Ares should’ve known better than to come early, or even on time. Aphrodite was unmindful of anyone’s needs but her own. He bit down hard when a smile started at the corner of his mouth. Even her bad habits made him sentimental. The god of war had gone soft.
He flexed his arms and the muscles of his chest. Blood oozed from a broad cut on his bicep and soaked the black cloth of his shirt.
Soft, but not weak. Strong, but still dying.
His death had started to show over a year ago. All his old war wounds, long since healed, reopened on their own. Ares loved blood more than all things, so the cuts blooming on his chest and shoulders delighted him at first. He waited for the next one to open, and remembered with nostalgia the fight when he’d taken the wound. The cuts lingered and bled, but eventually closed. Then the whispers started, of other gods falling ill. Impossible stories of gods dying. By the time the half-eaten Nereid washed up at his feet on a beach in Tanzania, he wasn’t feeling quite so nostalgic anymore.
Across the stream, in the trees that lined the opposite bank, something moved. Rustled. He peered into the shade. Maybe just the wind through leaves, or a careless squirrel. Only squirrels didn’t usually smell like vanilla and cinnamon.
“Aphrodite.”
She picked her way along the black stone that bordered the streambed, and he took her in, inch by inch. Her bare soles scraped over cold rocks and wet grass. She hopped and hummed like a little girl playing a game.
For Aphrodite it was always a game. She ran, and Ares chased. She laughed, and he fought to catch his breath.
Images flashed behind his eyes, a thousand images from a thousand years. Rose-colored lips. Gold hair. Bared breasts that brought men to their knees.
But shadows like coal smudges marked Aphrodite’s calves now, long lines of darkness that disappeared beneath the uneven hem of her blue-green dress. Only they weren’t shadows. They were bruises.
Suddenly Ares didn’t want to see her face. To see her changed from breathtaking to hideous, with sores on her forehead and blackened eyes.
It would be an unfair fate for the goddess of love and beauty. As unfair as for the god of war to die from battles he’d already won. Ares took a breath and looked up.
Golden blond hair twisted down to her waist, and she smiled with lips red as blood. Her curious eyes shone blue and bright. The most beautiful of goddesses was still the most beautiful, even with the hint of bruising on her jaw. Even if she was mad as a rabid dog.
“I’ve come, as you asked,” she said. “To this river. Will you come to me now? Or must I cross?” She dipped a toe into the current and kicked, splashing Ares’ shoes. The flirt.
“I’ve come, as you requested. But not to the place you dictated. I’m not your pet, Aphrodite. I never have been.”
She pursed her lips. He was her pet, and they both knew it. She stood ungainly, unbalanced, the cock of her head at odds with the jut of her hip. Mud streaked her skirt. He couldn’t tell whether her eyes were truly bright, or only fevered. And then there was the dog to consider: a small, golden puppy, asleep in her arms.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll come to you.” She walked into the river up to the waist, hugging the puppy close, careful to keep it dry.
“What do you want, Aphrodite?”
“I want you to come home,” she purred. “I want you to fight, like you used to. Like the god you are.”
Ares snorted. Appeal to the strength of a dying god. Tell him he was strong. She was clever still, even through the crazy.
“Things have changed,” he said. “War has changed. Men don’t need me to take up their cause.” He lifted his arm to show her the blood. “The world sloughs us like dead skin.”
“It isn’t men who are asking.” She pouted. “And it isn’t like you to submit.”
He clenched his jaw.