how long I'd lain comatose while I recovered all this time, but I did know one thing. It had been too long since I'd last been in his embrace.

I still couldn't recall much of my final moments against Zeus, but in the fog, I thought I could remember seeing Ares lying motionless on the ground, coated in a sheen of silver blood. I didn't know if that was something from the nightmares or if that was a genuine memory, but it terrified me either way...

I squeezed my eyes shut and buried myself against his chest. This inhuman warmth that felt like it was just as much a part of me now as it was his, it filled me, completed me. Even through his baggy white chiton and my own, I could feel his heat radiating through to sink into my skin like a living thing, strong and true. And had he always been this big, so much larger than life? For the first time since I had awoken, I felt safe, and I pushed away the stray warning thoughts in my head that told me I was being too wishful...

He continued to hold me, and I waited until my pulse slowed and calmed before I lifted my head to look at him. The way his familiar red eyes stared down at me nearly made me forget what I was going to say - until a faint whisper floated around from behind me, a reminder that we weren't alone:

"Ares..."

I pulled myself away from him with a discreet but insistent tug, and when he released me - reluctantly - I twisted around to look at Hestia. She was awake and watching us through tired, swollen eyes, and the joy that I'd felt bubbling up inside me upon seeing Ares again dissipated instantly. She looked even worse awake than she had when she was asleep. The goddess's lips were pale and cracked, and I thought I could see faint spiderweb traces of black running under the surface of her skin that I hadn't noticed until now.

"Ares...Come here."

I moved aside and reached for his hand to pull him forward. He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before, and despite his expression showing no weakness, no sadness, I could feel something dark and terrible brewing inside him.

I hesitated, glancing between them several times in the silence, then pried apart our laced fingers so that I could hold open his palm. I was still holding the Cornucopia in my other hand, but now I pressed it firmly into his. He tore his gaze away from Hestia to look down at it, then at me.

"Go ahead," I said softly. "I'll wait."

A displeased grimace flashed across his face when I stepped away to sit back down, and I thought for a second that he would reach for me and drag me back over. But then the moment passed, and with stiff movements, he sat down carefully on the bed next to Hestia.

She said something too quiet for me to hear, but maybe that was because Ares's broad back was presented to me now and muffling her voice. He leaned forward and answered her in a low murmur as well, and I looked to my right to see Aphrodite watching me with her arms crossed loosely over her chest.

I looked away again, not knowing what to say or feel anymore. I was overjoyed that Ares was safe, and evidently Hermes too even if he hadn't shown up yet. But there lay a woman dying just a few feet away, one of the last few pieces of family that these gods had. There were supposed to be twelve Olympians, but now they were reduced just four. Three, soon, if it was true what Aphrodite had said about Hestia's imminent passing...

In the end, I had fulfilled the role of a new god, displacing the old hierarchy as I'd always meant to. But I'd never planned for this, had never thought of any of them as the enemy even back when I was still in hiding. Had never thought things would be so bleak, so cruel...

"Astraea..."

My head bobbed back up at the sound of the hoarse whisper. I'd been staring down at my folded hands in my lap, trying to think of any way that we might heal and save Hestia yet.

"Yes?" I shot up from my chair, and Ares reached out to stay my arm as if he thought I would topple over in my haste. But I was fine, just anxious. Especially since for some reason, everything seemed to remind me of my mother.

At least she wasn't here, I thought. Maybe it would be for the better if I stayed away from her for now, so that I wouldn't drag her into more danger.

I moved around Ares so that I could stand beside the bed. There was a faint, glistening sheen on Hestia's bottom lip from the nectar that she'd just partaken from. She couldn't even feed herself, I thought, and a sickening wave of helplessness flooded me from head to toe.. An old god from a long gone era, made low. It felt wrong to pity her, and yet...

"Be...good to them..." she murmured, and when she lifted her trembling hand from the covers, I hurriedly took it in both of mine. "There is...danger..."

She could hardly speak. I could see her throat bobbing, could hear her words catch with every syllable. Twice, it seemed as if she were trying to cough but simply lacked the energy to do so.

Her dark brown eyes drifted back to Ares's face, and a faint smile pulled at her lips. Even that looked like it cost her dearly, but she had more to say:

"You both...tell her. Tell her...what comes next..."

Mid-sentence, her eyes fluttered closed again while her mouth fell slack, but I continued to watch her sleeping face for a moment longer. She did remind me of my mother, I thought. I hadn't been imagining it after all. But I didn't understand why - they looked utterly different from one another.

But now wasn't the time for that. Once I was sure she was sound asleep, I carefully placed her hand back down onto the bed and rose to my feet. Before I could step back, however, Ares took my hand again in what might have been a compulsive motion: he looked startled at himself.

I smiled and squeezed back. For better or for worse, we were here. Together. And I wasn't leaving.

"So what's this about 'what comes next'?" I asked suddenly, and I craned my neck to peer around Ares at the goddess behind him. Aphrodite pursed her lips and frowned as if she didn't want to answer, and I let my eyes dart back and forth between them as I waited. Someone was going to have to explain it. I didn't care who, but I wanted to know. Needed to know, rather, or else Hestia wouldn't have exhausted herself back to sleep with her efforts.

"...Ares?" I pressed, hoping he would be more amenable, but the goddess sighed and waved her hand at me before he could answer.

"I'll do it. He's no good at explaining. Just...come sit here. We won't wake her, it's fine."

I nodded.