As expected, Ares couldn't come back to spend Sunday night with me, but I didn't have to be alone the whole time. Even though I was sure he had barely been out of my sight save for that first morning on Olympus, he had apparently somehow found the time to go back home and make my mom and my friends think that we were simply on a trip to a remote island where we wouldn't have phone reception.

"Oh my god, Emma!" Gabrielle exclaimed the moment she and Rachel burst through Ares's front door. "Tell us everything! I've always wanted to go to Tahiti. Oh, man, I'm so jealous."

Clever, Ares. Picking a place we'd already visited for this lie.

"Hey, Em," Rachel said, and laughed at Gabrielle's excitement. "How are you feeling? You just got back today, didn't you?"

"Uh, yeah," I said a little uneasily while I led them to the living room. I would never get used to lying to my friends. "I'm, uh, tired. It's a really long trip."

"Well, sit your ass down and let us take care of you," Gabrielle instructed. "I know I don't cook as well as your filthy rich gourmet chef boyfriend, but I'm sure I'll be able to throw something together in that kitchen of his."

"Isn't Noah coming back?" Rachel asked, frowning, while we made our way into the kitchen. Gabrielle easily found everything she needed; it was hardly the first time they had been here. Ares generally didn't mind my friends coming over even if he wasn't around, and the truth was, his home was simply a lot bigger and more comfortable than my own tiny apartment. Plus, it had started to feel like home for me, too — especially now that he'd replaced that painting in the living room of himself, Aphrodite and baby Eros, with an unostentatious eighteenth-century landscape.

"Mmm," I mumbled noncommittally as I sat down at the kitchen island. "He dropped me off and had to go straight to work."

Gabrielle started diligently cutting an onion. Ares's chef's knife looked enormous in her small hands. "Good thing you have us," she said, pointing in my direction with the knife's tip and then swiftly obeying Rachel's instant admonishment for it. "We are not leaving until you've given us a minute-by-minute report of your amazing trip."

They did end up staying until late, when they begrudgingly remarked that it was way past their Sunday night bedtimes and that it was time to go home. I could've invited them to stay — the townhouse contained an unused guest room — but I was exhausted from the day's events. I could barely believe that only hours before, I had attended an Olympian assembly. Only hours before had relief washed over me when Ares respected my wish to go home and this house took shape around me again. It already felt like a dream, as if I had imagined the past week and that fear of never getting off the mountain.

But it had been real. All of it, including Ares's mention of immortality in the beginning of the week.

Immortality.

Well, I probably hadn't been the only one to wonder, at times, where the two of us were going in the long term. But I'd somehow never arrived at this conclusion. Maybe because it was too crazy to even consider.

Apparently, I should. But not tonight. I was much too tired for that.

The bedsheets were already delightfully warm when I crawled beneath them. I couldn't help but smile — Ares might be far away, but his little godly comforts never were. It was enough for me to fall asleep easily and peacefully.

Ares managed to come back on Monday and Tuesday, but he arrived in the dead of night and left before the crack of dawn. I stayed at his house the whole time; it was what I had promised him, for my so-called safety, but also there was hardly a reason to go home. He sent Phile down from Olympus so she could bring over everything I could possibly need from my own apartment to the townhouse — clothes, toiletries, my laptop, even the next book on my to-be-read pile.

Phile couldn't be happier with this assignment, she told me when I said that I could easily do all of this myself. She hadn't been back to the mortal world in a few centuries and when I offered to take her out for dinner, she actually gasped with excitement; she couldn't wait to see how things had changed since her last visit, and it quickly became clear that away from the house of the gods, she was much less ceremonious and reserved, and much more like someone I would love to count among my friends.

If that were possible, of course — because she lived on Olympus, and was going to for the rest of eternity, and I definitely didn't and wouldn't.

Phile was still there when Ares came home late Tuesday night, but she insisted he send her back when he offered to get her a bed ready. Despite their thousands of years of friendship, there was apparently a certain line she would not cross with him.

And then, on Wednesday, Ares only stopped by quickly to tell me he'd have to spend a few nights working around the clock and couldn't come home to me. Although I didn't particularly want to hear about his days — his mission, after all, was to ensure the deaths of thousands of people — I did miss him, and his kisses, his feet touching mine underneath the covers. I missed his face burrowing in my neck while he spooned me, his long arm around my waist, the hard muscles of his torso against my back.

On Friday afternoon, a text, accompanied by a picture of his grimy helmeted face scowling facetiously into the camera: Can't come tonight. Sorry. I'll be there before midnight tomorrow. Miss you.

Ares never did kiss me happy twenty-seventh birthday at midnight the next day. He didn't get the opportunity.

Because only hours prior, when I had just come back from the grocery store and was putting my things away, a golden light started to shine around me — and for a second I was elated; surely this meant that Ares was back and he was taking me somewhere exciting for my birthday — but when I arrived at my destination, that joy faded quickly.

Aphrodite was waiting for me.

Wherever we were, I hadn't been there before. It wasn't her palace on Olympus, of that I was sure, even though I'd never seen it from the inside and even though our current location looked like a palace in its own right. This parlor looked far too… human. There were faint smudges on the large mirrors that adorned the walls. A crack in the leather upholstery of a bench in the corner. A patterned carpet that didn't look like it had never been stepped on.

I brought my gaze back to Aphrodite and tried to stop myself from staring at her, but failed miserably — despite the fact that we had met before, I was dumbstruck once again by her improbable beauty. Her body and her face possessed an uncanny perfection that was just as astonishing as it had been the first time, and I could've gawked at her for hours if she hadn't bluntly interrupted my foggy thoughts.

"Thank you, Eros," she said (oh, her voice), acknowledging him with a regal nod.

Eros?!

My head whipped around and sure enough, there he was, standing behind me. His eyes averted and his wings sagging, he mumbled "Sorry" to me before disappearing into his light.

"Yes, Ares may be his father, but Eros answers to me first and foremost," Aphrodite said. She smiled sweetly when I returned my aghast glance to her. "Come, Emma, sit with me."

My body moved forward of its own accord and dropped itself into the peach-colored armchair that she indicated. Was she — did she — was she making my body do this?

When I opened my mouth, she held up a silencing finger, and no sound came out. I tried again — nothing happened, my throat felt obstructed, even though I managed to breathe normally… Why the hell wouldn't she let me speak —

"Don't call for Ares just yet, darling," she said blithely, and sat down in the other seat. "I think you might want to hear what I have to tell you." Her hand lowered, and my larynx loosened once again.

I took an unnecessarily large but soothing gulp of fresh air and looked at her warily. "Why shouldn't I call for Ares?" I asked, before briefly rubbing the skin of my throat with my index and middle finger.

She tossed her resplendent silky blonde hair over her shoulder. "I didn't go through all this trouble of having Eros bring you here just for Ares to take you back. I will not lay a finger on you, dear."

My response was automatic. "Swear it on Styx." My heart was pounding and my nails pressed into my jeans so tensely that I was sure they were leaving red marks on my skin — but I had to keep a clear head, I couldn't let fear steer me, however close it might be to taking the wheel.

"Ah, he has taught you well," she said, still smiling. "I swear on Styx I will not cause you any bodily harm whatsoever during this little rendezvous."

"What about after?" I challenged. As if I would've missed that obvious catch of her oath.

"Oh, after?" Her graceful hand fluttered through the air in a motion that was probably supposed to be reassuring yet was anything but. "I won't have any reason to hurt you."

I tried to swallow, but my throat wouldn't cooperate. "What do you mean?"

She gave a little shrug of her elegant shoulders. "I will have accomplished my goal."

Her goal... There was only a single thing I could imagine her goal to be, if it involved me. She wanted me out of the way. I sat up straighter, trying to collect whatever bravery I could find within myself. "You're still in love with him." My voice was a little hoarser than I would have liked it to be.

Aphrodite's ocean-blue gaze bored into mine as a new smile slowly grew around her full lips. "What if I am?"

I knew it. I had known it the moment I met her. Maybe not that she still loved Ares, per se, but of course, of course I had been right when I realized I had to compete with the goddess of love and beauty. How on earth had Ares been so naive not to see that? Or did he see it, and had he just tried to reassure me when he said I didn't have to worry about her?

"But you can't…" My voice trailed off. It didn't make sense that she had just sworn she wouldn't hurt me. "You killed Elisabetta because you were jealous."

I saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. "He has told you about her?"

Bolstered by her reaction, I squared my shoulders. "Yes. I know everything about her."

"Hmm." She leaned back in her seat and regarded me with a supercilious curiosity. "I wonder if he would want to give up his immortality for you, too."

I sucked in an involuntary breath. I didn't know that.

Aphrodite cocked her head. "If you know all about Elisabetta, I'm sure you also know about Claudine. His little well-bred sex toy." She let out a small laugh that I knew was derisive, never mind how virtuous it sounded. "Oh, Emma, darling, you almost had me worried that you already knew what I am about to tell you. But then of course, if you did, you would be long gone."

"So you want me gone," I said. "Why not just kill me?" The words came out a lot stronger and bolder than I felt.

"Oh, I've thought about that." The left corner of her mouth turned up. "I could also simply command you to leave him… but I want it to be your own decision. I want Ares to realize that you chose to leave him."

My brow furrowed. She had to know Ares better than that. Even I did, after barely a year. "Do you honestly think hurting him like that will bring him back to you?"

"No, Emma." She leaned forward, and her voice was so soft that I automatically leaned forward as well in order to hear her. "I'm not trying to get him back. This is about my pride."

Her pride? So even if she didn't want to be with Ares, she just couldn't handle it that he was in love with someone who wasn't her? Was she that vain?

"You misunderstand, darling. Not my personal pride."

I froze momentarily, but I should have known. She would have no reservations about reading my mind.

"I am talking about my pride as the goddess of love. Ares's refusal to leave you is a blatant expression of disrespect for my domain."

There was nothing I could say to that. What was she even talking about?

"He believes he loves you, but he can't, and he should know that. He has blinded himself to the truth, which is that from the very moment you two met, none of it has been as real as you think it has. I'm sorry."

"No. You're not sorry," I bit off. Aphrodite looked sincere, but it was the only thing I could think to say. My mind felt full but I couldn't quite reach coherent thoughts, except for one: don't trust her, don't believe her, don't fall for her lies.

"But I am, Emma," she said, and her voice was so soft and heartfelt that my conviction to distrust her wavered. "It hurts me to see love treated with dishonesty."

"What do you mean, he can't…?" I couldn't say the last two words of that sentence. Ares and I had managed so well to avoid talking about that time he'd said that he loved me.

"Oh, it's not that he can't love. It's that he can't love you." She shrugged casually.

Somehow I managed to note, my rational mind taking over for a precious few seconds, that I was impressively not having a panic attack. Yet. But it did feel like Aphrodite had stuck a knife in my heart and twisted it around, slowly at first and then with the swift flick of that nonchalant comment. So much for not hurting me. She didn't need to do me any bodily harm. Her words were enough.

And all the while, she sat there, with her long legs daintily crossed and her arms relaxed on her lap and that annoyingly nice look in her heavenly eyes.

"Why not?" I whispered. My tongue felt dry.

She fixed me with a sudden level stare. "Because you, Emma, were never supposed to exist."

We were both quiet while I tried and failed to wrap my head around what she was telling me. "Uh," I finally, clumsily, said.

"Ares thinks I never met her, you know." Her mouth twitched, as if she wanted to smile but didn't manage to. "I met her before he did. He never would have, if it weren't for me."

Oh, what the fuck — how could she change the subject so abruptly after having just said that? Was she trying to torture me? And who was she even talking about?

But either Aphrodite didn't hear my thoughts, or she chose to ignore them. "I remember Zeus telling me that the prophesied girl had been born," she continued. Her eyes were no longer on mine, but drifted around the room. "He needed Ares to fulfill Apollo's vision and fall for her. Not that he really needed my help for that. There are very few things that Ares can't resist, and one of them is a helpless woman. She was already sick and frail… Oh, if anyone could benefit from immortality, it was Virginia."

My heart skipped a beat when she said the word, and then another when she said the name. Maybe she hadn't changed the subject. I remembered the first time I had met Apollo, and how he and Ares had argued… I hadn't understood a word of their conversation, but I had heard them say my name, and now that Aphrodite mentioned Virginia… They had said that name, too. It had stood out, with its English pronunciation.

"All I had to do was put her somewhere he would find her," Aphrodite was saying, "and his protector instinct would take care of the rest." She reverted her glance to me. "But of course, Emma, you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

I could only stare blankly at her.

She smiled. "Because he hasn't told you. Because despite his promise to be open with you, he hasn't said a word about her. He may have told you about his past, but you don't know anything about the years right before he met you, do you?"

I opened my mouth to deny her claim, but it was true. And how could I not have noticed that? How could I not have been more curious? Sure, there were thousands of years to cover, but how had I not realized that he had never elaborated far beyond his years in Florence, save for the bit about the French Revolution when he'd met Claudine? There were centuries missing from the story. Really, really interesting centuries, even without considering whatever was apparently so important that Aphrodite wanted to talk to me about it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He must have had a reason not to bring it up — but why had I never asked?

"Who is Virginia?"

The only question that really mattered.

Aphrodite nodded graciously. "Very good, Emma. It really is a shame that you and Ares are not fated. You would have been good for him."

"Who is she?" I spit out.

"Something happened recently, didn't it?" She tilted her head slightly as she scrutinized me. "You think maybe Ares wants you to become immortal."

I swallowed, and managed to respond with a curt nod.

"You're right." She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, leaning her elbow on the armrest of her chair and her chin in her hand. Even a slight slouch looked gorgeous on her. "Ares thinks you are destined to ascend and be with him for eternity, because of a prophecy Apollo once made. You're not. Virginia was."

"A prophecy," I repeated. That was the easy part to react to. Although I hadn't wanted to entertain the absurd idea of becoming immortal in the past week, if Virginia had been fated to be with Ares forever… then by definition, I was not. The notion hurt more than I would've cared to admit. I'd never even believed in 'meant to be', had I?

And besides that, he had apparently expected me to join him eventually on Olympus for a long time. Maybe since we'd met. Maybe I never would've had any choice in the matter.

"Yes," Aphrodite said. She straightened in her seat. "It was not long after Claudine had hanged herself. Perfect timing, really. Ares had been absolutely feral since Elisabetta's death." She shrugged in response to my incredulous stare. "My fault, perhaps. But Ares has never been able to find equilibrium. He has always been either too wild, too destructive, or too close to mortals and too far away from who he really is: a god, one of us. In France he was on the far end of the violent and erratic side of that seesaw. We know now that that was all his way of coping with grief from losing Elisabetta. But back then… All we saw was savagery. Bloodshed. Death."

I knew I should be able to picture that. It was how all the myths portrayed him after all: ruthless, sadistic, vicious. And I'd seen it, that night when he had fought Daniel Beck. But he had come back to me when I'd touched him… I couldn't imagine Ares completely losing all sense of humanity. That wasn't how I had gotten to know him. Or had he been selective after all and only told me about that other part of the comparison, when he was too human for the gods' taste? The unobjectionable parts, the parts that I would approve of, with a few hints at brutality sprinkled in to make it less obvious?

Aphrodite inexplicably laughed, though there was very little joy in the sound. "I mean, those mortals had to die anyway, but they didn't have to do it in such cruel ways." She delicately wrinkled her nose. "And then Apollo had a premonition. He saw an image of Ares at home — not that little house of his, of course, I'm talking about Olympus. Ares as an Olympian, a colleague, a brother. Quite the relief, let me tell you. I don't think he has ever seemed more out of control than he did then."

She sighed softly. It was the most dulcet sigh I had ever heard. "And, as with all good prophecies, there was also a clue for how Ares would come back to us. Apollo saw something else: an anchor, someone who helped Ares find equilibrium and himself. Someone who could tame our raging god of war."

"Virginia," I breathed. Who else?

"Yes. It took some time before she arrived. Oh, Emma, the wait was agonizing! But then she finally showed up, I brought them together, and he calmed down. All the way to the other end of the seesaw," she laughed, "and we didn't see him for over a year, but still. She was very clearly the anchor we had been waiting for."

"Then wh—" I barely got the words out with my throat feeling so thick and my heart beating so hard — "Why is he with me, and not on Olympus with her? Or—or is she there?"

Aphrodite's smile looked almost compassionate. Maybe it even was. "He never took her there. She died when the Germans bombed London, and he has been broken ever since."

She had been talking about Virginia in the past tense all this time — my mind apparently hadn't been sharp enough to pick up on that. "She's dead?" But that didn't make sense, if she was supposed to live forever…

"The Fates are an ironic bunch, Emma. Virginia didn't come to Olympus — and, to be fair, Apollo didn't explicitly see her attain immortality — but she did serve her purpose of bringing Ares back from his madness."

"But then — if she died, how—" I didn't finish that sentence, because now that I was making a resolute attempt to think logically, I realized something. Although the things that Aphrodite was telling me shook the foundation of everything I thought Ares and I had… none of it was relevant to what she had initially said. None of it mattered — no, it did matter enormously, but it didn't have anything to do with me.

So, what, was all of this just a distraction? But a distraction from what?

"And this relates to my unintended existence… how?" I jutted my chin out, trying to help myself feel braver and stronger.

Aphrodite's brow furrowed ever so slightly, and her slow smile was a little hesitant, as if she was confused by my question. "Don't you wonder, Emma, darling, why Ares thinks that it's you in the prophecy, and not Virginia?"

I stared. How was I supposed to know? I had no idea how prophecies worked. I'd always assumed that, hypothetically, they would go 'when the sun rises in the West', or something.

She stood, walked a few paces, and turned back to me. "I'll help you. Apollo met Virginia in 1940, and he told Ares that she was the one he had seen."

"Ares knew about the prophecy?"

"Eventually, yes. Not the point." She tapped her foot on the floor a few times, though not out of impatience, it seemed.

So Apollo met her… but he had had to meet her to ascertain that it was her. He knew it when he saw her. And now Ares thought that it could have been me in the prophecy after all. Aphrodite said I was never supposed to exist for whatever reason, so —

Oh god.

"Are you saying—" I choked on the words.

Aphrodite knew exactly what I meant. "Yes," she confirmed, staring straight back at me. "Exactly and entirely. Do you see now that Ares is treating the notion of honest love with utter contempt?"

I couldn't say anything even if I wanted to. I could only sit there, stunned and speechless, wondering what I was supposed to think. My vision started to blur, my breath caught, and I barely registered my nails biting into the palm of my hand — and somehow I accomplished a nod.

"Before you ask," Aphrodite said in a businesslike tone, "I don't know why or how you were born, only that it is impossible for two unrelated women to be natural exact duplicates of one another. For all I know, Ares could have manifested you himself, out of sheer longing for Virginia."

"Is that even poss—" I started to say, but only then did the weight of her words hit me and I lost my train of thought.

"I've never seen it, but that doesn't mean it's not possible," Aphrodite said, but her voice sounded far away as if I were underwater and oh no my legs were shaking and how was it suddenly so hot in this room —

And then the next moment I was sitting on the floor, my back against the armchair and my knees pulled up, with Aphrodite squatting next to me and her hand holding my forearm. She touched the back of her other hand to my forehead, gave a small satisfied smile, and handed me a fig.

"Eat this," she said. Her voice was kind. "You need the sugar."

I eyed her with some suspicion while I inhaled deeply to ground myself.

"Darling, it's only a very ordinary fig," she said with a chuckle. "Sworn on Styx."

My arm was heavy when I lifted it to take the fig from her hand and bring it to my mouth. I felt cold suddenly, my body reacting to the thin film of sweat on my skin, but I only had to shiver once before Aphrodite pulled a soft blue blanket out of thin air and settled it around my shoulders.

"There," she murmured. "Now, finish that fig, and you will be perfectly fine within minutes. Would you like me to call for Eros so he can take you home?"

Eros? What did Eros have to — Oh. Right. I shook my head to myself. My thoughts were so hazy from fainting that I barely even remembered that he had been the one to take me here.

"No? In a little while, then?" Aphrodite asked, misunderstanding my headshake.

I looked up at her, swallowing my last bite. "No, I didn't mean—" I croaked, but once again didn't finish my sentence. Did I want to go home? Home, for the moment, being Ares's house?

Not after this. Not after finding out that Ares might have created me for himself, exactly in the mold of his dead love, no, his dead fated love — that I was nothing more to him than a reproduction of her.

Everything else — everything about immortality and the prophecy and how it referred to someone else — those were things that maybe he could explain to me, and I might not be able to get over them, but I could at least try. But this? There was no going back from this.

Aphrodite tilted her head, assessing me. I had the distinct sense that she was listening to my thoughts again, but realized that it didn't feel as much like an intrusion as it did before. She was helping me, wasn't she? Maybe she wasn't so bad.

"I can take you somewhere safe," she said softly.

Oh, the irony. Only less than an hour ago I'd been scared she wanted to kill me.

"But he'll find me," I muttered. "He always does."

"He hasn't found you yet, has he? He doesn't have some sixth sense that tells him where you are." She smiled at my puzzled stare. "He has had the Ornithes Areioi watching you since before you even knew who he really was. Oh, don't look so scandalized, they're only birds."

I shut my mouth that had fallen open at this revelation that was, in all fairness, the least shocking one of the entire conversation.

"Those dastardly creatures would alarm him the moment they saw me with you, hence why I needed Eros's help to evade them," Aphrodite explained.

"Can you get rid of them?" I asked in a still-rough voice. My mind latched onto the practical question.

"No, but we're already long out of their sight." She pursed her lips briefly, thinking. "He will find you eventually, but you can delay it if you don't go back to your own house."

"But I have nowhere else to go. And I — I don't want to be alone." I looked down at my fingers that were fidgeting with the hem of the blanket.

Aphrodite held out a hand. "I'll take you and your two friends to my cottage in Andalusia. They'll think you all took a plane to go on holiday together for your birthday."

More lies. Bigger lies. But there was nothing else I could do. I accepted her hand, and the room dissolved around us.