Aphrodite placed a hand on his.
“I won’t stop you,” she said. “But take care. They’re weakened. But they’re still our gods.”
“Hera’s inside,” he said. Half-question and half-deduction. He hadn’t seen her in almost a day. And Olympus, despite its endless size, had few places where a god could truly disappear.
He pushed the door open, and a strong draft of herbal smoke hit him in the face. Braziers. Hera must’ve burnt herbs of offering. Or maybe she’d burnt them to cover the smell. Decay, sweet and sinister, clung to the walls, and not the smell of a rotting battlefield, the kind Ares enjoyed. This was the scent of sickness.
His eyes swept over the marble floor. Hera lay near one of the gold braziers, her eyes open, sweat on her chest and face.
“Mother!”
“Ares?” she asked. Her arms trembled against the stone floor. He picked up her granite fist to stop the rattling.
“What happened?”
“Healing me,” she whispered. Stone molars clacked against her upper teeth as she shivered. “Trying.”
They must not have tried that hard. Aside from a slight softening on her neck, she seemed worse: in more pain, feverish, and exhausted. Silk rustled behind them. He thought it was Aphrodite, finally brave enough to come inside, but Hera braced herself and pushed up onto her elbow, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Smile,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Smile,” she hissed. Her lips stretched as well as they could, pulled taut against her stone jaw. “They like it when we smile.”
“I don’t smile,” Ares said. “I look ridiculous.”
(ARES)
The voices hit the center of his brain like a truck. Hera cupped her hand under his chin to catch the blood that fell from his nose. He put his palms to his ears, but it didn’t matter. The voices weren’t in his ears.
(JUST FOR YOU)
The voices backed off by decibels. Because they could. Now that he knew what they were capable of.
(WE WOULD BE GENTLE, BUT WE KNOW YOU LOVE THE BLOOD)
“Not my own blood,” he said. “Or at least not as much.” He licked a little of it, strong and salty, and pressed his mother’s hands together. The Moirae stood at his back, and suddenly he wanted to keep them there. To never, ever lay eyes on them, and rewind straight out of this hot, firelit room. He would forever lie happily wounded with Aphrodite on their ruined bed.
But it was too late for that. The Fates put their hands on his back, and an electric shock passed through his skin and through the blisters of blood Cassandra had burst. It burned. It sliced with more pain than when the girl had done it in the first place. Their fingers dug like insects, sharp legs burrowing and embedding into the muscle. No wonder Hera lay panting on the floor. If he hadn’t been the god of war, he would have cried like a tiny baby.
“This is your healing?” he gasped.
(PRICES FOR EVERYTHING. THAT IS THE WAY. THAT IS THE LAW)
“The law is for me to feel every scrap and fiber stitching itself together?”
“Ares,” Hera whispered, and he shut up. Because they could always make it worse. They could make it worse, and they could stretch it out. They could refuse to help him at all.
Sweat beaded on his lip, but he sat silent as a biker in a tattooist’s chair. It would be over soon, and then he could wear shirts again without the fabric sticking to him the minute he put them on.
The Moirae worked for a long time. Twice he almost passed out from the pain. Every now and again he heard something sharp and metallic, like razors rubbed together: the shears of the Moirae, opening and closing. Not on his skin. They opened and closed in their idle hands, just an absent habit. Hera stayed with him as they worked, her flesh hand on his knee. Aphrodite hummed a soothing tune from the open doorway.
(THERE. ENOUGH)
He stretched his mostly healed back, reformed from ribbons into one piece. Yes. They were his gods. They decided what was enough. Even though his godhood called for more, for all, like it always did.
“Turn,” Hera whispered. “Turn and thank them.”
He didn’t want to. He wanted to wave and jet the hell out of there. Leave a fifty on the brazier and promise to call them sometime.
“Yes, Mother,” he said. At least the Moirae had moved away, receded to wherever they’d snuck up on him from. Better than turning around and finding his nose stuffed into their silk dresses. He imagined they smelled half-rotten.
The Moirae sat in a puddle of stitched-together fabric. Red, silver, and black merged in a sadly extravagant patchwork quilt to cover them up like old ladies. To hear Zeus tell it, the Moirae were three beautiful girls. Ivory cheeks and sparkling eyes. Curves and temptation along with wisdom and war. Clotho, the spinner of life, had red hair that flowed over her shoulders. Lachesis, the weaver of destiny, tantalized with silver-blond hair down her back. And Atropos wore her black braid long and thick.