The rush of being with Niko was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Everything I’d been avoiding for so long had broken through. I’d been holding on to my grief for Julio, and I’d spent years punishing myself with guilt, and in doing so, I had punished my son. Thero had been right all along, and all I could do to repair what I’d lost was to amend that mistake now. I stood in the moonlight in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods and stared up at the stars. I knew what I had to do, and hoped Niko would accept everything I’d told him. He needed time, but what I was going to offer him had an expiration date.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to Olympus once more, but this time, I did it with hope in my heart.

Once it was removed from its sacred chalice, outside the marble confines of Olympus, the ambrosia’s transformative magic faded exponentially with each passing hour. The mortal world spun faster than our immortal plane, and the ambrosia was not strong enough to resist its pull.

The marble throne room whipped into sharp focus as my feet touched the tiles. I stood there for a moment, taking in the serenity of the space before I realized it was completely unnatural for it to be so. Since my father had embarked on this quest to thwart Hera’s curse, the marble halls had been filled with laughter, joy, and noise of all kinds. But the only sound was the fluttering of wind through the high columns.

With grim determination, I climbed the stairs to the Olympian thrones. Carved from dark green jasper shot through with veins of blood red, my throne was set apart from the others. It was a small separation, but enough to remind me of the way my father felt about my involvement in the business of Olympus.   

“The God of War has no place in this matter.”

Words I’d heard too often over the centuries. In my youth I’d been angry at being shut out, and I would lash out in ways that punished everyone around me. Battles between peaceful nations, tipped the balance of a conflict to spite an uncle or brother, the destruction of a sacred city—I’d done it all. And regretted none of it.

Maybe they’d deserved my wrath just as much as I deserved their scorn. We had each done our part to earn it.

I ran a hand over the smooth arm of my throne and paused as my fingers dipped into the fissure I’d cut into the solid rock to make the box that had carried the ambrosia I’d intended to give Julio.

The chalice that held the sacred food of the gods glowed from its place beside my father’s throne. I opened the box I carried, stared down at the withered contents and reached out a tentative finger to touch the remains of the ambrosia.

Under the pressure of my fingertip, the ambrosia shuddered into a pile of shimmering dust. I poured it into my hand and examined the sparkling remnants of the immortality that should have belonged to Julio. A gentle breeze, smelling of salt and the ocean brushed across my cheeks and I closed my fist as it tugged at the glittering grains, threatening to blow them away.

“Do not despair, Nephew,” a gentle voice said. A feminine voice. I turned in surprise. It had been uncountable eons since a goddess had dared to step foot on Olympus.

“Amphitrite,” I whispered.

My aunt smiled at me, but her expression faltered just a little as her eyes darted around the marble hall.

“My father will know you are here,” I said quietly. I was surprised Hermes hadn’t shown up already.    

“I know. I have much to atone for,” she said. “Quickly… gather your ambrosia now, before they arrive. I believe your father will have questions for you to answer as well.” Her tone was light, but there was an urgency to her words I couldn’t avoid.

I raised my hand over the ambrosia and released the sparkling remains into the chalice. The ambrosia glowed brightly for just a moment before absorbing the dust and settling back into its normal shimmering mass. With a murmur of gratitude I filled the box with the precious material.

“Ares!” Amphitrite’s harsh whisper pulled me from my trance. “You must leave, your father is coming. I know you are not ready to face him… and Niko is vulnerable. The curse has not been broken. Your father must see that now. You must go to Niko, but if he refuses you, I promise I will keep him safe.”

I had already made up my mind, but she was right… what if Niko rejected me? Hermes had almost destroyed his relationship with his spark by taking away Noah’s choice to take the ambrosia. My brother said he had no other choice, but Amphitrite had given me one.

I nodded shortly. There was nothing else I could say. The goddess was trying to make amends for eons of petty rage, and it was the very least she could do.

“Go,” she whispered.

“Sister!” My father’s voice echoed through the marble chamber and her eyes widened in panic. If I was found here, I would never be able to escape my father’s questions, his accusations. There would be time for that after Niko had promised to be mine.

If.

I closed my eyes and held the way I’d felt with Niko in my mind, and as my father’s heavy footsteps drew closer, I willed myself to Samothrace.

---

I didn’t know how much time had passed in the mortal world, but just as it had on the first night I’d come to Niko, the moon was high in the sky above me, and it bathed the stones of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods in pearly white light. I stood between the once-mighty columns and my shadow spilled out over the stone as it had when this temple was whole and the wars we fought were noble and just, not like the bitter feud the gods and goddesses waged now. I stood amongst the ruins of our greatness and called out to him.

My Niko.

Asteri mu

My spark.

“Come to me. Come from your slumber and safety, mortal. Come into the heat and the passion and the fire of my love.”

I closed my eyes, and reached deep within, calling out to his divine lineage with my own. I couldn’t resist its pull any more than he could, and when I opened my eyes, Niko was pushing his way through the branches of the sacred grove that ringed the Sanctuary. He was half-awake and dazed and leaned against one of the trees for support. Trying to shake away his slumber, and the pull of my power, he stumbled a few paces towards me, and then fell to the dusty ground.

I crossed the distance between us in an instant and fell to my knees beside him. “Niko.”

Niko blinked up at me, his eyes full of sleepy confusion but widening when he saw my face. “I need to stop dreaming about you,” he murmured. He blinked again, trying to get his bearings. “Where are we?”

“A sacred place you know very well,” I said. I brushed my knuckle along his jaw. “A place where the stones once ran red with the blood of sacrifices, and the air was thick with the smoke of sacred hearths.”

“Romantic,” Niko mumbled.

I caught him up in a fiery kiss and stifled any further talk on the matter. Niko seemed to melt beneath me and wrapped an arm around my neck as I lifted him and carried him up the steps to where the few remaining columns stood. It felt right to do it here, beneath the stones his kind had once erected in our honor. Sacramental, even. So many sacrifices had been burned here to appease us. Now, we would rekindle the fire of the gods that had so long lain dormant.

All it took was a single spark.

Before I could demand it, Niko began to peel off his clothes, desperately seeking out my lips for another kiss. I gave it gladly, helping to throw the thin fabric aside before quickly removing my tunic. His hand closed around my cock and stroked me to quick, painful hardness as his tongue moved inside my mouth.

I stroked a finger down the cleft of his ass and began to tease him open. Niko groaned, buried his face against my shoulder, and pressed his body even closer to mine. As I pushed two fingers inside him, I felt his teeth close around my shoulder. I drew back slightly, surprised. He had drawn blood.

Niko blinked at me, and I saw a teasing flame dancing in his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, without sincerity.

With my fingers still buried in his ass, I reached up with the other hand and touched the bite mark on my shoulder. Then I pressed my bloody fingers between his lips. Niko’s eyes fell closed as he tasted my blood and he sucked hard on my fingers. With my other hand, I rubbed that sweet spot deep inside him, and he moaned and wriggled beneath my touch.

I couldn’t wait any longer. Withdrawing my fingers, I said, “Get down on your knees.”

He did as he was told, sinking to the ground and staring up at me as if in supplication. I strode around him and put a foot on his back, forcing him onto all fours. My blood felt hot in my veins and my heart raced. Even the thrill of the battlefield could not compare to this beautiful creature trembling in anticipation before me. I would have set the world on fire just to hear my true name on his lips.

I entered him in one forceful thrust, and Niko gasped and curled his fingers against the unforgiving stone. His skin was cool and pliant beneath me, and I moved him as I pleased, driving him into the rough, broken marble.

I knew he wasn’t comfortable; and that he didn’t care. Our love would not be comfortable, it never would be. It wasn’t in my nature. I was most at home in the heat of war. The way my uncles and brother fawned and doted over their own sparks was completely foreign to me. Niko and I would never be cozy—what we had was heat, pure and simple—and I knew he wouldn’t trade it in for the world.

Remembering the blood he had drawn from me, I dragged my nails down his back, not afraid to make it hurt. I felt Niko flinch and shudder, and saw him hang his head, panting. My thrusts never slowing, I draped my body over his and licked the blood from his skin before trailing hot kisses down his spine. I became aware he was crying—from pleasure, from pain, from desire—and focused on driving into him even harder, deep strokes that grazed that sweet spot inside him and had him weeping and begging within minutes.

“Please,” he gasped, so endearingly beautiful he set my lust ablaze. “Please—oh, God…”

I moved my hand over his hip and trailed one hand over his stomach, stopping teasingly short of his cock. He groaned and shifted his weight on the marble, and I saw a smear of blood left behind where his knees had been, black against the pale stone in the moonlight.

The heat of my orgasm pooled in my belly; I gripped his hips so tight my nails cut into his skin, and thrust into him even deeper and harder than before. Niko’s cry rang through the quiet night as I spilled my seed inside him.

When the fire that had threatened to consume me finally ebbed away, I pulled out and watched Niko collapse onto the marble beneath him. He rolled onto his back and I saw that his knees were raw and bloody. His cock, painfully untouched, was throbbing and leaking copiously. He reached for it, and I pushed his hand away, a motion that elicited a quiet whine from my lover. I knew how desperately he needed to find his release, but I wasn’t going to let him spill on his belly again like a horny teenager.

Without saying a word, I wrapped my lips around the head of his cock and felt him buck in surprise and need beneath me. Putting my hands on his hips to hold him still, I took his cock even deeper, tasting the salt of his sweat and precum.

Niko mumbled and groaned, but I wasn’t really listening. Swallowing him down until my nose touched his abdomen, I pressed two fingers into his sensitive ass and Niko came, screaming my name as he did so. My real name.

I sucked him well past the point where it was comfortable for him, relishing his writhing and twitching. When I finally released him, he tried to sit up, and couldn’t. My lips curled into a smile. I lay down on the stone beside him and folded my hands behind my head as I looked up at the stars spread out above us.

“I need to stop having these dreams,” Niko whispered, after a moment.

“This isn’t a dream,” I chuckled. “And with me, it never will be.”

“No, this is definitely a dream,” Niko said. “A holdover from when I fell and whacked my head. It has to be a hallucination. All of it. It’s the only explanation. In the morning, I’ll wake up, and you’ll be with Cayden, and I’ll have to go back to fantasizing that you’re actually interested in me.” He sighed and rolled against me. The heat of his body against mine was deliciously unbearable, and my cock stirred against my thigh, thick and ready for him again.

“Do you think that everything I told you was part of your… hallucination?” I asked, mildly amused by his denial of everything he’d seen.

“Well, if it isn’t… then I’m not sure what to make of any of it. I’ve lived my entire life immersed in this… stuff,” he said, gesturing at the ruined Temple and the Sanctuary complex. “If it’s all real, and my father hasn’t just been filling my head with lies… I don’t know what to believe.” He was silent for a moment, and then he began to chuckle softly. “I used to run through these forests pretending I was Apollo or Theseus… anyone but who I really was. And if I believe what you told me, what I saw with my own eyes…” he shook his head. “I can’t.”

“There’s a difference between can’t and won’t,” I said. “Refusing to believe doesn’t make something untrue. You are special, Niko. Made for me.”  I reached into my discarded tunic and pulled the jasper box out of the pocket. Cayden’s talisman tumbled out with it and clattered onto the marble beside me.

Niko leaned over me and pressed a quick kiss to my jaw as he plucked the stone up from where it had fallen. “What’s this?” he asked. The weight of his body was comforting, but the flames of my desire for him flared again. If I wasn’t careful, we’d be tangled together until the sun came up. Not that it was a bad idea.

“It’s Cayden’s. It belonged to his father. A token he used to carry with him for good luck. He found it on Aegina.”

“That’s where Achilles trained his Myrmidon, isn’t it? Your devotees… unbeatable warriors beloved of Ares. If what you told me is true, then they were real, too.” He examined the stone carefully, turning it in his fingers in the moonlight. “Achilles’ mother was a sea goddess…”

“Are you asking me if you’re related to Achilles?”

Niko smiled. “Maybe I am.” He held Cayden’s talisman out to me and I took it from him gently. “A marble heart,” he said. “It’s rather appropriate, don’t you think? I could make it into a necklace for him, then he would never lose it.”

“I think he’d like that,” I murmured. This was what Cayden needed, someone who would love him in a way I couldn’t, a way only a mortal who carried that divine spark could. He understood my divine child better than anyone. I tucked the stone back into my tunic and rolled towards Niko. He chuckled as he slid off my chest and braced himself on his elbow to look at me.

“Now what? You fly back to Olympus alone and I go back to sleep and wake up with my father banging on my door, yelling at me because I have to marry the girl down the street?” He sighed heavily and I wondered if he was actually joking.

“That doesn’t sound very pleasant for either of us,” I said. I set the jasper box in the patch of moonlight between us. Its deep green surface seemed to ripple in the pale light and I removed the lid to reveal the ambrosia. “You could stay with me.”

“I can’t go to Olympus, only immortals can go to Olympus. That’s how it works. That’s why no matter how high up the mountain anyone has ever climbed they were never able to find the halls of the gods…” Niko stared at the ambrosia, transfixed. “For a mortal to be welcomed into Olympus he would have to be—”

“Immortal.”

“Akrivós, but the only way to become immortal is t—”

“To eat the food of the gods… ambrosia. A simple thing, Niko. Isn’t it?”

Niko licked his lips and his olive-green eyes, shining in the moonlight, found mine. “It would be… if it were real. But what would I do with immortality… tell me great god,” he teased me. “What is there to do with your immortality?”

Instead of answering him, I leaned forward and captured his mouth with my own. That familiar and intoxicating fire coursed through my veins and ignited my limbs as my fingers tangled in Niko’s hair. His mouth opened under my attack and he moaned against my lips as a similar heat rushed through him. When I finally pulled away, he was breathless, and his eyes were wide pools of hot desire.   

“Good point,” he gasped.

“Olympus has begun to be a home again,” I said. “After centuries of anger and quiet, that marble tomb has sprung with new life. You are not the only spark, and Cayden is not the only child to be born of such a union. You will have a place in the Pantheon, and our children will be gods and goddesses.”

Niko laughed lightly and brushed his fingertips along my jaw. “I’m almost reluctant to wake up now,” he said. “Reality is so much more boring than what you’re selling.”

I smiled, gripped his hand, and pulled it to my mouth. I bit down lightly on his thumb, hard enough for him to feel how sharp my teeth were. “This is real,” I said. “All you need to do is believe it.”

“This is much more fun,” Niko breathed. My cock was hard and heavy against my thigh and Niko smiled slyly as his hand fell to caress its length. I groaned as the fire of his touch rippled through my body. All it takes is a spark. Following his lead, I closed my hand around his hard member and began to stroke him in the same rhythm.

With the ambrosia between us, we brought each other to a hard and fast climax. Niko groaned his release with his mouth pressed against mine and his hand moving fast over my aching cock while my own orgasm ripped through me like wildfire.

Panting in the moonlight, Niko grinned at me. His olive-green eyes sparkled with lust and something else I couldn’t quite place. I knew dawn would be coming soon, and with it more questions. Niko sighed and fell back against the stones. “If I’m a very good boy, will you keep visiting me in my dreams?” he asked faintly.

“If you want me, I’ll come to you every night, whether you’re dreaming or not,” I replied.

“Hmm. Irida might have a problem with that,” he murmured.

“Well, then you had best make a decision soon,” I said. I closed the lid of the box and tapped it gently. “One taste of the ambrosia, and you can come with me to Olympus. Cayden wants to see you.”

Niko sat up on his elbows and glared at me. “That’s not fair. Using your son as bait isn’t fair.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But if it works…” I rolled over and pulled my tunic over my head. I tossed Niko his shorts and chuckled as he scrambled to catch them. “The ambrosia has an expiry date,” I warned him. “Time passes quickly in this world, and its ability to make you an immortal fades with each passing minute. When you make your choice, I’ll come to you.”

Niko’s mouth opened to protest, but I didn’t wait for his arguments. I closed my eyes and willed myself to Olympus. Armed with the knowledge I had done all I could, I was ready to face my father’s anger. All I could do was hope Niko would make his choice, and that he would make it in time.