I took a deep breath and turned to face Emma. She looked up at me.

'He seems…nice,' she said softly.

I shrugged and walked over to a table at the restaurant, still holding her shoulder. I pulled a chair back for her, then sat down on another one. 'So. Answers.'

A waitress came to our table to take our orders. I quickly ordered two cups of coffee without looking at her, instead trying to measure the mood between Emma and me.

Emma had acted relaxed when the waitress was there, but stiffened again now that she was gone. She bit her lip shortly. 'Why were you covered in blood?'

'You know who I am, right?'

She nodded. 'Ares. God of War.'

'Ssh, not so loud,' I said, looking around if anyone had heard. I moved closer to her so that we could speak a little softer. 'Not everyone needs to know.'

'Right.'

'I had just returned from battle,' I explained. And oh, what a battle it had been! Most battles these days were fought with big guns and extreme strategy made them boring; this one, however, had been in a place that had only recently been discovered by Western society, and the men still used old-fashioned weapons. It had been glorious.

'You? In bronze armor?' she asked skeptically. 'Doesn't that raise questions?' I nodded, grinning a bit.

'It would, normally. But this time, it didn't. Not as much.'

The waitress came back with our coffee. Without saying anything, she put the cups on our table, then walked away. She had picked up on the tension between Emma and me.

Emma took a sip, still eyeing me curiously. 'And Aphrodite? Why was she there?'

I looked away from her intense gaze. 'Cleaning my wounds.'

'She didn't seem to be very good at that. Couldn't you do it yourself?'

I looked back at her now, irritated. I didn't want to be irritated by Emma. What if I were to lose my temper? 'No, Emma, I couldn't. She really was there only for that reason. Can't you just trust me on that?'

Emma bit her lip again. 'The myth of you and Aphrodite is one of the bedtime stories my mom told me. If you can't understand why I don't trust you with her, I'm not sure if I should even be here right now.'

'Is my cheating on you, which I wasn't doing, really the most important issue here?' I asked, wishing fervently she wouldn't get up and leave.

She stared into the distance behind me. 'I don't know. Are you still Noah?'

I silenced. The truth was, I didn't know who I was. After hundreds of years of living like a mortal, after centuries of pretending to be someone other than Ares, I wasn't even sure about my own identity. 'I've never been Noah, Emma,' I said finally. 'That name is just a cover.'

'What about that life? That personality? Is that even you? Or are you wholly a lie?' She was firing these questions at me like they were bullets. I loved that about her. I loved how strong she was emotionally, how she could hold on to composure even after learning earth-shattering news.

I shook my head. 'That life is my life. Like I told you, I never actually lied to you. Noah…is me, without the godly parts.' It felt strange talking about myself like that. That name didn't even matter, but to her it did, apparently. I suddenly remembered a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' While the choice of words didn't seem to apply to me, the gist of it certainly was true.

'But the bad parts define you.' The sound of Emma's voice pulled me back from my thoughts. 'I don't know much about…' She swallowed. '…about Ares, but I know that he was the worst of all the gods.'

At that moment she did not seem to realize that it was really me she was talking about, but what she said hurt me. 'That is what the stories tell you,' I said. I played with my napkin and refused to look her in the eyes, no matter how hard she tried to catch my glance.

'But how can you even be good?' She sounded as if she was truly trying to understand. 'Aren't you a killer? Aren't you power hungry?'

I looked up now, my eyes sparkling with annoyance. I was not really annoyed at her, now; it was the stories that made me look like a ruthless murderer. Maybe I was a murderer. But that was always with good reason, and I was never emotionless doing it.

'I could have killed my father, like he did, like his father did, and ruled the world. I didn't. I'm not like that.' I said it hastily, now a bit louder but none of the people surrounding us seemed to notice…yet.

'That doesn't explain your bloodlust,' she said defensively. How was I ever going to get through to her? This was useless.

'Emma,' I said urgently. 'Can't you just forget about those fucking stories and listen to me?'

She looked afraid again, afraid I would snap and lose control. She had good reason for it, too: it took everything in me to not let desperation at her refusal to believe me take over.

'Do you even know who wrote them? Stupid, ignorant poets who hardly ever met any of us. They had no idea. They needed to add drama to their songs.'

'So everything my mother told me about you is untrue?' Her voice was now so soft and so scared that all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms and console her, to convince her this was all a dream and that I, Noah, would make everything okay. I had to tell her what she wanted to know, though. I had promised her.

'I'm not going to deny that savage war and complete rage and chaos is what I am in every fibre of my body and every part of my soul. I'm not going to tell you that all the myths are wrong. I have done things that you wouldn't agree with.' I made the conscious decision to not say that I regretted those things. I didn't, after all. 'I ask you, however, to believe me when I say that I am also just a man.'

Emma swallowed. It was quiet for a while. Neither of us had touched our cups of coffee since a long time. Her voice was still soft and nervous when she spoke again.

'I just…I don't know how I will ever feel comfortable around you again.' She took a deep breath, obviously preparing for what she was going to say next. 'I'm scared of you, Noah.' She looked into my eyes, clearly confused about what to call me.

I nodded. 'I know.' I had no idea how to change that. I had never planned for her to know all of this. This was exactly the reaction I would have expected from her. 'I…' I looked away, a bit nervous. I hadn't felt nervous in years, which made the emotion feel all the more real. 'Emma, I don't know what to do.'

'About being exposed? I won't tell anyone… I think,' she admitted, surprising me. I shrugged.

'That, too.' One thing was for sure: I did not want to be confronted with the other gods' anger, let alone my parents'. Feeling such fear was so unnatural to me: I was always the one who wasn't afraid of anything. I was always fearless. How could I have become like this?

Emma saw in my eyes how terrible I felt. 'What, then?' she asked, more sweetly than before now.

I stared at her for a few seconds. She was so nice, so smart. So sweet, so soft. So beautiful. So human. She had no idea how perfect she was.

I cleared my throat. 'About you.'

Fear returned to her face. 'What do you mean?' she asked, shocked. 'Because I know?'

I shook my head. 'There is no need for any…punishment for you. At least, that is my father's call to make.' I looked away in horror as I imagined the ways that Zeus could smite her, and me with her. 'I meant you and me. Us. I don't think I have any say in the matter, do I?' I looked back at her with a sad smile on my face.

Emma bit her lip again. I had found out it was something she did when she was unsure of something, or unsure of herself. 'I like you, Noah. But I don't think I like Ares.'

I grabbed her hand. The fact that she had said she liked me, even if it was just Noah-me, was so relieving and made me so happy; she didn't have to deal with Ares-me. 'That's okay. Nobody does, Emma. You don't even have to know the real me.'

She shook her head and retrieved her hand. 'See, that's the thing, Noah. I don't want to see you or even be with you if that is the direction we were headed, if you're wearing a mask all the time.'

I looked down. She was probably right, but we had clicked so well when she hadn't known anything; that had to count for something. 'I wasn't.'

'You weren't what?' she urged.

'Wearing a mask.'

'But if you were hiding your bad side…' She trailed off.

'Stop calling it a bad side.'

'But it is a bad side, right?' She didn't even seem to want an answer to that. She had to know I wouldn't, that I couldn't agree with that. Annoyance came back to me and I stood up, not wanting to confirm her suspicions right now, right here, her suspicions (which were true) that I was just a volcano that could erupt at any given moment. This came very close to being such a moment.

'I see I can't persuade you to think differently about me. Until some other time, Emma Sawyer,' I said coolly. As I walked away, she called my name - my human name - but I kept walking, barely even thinking about it, like a march.