I slapped on a grin. “We’re not here for love stories.”
We shared a belly chuckle as we looked toward the head of the table.
It was Ares, god of war, who had invited Hell, regardless of who supplied the wine and merriment.
The King of Macedonia, a human man called Alexander, was ready to be Ares’s sword arm as he marched his empire east.
Hell knew the area well. What once belonged to the Sumerians, then the Akkadians, then the Assyrians, now belonged to the Babylonians. Hell had a front row seat to all that went on in the Cradle of Civilization, particularly as it watched the King of Heaven move from Canaan outward, thriving as far west as Egypt, east as the Tigres, and trickling north as awar deity called Yahweh marched his rule onward and upward, conquering territory well beyond Mesopotamia.
Ares thought that Hell might be interested to hear how his people would conquer Heaven’s people and proposed an alliance between Hell and the Grecians.
He was right.
Between plans, they did what they did best.
Eat, drink, dance, fuck, discuss, sleep, repeat.
I stayed present for the first week of festivities and negotiations, but a nymph—one of the Naiads, called Nai, for short—had brushed past me at the table. She bent at the waist to whisper how I couldn’t make any decisions about allegiances without seeing Greece for myself.
Persephone leaned across her husband to give my bicep a squeeze. “Go. Get out of here. We’ll catch up when we aren’t conquering the world.”
Her husband threw me a wink, and we emptied our cups before I extended my hand to accept the invitation.
The nymph’s cheeks pinked as her hand disappeared in mine.
“Lead the way.”
Maybe I wanted to escape the monotony of meetings. Perhaps I was just emboldened by the mix of curious and jealous looks as others at the table carried on with their talks while watching to see how I’d react. But I let her take my hand, following the woman made of little more than air and water whose loveliness rivaled...I stopped my mind from comparing the nymph to the goddess as I caught Aphrodite’s sharp glare from my peripherals.
Could the goddess of love hear my unspoken words?
Of course not. She had to be speculating. I’d heard tales of her vanity and jealousy, though most immortals had an inscrutable list of intermingled fact and fiction to their name.Some were victims of the rumors. Others had started the tall tales themselves.
In a single step, the clouds and marble and scents of Olympus evaporated. No torchlight muddied the silver night. Moonlight washed the pale stones as we moved through the metropolis.
The earthly silence was deafening.
The city was awash in silver light. Rolling hills elevated half of the houses, the flickering candles in their windows doing little to rival the stars burning overhead.
“I thought nymphs preferred the forest?” I asked, both to get her talking, and because I truly didn’t know why a forest deity would bring me to the heart of Athens.
“Isn’t it neat?” Nai winked. She dropped my hand and gestured to three intricately carved fish and the liquid that burbled from their mouths into a marble pool below. “The humans have brought fresh water into the city.”
I approached the pool and ran my fingers over its cool, clear surface. “To drink?”
“And for beauty,” she cooed.
I knew a bid for attention when I heard it. I was meant to compliment her. To tell her that water was beautiful, as was she. I was no stranger to the words whispered to women, to tumbling into the beds of gods and fae and things that lurked in the shadows.
I’d even attempted my hand at the title of incubus and set out to meet a human in their dreams in recent centuries, but only once. The mortal had opened up for me, had invited me so willingly, and I’d hated it. I’d vanished before reaching their bed, never to return to their home.
I could tell Nai whatever she needed to hear now. I could slip my hand over her hip, tilt her chin up toward mine, pinher against the wall between two of the softly murmuring fish-shaped spouts.
But we weren’t alone. A woman’s gentle hum carried over the fountain’s gurgle. The tune was almost familiar. Simple, minor, haunting. A humble home. The dead sea. A human grinding barley into flour.
My heart stopped.
She bit her lip, following my gaze to the sound of footsteps.
