Poseidon waited, hands sluggishly traveling up and down the ridged shaft of his iron trident. He sat as the only breathing creature within a dark private den made for three brothers. Minus one, the remaining were indifferent. The space of pure granite and gneiss was narrow enough for clear whispers, away from prying eyes and ears. Droplets of water hung like bells from the short stalactites above three shallow thrones surrounding a disc table chipped from the rock. Above it was a yawning hole where illumination spilled.
His eyes, ever ocean blue, watched in anticipation as the frittering sunlight vanished. It was time for the shadows to lurk, the only mode of transportation his brother could steward.
A few more quiet minutes, and he felt the ghastly presence. A pair of pure black sclera peeked through the lone dying ray of light. Poseidon grimaced. "Will you wear anything but your true color?"
Hades slowly smirked, swallowed himself into the dark. All these millennia and he never fails to frighten his brothers. If Zeus was here he would have yelped unceremoniously, so much for a fearsome king. Once.
But it was his nature to blend with the environs. His eyes changed colors where he was – deep green in the dense forests, sapphire blue around the waters, lilac, cognac, vermillion, lapis lazuli… all shades to mark his invisibility. They regard him the colorless eyes, but his true glory is cosmic black. He intended to keep it that way now. Poseidon shifted his gaze. "So you still have contact with your realm. I was sure to have left the message of our meeting to Thanatos."
No reply.
"What are you doing?" he furthered, mood darkening and vigilant, "What is this news of your acquaintance with Cronos? You fool."
Deep undulating laughter came forth, unnerving Poseidon. Swiftly he raised his trident, causing an invisible force to strike the wall of rock where Hades hovered.
"You be thankful I intend to keep this meeting a secret from the King… they seek justice for Apollo. In the name of our brotherhood I will not offer you for now. Therefore if you have no interest in our side better not show yourself anymore."
Hades arose from the dark, eyes inquisitive. "You're too kind." He moved behind his brother like a gust of smoke. "Why are you too kind? Surely there is something you need eh."
Poseidon's teeth gritted. "So you have it."
A slow smile crept Hades' face.
"Give it to me." The sea god stretched one hand, the other ready to fling a power from his weapon. "Your hands will sully our brother's legacy. Give it to me. Handing it over to Cronos will not soften his heart and save you." He made the last word boil… "traitor."
"Who said anything about handing it over to Cronos?" Hades chuckled, making his brother's eyes glint with rage.
"Why you – !"
Walls of rock splinted and broke at bullets aimed to capture the shadow. "We made a deal, us three! You've always been the fickle one! All you desire is revenge when our domains were determined by mere luck!" Poseidon cursed unable to feel Hades' presence, or maybe he has found a way to mask it as well.
"Show yourself, coward! Give the damn Lightning bolt to me and I assure you when Cronos is leashed once and for all, you will be spared!"
Echoes undulated, both near and far and way too confusing for a narrow space to detect its source.
"YOU will assure me?" Hades suddenly emerged, eyes narrowing. "How will you judge me? You're not the King."
Poseidon was in sudden halt and stagger. "I didn't mean – "
The king of Underworld smiled at his brother's sudden paper white color. At once he disappeared along with a faint snicker and overlapping voices.
"Oh brother. Don't we just love being ambitious…?"
Deranged and tumultuous hands caught the sides of Athena's head and the King plunged his mouth against hers, earning furious grunts and thrashing against his chest. Only when the Queen bit on his lower lip did he let go with a curse unfinished as she again whipped his jaw with a seething palm.
He quickly faced her. All wild eyes and hair.
"WHAT'S WRONG?" Ares snarled, irises shrinking to small dots within excited crimson pools. He spread his arms, a nasty smile played amid rage. "Isn't this what you need!? To seal that goddamn TREATY with the Romans? THEN BLOODY GET IT!"
Athena screamed with what seemed to be a lifetime's worth of sickened, worn-down aggravation. She loosened personal hell with another swing of a palm but he caught her wrist deftly and flung her abdomen over his shoulder.
The clamor of broken marble statuettes and bronze candelabrum scattered across the chamber. Ares hurled her on a side table, causing a cornucopia of wildflowers to lay waste on the tiled flooring. He aimed to pin her writhing arms against the surface, forgetting the stark detail she was a bloody warrior and not some dumb tart on a worn down brothel. Athena crushed her forehead on top of his nose and the crunch of broken cartilage became music to her ears.
He leaned back with a grunt, momentarily fazed. Athena wrapped her legs around his hips and forced to overturn him crashing on the floor.
The Queen was breathing wildly and Ares could not help the faint chuckle made of anger and entertainment, still holding up through the dizzying pain. He placed himself in repose finally submitting to the Queen above him ready to roast him alive.
She studied him like a prize bidden by vying merchants, at the ironic conflate of crassness and pleasance that made him; sneering, eyes full of hatred… and concealed admiration. As if her hands had taken command of their own, she moved her fingers on the collar of his armor and with enough strength, tore it from his body. Ares' eyes flew open at an act he was taken surprised of – things and wild thoughts he so badly desired. The metal clambered on the floor and he couldn't stop the hissing that came from his throat which ignited the promiscuous flame in his gut.
Akin to his want, Athena lowered her face on his neck, breathing hotly while her palm rolled over the bulk of his chest, grazing the moist contours of such perfection. She drank on the power and glory of his façade, secretly wondering whether he was sculpted by the muses themselves, and it made her envious imagining their hands on him.
He was loving the feel of her fingers discovering every muscle, every ridge and every ripple in his form. It was ridiculous how he wanted her to own him, inflict the edge of her emotions on him – every tint of pain and joy and anger, oh yes, beautiful anger.
When she kissed his stomach he flinched as her hand traced the rigid hills of his abdomen. Athena breathed on his skin down, down to his aching groin, making Ares throw his head back in anticipation and his lips curling. When she reached his most sensitive weapon she withdrew her face and stood on her feet, earning the King's utter dismay.
Athena paced, sniffling as her nails raked through her scalp and turned to Ares already standing still fixated on her.
"Do you love her?"
Ares scoffed. "How the hell do I know?"
"There's only two choices to that."
"Well maybe Yes because she can bloody make man, woman or beast fall head over heels for her with some bewitched girdle or a singular inhale of her draught and maybe No because of the same stupid reason, Athena. So how the hell do I know?"
She gibed and he squeezed before her, grimy hands on each of her jaws and his forehead pressed on hers. His breaths were hot and daunting. "And yet you took advantage of her," Athena murmured bitterly, "You enjoyed her, whilst enjoying the company of many others. How long had your scandalous trysts been?"
Ares shook his head, eyes shut. "You don't have to know. I am not going back that lane."
"A turn of moon, season? A decade? A millennium?"
She felt him suppress the will to snap, marked by a hiss and a tighter hold of her.
"More… I don't want to remember. I – want – you." Ares sighed shakily, brushing his thumbs on her cheeks and jawline, and standing up to the iron heated eyes scorning him. "I do not doubt what I feel for you. When will you have faith in me?"
"Perhaps…" The Queen held his wrists, "...after more than a millennium." And she closed the gap between their faces, spurning herself – but what can be done except concede? They could barrel the sharpest blades at each other for endless tomorrows but at the end of the day the demand of wicked oaths still bound them.
So she let everything slide and settle like her ruined dress across the floor. The hands that roamed her were ardent and needy, mapping her, consuming her system, subduing her like an unopposed city finally vanquished. His kisses were marks of territory: languid traces of teeth sunken on skin up to her mouth, capturing her sighs so she could taste his endless apologies.
For what use is resistance? This is a battle they'd never win.
She was arctic to his touch, withdrawn. Even the cold bed was warmer. Ares moved through her and all was lost. He felt the turmoil in her mind between desire and reason but Athena did not want to think anymore and he made sure she would not. Not with how he pressed against her hips so profound, so ruthless and cursed. There was aggression, anger and greed, but beneath them lies devotion and promises of fortitude. And while it was true victory that he tore down her walls, behind them was a domain one would regret conquering. For her body was a dark paradise, filled to the brim with ghosts and echoes of sadness… a haze, a mist, and trickles of rain. His armors and offenses turn vulnerable, no matter how deep the plunder and shattering pleasure.
Athena was the only storm he could not withstand.
His fingers grazed the sheets beside him at the heightening sense of consciousness, searching, when at last the cold empty space made his eyes snap open.
No. He panicked, chasing the dream of hours before. No… she was here… She was here and he will flay Morpheus if it turned out a dream.
Ares thrashed from beneath the sheets at the distress of finding himself alone. His eyes swept across the dark, and immediately placed at ease seeing her delicate figure at the southern margin of the bed. Athena's side was closely angled towards him, thick mussed hair tumbling into slits down a bare pale back, the rest of the sheets shrouding her hips. It was obscure, the boyish means she sat with one leg lain folded at the edge of the mattress as she slouched. She wasn't looking seductive, not trying to either. But unlike any other lover devoted to extinguishing his cravings, she pulled from him a sinuous insatiable need… and it was getting worse.
Until his labored breaths went loud enough to irritate her, she slowly turned her face to him – eyes inflecting a stronger shade of silver as if trapping the moon behind her lids. She never smiled, her face was one of the usual expressions that did not even welcome him.
But it was beautiful. Her fire was beautiful, and the word cannot even encompass how he truly sees it.
Ares could not remember how he could suddenly touch her when she wasn't from a reachable distance. He loved how her skin quivered the moment he wound his right arm around her waist, his left snaked across her shoulders, and both pressed her back against his chest.
"What are you thinking?" he muttered, burying his face on her messy locks as he owned her lithe frame.
Athena sighed, tensing at his warmth. "I wasn't." She felt his forehead rest behind her ear, "About what you heard… back there…"
The Queen swallowed, opening her mouth to say something but as if her throat had been twisted, she was left voiceless.
"It was foolish of me… I'm sorry…"
Came old-fashioned painful silence and lungs that begun to wither.
"I know you've lost count of the times you hated me, times I caused torment… and I will not make excuses for them. Not now. Not ever."
She felt him brush his lips along her shoulder. His chest heaved, marred by a cruel pressure and an antagonizing sense of… fear. "Forgive me…
"Forgive me and I promise…" he held her tighter like a child to his first knit blanket and poured out words he was never accustomed of. "I will be better. I will. Spare me another chance – a last one. I swear this upon Styx and upon my life: I will – never – hurt you again."
"But you cant…"
The Queen closed her eyes with a shaky sigh. "You've nothing to hurt me with now, so you can't. You've used all your resources to wound me and did more than that. You tore me, and the pieces you turned to powder. My body. My pride. My chance to nurture. And now my only shred of dignity. I walk along crowds who show me pity behind adoration. I've nothing left. You can no longer hurt me."
Athena tugged on his wrists now weakened by her understatement of rejection. She shifted to face him unmindful to cover her naked breasts peeking through spilled dark hair. Not that he complained. But it sent the message she truly did not care about modesty with him anymore, that her body, once immaculate, now the harem of a swine and merely a vessel for his seed.
"Your words mean nothing to me," she lazily mouthed, lashes low and slowly travelling up to his eyes. Athena spread cold fingers on Ares' forehead and lightly grazed downwards. "But Olympus still depends on you. If you need to make a promise, make a promise of duty."
Her fingertips rested on his lips and pressed to stop the words about to escape him. "Don't. Don't say it –
"Speak with your actions, not your mouth. For your words are brittle, and when they break they hurt. I know so."
Ares sighed, bewildered. Her bluntness was not foreign to his ears but it struck him just the same. But Athena, ever prudent, just knew how simmer him, drown him, and pull him up the air to revive him. She placed the same hand on his heart, the sheer warmth extending to her. "Your power is beautiful. Such courage, such fearlessness. They allure me… but this…" – placed pressure on the thumping skin, "This is true strength. Learn to use it."
Once again their eyes locked, stray hair settling between her brows. Despite the frigidity in her silvers it melted through his, searing his core. While he had enjoyed so much worship from the world and from his bed, such few lines brought about by his worst adversary rained like retribution. Even he himself felt undeserving.
Ares found his palms on both sides of her face and pulled her to his lips, never getting enough. And before it licked from the Queen a heat she both ached for and detested, she pushed him by the chest.
"This is but duty. Nothing else."
Standing up, she padded towards the hung robes. Athena covered herself and went for the doors, leaving Ares heavily falling back to bed with absolute despair and a growing nausea for a single word to describe what had just transpired. Duty.
Of course, duty. All the drama, but just duty, and it will soon hurt less once he decides to reform back to the beast he was. Athena leaned at the door as she inhaled freedom from the open space outside her chamber. She walked, barefoot along polished stones and mosaic floors, letting the hoots of owls and chirps of cicada drift through her senses.
A spark annoyed her short-lived peace. She could hear it, a swelling ruckus from Gaia, from panic to audible screams of the mortal world. Goodwives clutched to their husbands and children cried for their mothers. The heat was excruciating. There was riot; there was uproar and fire, unquenchable fire brewing from the skin of the earth itself. The Queen found herself choking in tears of horror from no visible reason. She could already perceive Hermes hastily approaching her from behind…
A / N : This day had been horrible. So, yeah.
I have replied on your reviews from the last chapter on the reviews section itself. I know I'd been thanking you all in general but once in a while I feel the need to commend each. Stay safe - xx