A little update: I've been editing/rewriting the early chapters of this story. Nothing major, the main storyline won't be impacted, but they're a bit more detailed now (with some changes in scene and characterization) and significantly better if I may say so myself. Chapters 1 and 2 are up, 3 to come soon, and I'll likely edit at least up until chapter 9.

In the meantime, here's more of the early stages of Emma and Ares's relationship, from his perspective. Including good old Apollo — and I'm starting to think about writing a short story with him as a main character... Should I?

Stay tuned because very soon a certain someone might be visiting a certain mountain :)

"Look at you, making women swoon like it's 1999!" Apollo appeared without warning, without giving me more than a split second to adjust to his presence, and without taking my splitting headache into consideration given the cheerful volume of his voice.

It was Monday night, and I had spent all of Sunday and the better part of today steadily working my way through the supply of Dionysus's wine I had brought down from Olympus. Although it did the job of getting me drunk and keeping my mind blissfully blank, the way I'd preferred it for decades, it wasn't nearly enough. In the past few hours the divine alcohol had started wearing off and I was left with my thoughts, more thoughts than I'd entertained in a long time — of Emma, because she had instigated this, but to a much greater extent of Virginia, her illness, her depression and fears, her cruel death. I was not in the mood for Apollo's theatrics.

I lay on the couch with Ace at my feet and tried to keep my bloodshot eyes closed for as long as my brother would let me. "Nothing happened in 1999," I croaked.

Apollo's light was so painfully bright that it reddened the inside of my eyelids. "I think a nymph or twenty would beg to differ, Ares, but it's only an expression," he said. "This particular girl might not even have been alive in 1999. Or was she? Yeah, never mind."

"What are you talking about? And since you're closer, can you hand me that bottle of whisky?" I waved my hand in the general direction of the bar cart.

"Oh, please. That's not going to do you any favors."

I heard Apollo's footsteps approach, then felt his hand on my head, and the headache faded blissfully. I opened my eyes and felt energy stream back into my body. "Thanks," I mumbled.

"I am talking about one Emma Sawyer," he said, his voice somewhere between smug and jovial, as he sat down on the other couch. "I received a very interesting message from her."

I sat up in a flash. Emma. "What? Why?" No, no, Apollo could not know about her, there was a reason I hadn't told him after the concert, he was much too fickle — for all I knew, he could see Emma's existence as some form of hubris and punish her. True to his nature, Apollo's punishments were the most creative any of us could concoct. But aside from her safety, I wasn't going to tell anyone about her, full stop, because I had no idea what to think of any of this myself. I needed time, more time, to figure out what her existence meant, without meddler Apollo getting involved.

Apollo relaxed into the seat, his arms splayed out on the back of the couch. "Well, well. What's this?"

"It's nothing," I replied too quickly. "What did she say? And did you see any of her pictures?"

"No, her profile is private and I couldn't be bothered to look her up, though judging from your reaction maybe I should have," he grinned, not taking his eyes off me for a second. "She said that my concert was awesome, and—"

"What did she say, Apollo?"

"Fine, fine. Don't get your panties in a twist. She said something about that fight — I wanted to talk to you about that, by the way, you're not coming to any more of my shows until you swear on Styx that you'll behave — and that she wonders if you're okay. How very sweet of her."

I hadn't expected to hear from her, this quickly or at all. For all intents and purposes I didn't exist: I had barely left a paper trail in the few months that I'd lived here now and used this name. Unless I were to look her up, I figured, I was lost to her and we would never see each other again. And here she'd beat me to it. She had taken the one useless scrap of information I had given her — world-famous celebrities were as inapproachable as gods to these people, weren't they? — and just gone and messaged my brother to get in touch with me. I couldn't help but be impressed by her boldness and resolve. Virginia would've never done it. She would have been much too shy to cold-call someone like that.

"Have you answered?" I asked. Did I want him to? No, it was for the best if I ignored this and went on with my life, someplace else perhaps. Emma was an anomaly and nothing good could come of me and her seeing each other.

Apollo shook his head. "Not without your blessing. But the least you can do is give her a taste of that mighty spear of yours," he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"You're disgusting." Although, come to think of it… — I couldn't. Emma was only a mortal who happened to have Virginia's body and I would do well to remember it. I shouldn't let myself get carried away by an insignificant human, just so I could feel that body again.

"Oh, come on, she'll love it. Just try not to break her hips," Apollo guffawed.

I frowned in indignation. "That happened once!"

"Now you're just lying to yourself," he said mock-seriously, "and to me. Ares! How dare you."

To buy some time, I pretended to busy myself with a loose screw on the underside of the coffee table. Apollo didn't let me off the hook, though. He never did.

"So should I give her your phone number? Maybe she'll make you fun again."

"I don't need to be fun," I said gruffly.

"Nor do you want to, I'm aware, but it does make everyone else's life so much easier if you're not looking like you just ate a lemon the whole time." Apollo put his feet up on the couch, making himself much more comfortable than I wanted him to.

I looked up. Couldn't he let this go? The sooner he did, the sooner I could let it go and forget I ever even met Emma. "I'm not going to talk to the girl again, Apollo."

"I'm only suggesting—"

"I didn't ask for your suggestions," I said resolutely, feeling a heat flare up in my chest.

"Okay, okay, fine!" Apollo held up his hands in defeat. "Dear me, who pissed in your nectar? Whatever, let me know when you change your mind. Arrivederci."

I went to bed not long after Apollo left, but I couldn't get to sleep. Virginia and Emma kept swimming through my vision, Virginia dancing in that club, Virginia in London, Emma in London. A deranged laugh — whose, I wasn't sure. Emma staring into my eyes, screaming, as flames overtook her. The two of them blurring together until they were one and the same.

Lying awake like this, thinking, imagining things, was the closest I would ever get to dreaming. I could pull myself out of it whenever I wanted and yet I didn't. I let them stay with me until finally, hours later, I fell asleep.

I tried my best, really, to distract myself for the rest of the week. On Tuesday, I went to see my Florentine family and met newborn Allegria, the most recent addition to the nineteenth generation of Carraras. On Wednesday, I took my time arranging all the shelves in my attic armory, and rearranging them again and again. On Thursday, I let hostilities erupt over the Strait of Malacca out of sheer boredom.

On Friday and Saturday, I was in the thick of battle, but I never managed to let myself loose. I was too disinterested even to summon my attendants, and none of the bloodshed captivated me the way it normally did. And so on Sunday, I was sick of it, tired of the way my thoughts stood in my way, and decided to change tack and let those thoughts work for instead of against me.

The culprit was obvious, and so was the solution. The mystery that Emma presented was going to bother me until I solved it — so all I needed to do was do exactly that and make sure no one else knew about her, and then I could send her on her merry way and move on with my life and my job, undisturbed by any disconcerting reminders of a prophecy I had long deemed false.

First, a plan. At the very least, I had to figure out what Emma was and why she had Virginia's body. Persephone had just returned to Olympus for spring — perfect. It would look much too suspicious if I traveled down to the underworld to see if Virginia really was still there, but its queen would know. I'd never seen a body reborn rather than a soul, but I couldn't rule out the possibility.

Other than that, I didn't have much to go on. This was going to be difficult. The most likely option, if not reincarnation, was that she was somehow a copy — had someone, somehow, done this to spite me, perhaps? But there were only a few gods who had ever seen Gin: Apollo, of course, and Hermes, when he came to pick up her soul. Helios and Selene, who together saw everything their light touched. As far as I knew, none of them had any particular reason to torment me.

And then there was enigmatic Emma herself. I would have to look into her family, see if she had any relation to Virginia. I could do research, and I would, but I was never one to hide myself away in books and archives. I had more efficient ways of finding what I was looking for.

"Afternoon, Ares. Ah, what a lovely scene." Apollo's cavalier expression was wiped off his face only moments after he arrived. I had my dagger to a soldier's throat and pulled his head back by his short hair; when I severed his carotid artery, his blood spattered onto Apollo's face and chiton before I dropped the body face-down onto the ground. Apollo squeezed his eyes shut a moment, inhaled deeply, and slowly rubbed as much of the blood off his face as he could. "Did you have to do that?"

I put the dagger back in its leather sheath. "What did you want me to do, hold onto him throughout our conversation?"

He shrugged in response and looked out over the sea. Thousands of tankers and cargo ships were on the horizon, waiting to pass through the strait or turning away to try another route. "What's the deal here, anyway? What are they fighting over?"

"What do you think?" I asked rhetorically. "Whoever controls this area, controls Asia's trade."

"Since when do you care about trade?" He glanced at me with some skepticism.

"I don't." But every war, in the end, came down to money and power, no matter what romantic stories mortals might tell one another.

"Hm." Apollo smoothly dodged a bullet sent his way — I heard its shooter choke on his own tongue — and turned back to me. "So why did you ask me to come here? You don't seem to be in need of any plagues."

Ugh, no, I wasn't looking to have my war ruined by Apollo's silver arrows. He might enjoy the slow, painful way that they infected an army from the inside out, but to me that was cheating — I'd much rather see armies fight each other than some invisible danger. "It's about the girl. Emma. I want you to contact her."

Apollo's phone was already in his hand before I'd finished my sentence. He smiled widely. "I knew it! I knew you would come to your senses." He started tapping away on his screen. "Ha, Ares, I'll be honest. Strangely enough, I did not expect you to reconnect with humans through my music."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't give yourself too much credit, sparkles. It's only a message."

He dismissed my comment with a wave. "Sure, keep telling yourself that. Now, do you want me to compose someth—"

"Please don't," I interjected sharply. "No sonnets. Just have her give you her phone number."

"That's all?" Apollo flicked his hand to his chest in faux surprise. "Ares, have you learned nothing from Aphrodite? This Emma is a woman, not an insurance application."

Right. If I was going to bait Emma into spending time with me so I could dig her for answers, it needed a little more embellishment. When had I lost my finesse? I was usually smoother than this. I frowned as I thought back to the message she had sent Apollo. She had wondered if I was alright — how long had it been since anyone had genuinely cared for my safety and well-being? "Tell her I'm fine and that I want to talk to her, and get her number. I can take it from there."

"Look, Noah, they have samosas!" Emma pulled me by my hand as she made her way through the crowd — she didn't notice how people stepped out of her way just before she wanted to elbow them aside — and stopped in front of the Nepalese stand. "Let's share a plate?"

"Sure. Vegetarian or pork?" I was already pulling my wallet out of my back pocket when she put her hand on my arm.

"I've got it," she said with a smile. "Wait here."

I leaned against an iron post and observed the environment while Emma ordered the food. She had been okay so far with spending most of our dates at her apartment, but this time she'd said she really, really wanted to go to this indoor food festival, and you'll love it, Noah — and so, apparently, did the rest of the city. I was acutely aware of the throng of mortals around me. The ceviche vendor checking his inventory with some concern — he hadn't counted on this many attendees, and when he wasn't looking I quickly conjured up some extra fish in the back of his fridge. The Lebanese chef, smoking a cigarette outside on her break. The teenager who burned his mouth when he ate his bibimbap too quickly and had to quench it with his friend's soda. And all the little annoyances that almost everyone here carried with them, from a man whose spot in line got taken to a woman who hated the way her boyfriend ate his noodles.

Emma was in front of me suddenly. I'd been so engrossed in an argument going on behind me that I hadn't seen her return. She gave me a samosa and held up a cardboard bowl. "I also got dessert. I think it's... tiny donuts?" It was gulab jamun, but she would never have remembered that name — and she looked elated by having found a new dish to try. It was endearing and I felt myself start to smile and — stop. Don't start caring about the mortal. She means nothing. I'm only here for answers.

"Mmm, this is so good," she said now between bites, and then her eyes shifted. "Wow, don't look now, but those girls over there are not having a good time." I obviously knew that already and just chuckled with her while I ate my samosa.

"You know, Noah, you're the only one I know who actually doesn't look when people say that," she said, and laughed. It was at once the most beautiful and the most dreadful sight and sound in the world to me — but she made it her own, even if only by virtue of laughing so often and so genuinely, and although the memories it brought back never disappeared entirely, they had slowly began to fade to the back of my mind. "Your self-control is impressive."

If only she knew the amount of self-control I was exercising at that moment, in this crowd of people and all their emotions. All afternoon I had done my best to radiate calm instead of hostility, to restrain my excitement when I felt and heard people arguing, and to ignore the distressingly continuous thought that holy hell I wanted to jump her bones. I couldn't, I shouldn't, I wouldn't. Kissing her was fine, a little more than that was fine, but I drew a line at having sex with a woman if it wasn't for the right reasons and her resemblance to Virginia was definitely not a proper reason. And yet I couldn't stop myself from imagining what it must be like, what she would be like, because in the past weeks I had come to know that she was nothing like Virginia.

The months that followed only served to amplify that point. Emma was wholly herself and unapologetically so, even if she might not see it herself. She was much more foul-mouthed and louder than Virginia had ever been, and incredibly stubborn. She had a certain pride that she seemed unaware of and that sometimes turned into a self-righteousness that was almost annoying. She often laughed at her own jokes. And she always, always forgot to let me know when she was running late. But she also saw a beauty in the world in a way that Virginia had been unable to, and that I had long been unable to. She was vocal, proactive, creative, unafraid to tell me her opinions and her desires.

She was also so wonderfully human. Imperfect. I was fascinated by her scars and her blemishes. I could look at her bitten nails for hours if she wouldn't have hidden them the moment she noticed my glance. I could lie awake listening to her snore, but I would never tell her that she did that, because it would only make her feel embarrassed. I wouldn't tell her how the symmetry of her eyebrows was just a little off, either. And she got so humanly worked up now and then — no godly passion could compare to the excitement with which she sometimes just couldn't stop talking about photography, or her irritation at a phone call with her mother, or her nerves before a big event at work.

I came to be honest with her, to the extent that I could, speaking to her in language that she understood (I wasn't really a soldier, of course, but what else could I say?) and telling her whatever bits and pieces I could share. She was always interested, always curious, probing me to elaborate and more often than not only satisfied once I'd fully explained the words and concepts that I mentioned. I didn't need a safe haven but she became one regardless, listening to me without ever passing judgment and yet providing me with a balance of gentleness and a critical mind. She knew when to give me space and when to question what I said and make me think.

And so I found myself bringing this Noah Chevalier cover to life. Whatever issue I was facing in the divine side of my life begat a mortal equivalent. In some instances this was easy — aside from lightning bolts and immortality, my relationship with Zeus was really just one of a disapproving father and his ever inadequate son — but many times I struggled to find the proper words and resorted to saying nothing. I could see that it frustrated her and that she wanted to help, but she wouldn't be able to anyway; what would be the point of telling her at all?

But she did help me after all, even if she might not know it. I hadn't thought I could still feel it. It started out small, a sensation underneath my skin, but it grew little by little until it was no longer subconscious. In the beginning I took my pleasure in being around Emma for granted, thinking it was only novelty and curiosity, yet the more she pulled me into her human life and the more comfortable I got with my mortal disguise, the more I was reminded of how much I had once loved humans. When I met Emma's friends — or met soberly, in Gabrielle's case — we were already halfway through the night by the time I realized I wasn't holding any private contempt for the simple mortals that they were. The shift became difficult to deny when I started to notice it away from Emma too: I felt an increasing exhilaration in my stomach when I entered battlefields, despite how stale and lacking in honor they had become with industrialization. I wanted to stay after a council meeting and catch up properly with Hermes for the first time in years. I was fully aware of it once my children other than Phobos and Deimos started seeking me out again.

It was joy. Hope. A joy that I might not have known since Florence. A hope that had been dashed the moment Virginia died.

Eventually, I was confronted with the inevitable truth: I had fallen in love.

And with that truth came something else. It shone a new light on the past eighty years. What if it was her? What if Virginia's death hadn't invalidated Apollo's prophecy, because it hadn't been Virginia in the prophecy all along? It still wouldn't explain Emma's existence, or Virginia's for that matter. All my efforts to figure that out had been fruitless and I'd eventually stopped trying. But had there ever been a guarantee in the first place that whoever Apollo saw was Virginia?

For a while I tried to ignore it and what it would mean, but I knew I couldn't do that forever. If it was Emma in the prophecy, eventually she would have to know. I would have to tell her everything, or at the very least who and what I was.

But the last person who had found out, had died because of it.

The person before that, Claudine, had gone mad with the knowledge.

I couldn't tell Emma, not if I wanted to keep her alive and healthy — but a prophecy couldn't be ignored and time was ticking; her life was short and it would end if I didn't tell her. This was a battle I couldn't win.

My first, and truthfully only, priority became to keep Emma safe. When she didn't pick up her phone or was a few minutes later than we had agreed, I felt my thoughts start to race and my muscles tighten. And there were the times when a car sped by a little too close to her, when she tripped, when she nearly cut herself while cooking. She had bouts of anxiety that made even me think her heart or lungs were failing.

I pulled her away from the road, I caught her before falling, I did all the slicing in the kitchen. I soothed her panic. I never let her come anywhere near an open flame. But I wasn't always there, and humans were so damn fragile — my greatest fear could all too easily become reality. My worries soon won out over any concern for her privacy (and for what it was worth, by this point I had not read her mind for a long time), and I ordered my birds to guard her at all times.

It wasn't enough. Virginia's death kept coming back to me, and so did the thought that I could have saved her, maybe, if I had shielded her with my divinity only seconds earlier. If I had taken her out of that building and out of the city, an hour earlier, a day earlier, a year earlier. If I had been able to use my full power in order to protect her.

I hadn't been able to rescue Virginia, but I could still safeguard Emma — except I could only do that if I didn't have to keep up my mortal cover: if I could travel straight to her side, push dangers out of the way, bring her to safety without a moment's thought. She would have to know after all.

My plan came together quickly in the end; there was really only one option. I couldn't just let her see the way Virginia and Claudine had — the shock would be too great. I couldn't simply tell her — she wouldn't believe me. She had to find out for herself, slowly, bit by bit.

So I would leave those bits for her to find. I let myself get scraped and cut and stabbed in battle, so that my shirt would bear my golden blood. I borrowed a family painting from the Florentine palazzo and brought another down from Olympus. I set a wooden box in my study that held the daggers that had assassinated Julius Caesar. I collected as many old passports as I could find in my various storage places. I kept the door to the attic armory unlocked and even stored my second-most valuable armor there. I knew Emma well enough by now to trust that she would let her curiosity lead her. All I could do now was wait.

But first, there was someone for her to meet: the prophet himself.