After the curse… in the beginning

---

I woke up and looked around, trying in vain to remember what had just happened to me. But when I tried to raise my hands, I realized I had no form. I was water, simply the wet particles of life.

I thought of a body. My body. A form. A shape. A woman… but nothing happened. I couldn’t take on a structure. I was merely this, whatever this was.

Panic began to tear at me as I tried to reach deep into the vault of my eternal memory for some clue to my identity, to why I felt so out of place and out of touch with the world around me. I searched through the empty corridors of my mind, only learning that I was me, the me that had just opened her eyes mere seconds ago, as if I’d just been birthed. But that was not possible. I knew it was not possible. I dug deeper, reaching farther and farther backward, looking for any glint or glimmer of something that would guide and lead me. But the more I searched, the less and less I found.

I was a clean slate. I was nothing at all.

Breathing heavily, tasting the brine of my waters upon my tongue, I looked all around me. I was in darkness, a pitch-black pool with no life in it at all. But I was water, so should there not be life in me? Should there not be… children?

Panic was clawing at my insides, making me twist and dive down into myself. Surely, I was not alone here in the darkest abyss of the earth. Surely, there were others.

But no matter how far I reached out with my mind, the waters were completely empty. I trembled, knowing something was wrong, just not knowing what or why. A feeling of despondence stole over me, and I grew quiet, wondering what I should do next. I was not even certain of my own name. Who was I? What was I? I stared down at the thing I called my body, but it was shape without form. There were no clues to be found there.

Then I felt a brush of power roll through my mind, delicate at first, like the gentle lapping of a wave upon shores. But soon it grew in strength and size and began not to roll but to roar.

It was as if something knocked at the door of my soul. Like a giant pressure wave that wanted in, it was shoving, shoving, shoving against me, making me groan, making my waters burble and churn. Deep down, I knew if I let it in, I would die, and I did not want that. So I didn’t peek. I didn’t touch that door. I moved away.

Let me in.

I heard its ghostly whisper roll through me, loud as a thunder strike, and I trembled. What was that thing inside of me?

Violently quivering, I moved back into deeper and deeper darkness until it was not so loud or so painful, but then I felt empty and cold. So desperately cold.

What had that voice been?

Why was I here?

What was I doing here?

And worse yet… who was I?

At that final thought, I felt myself scream through a form that had no mouth, no body, no flesh. But I screamed and screamed and screamed as I sank into the madness of despair.

Many moons later

---

I began to have memories.

Thoughts.

Nothing cohesive.

But in the darkness of my waters, I started to remember things, little things, like skin as dark as the night and hair as electric blue as sea coral. Those memories made me smile sometimes, but there was one memory that made me burn. Made me rage and froth and despair.

A deeply accented voice and dark, haunted eyes.

Eyes that could peer into my soul.

Eyes that could reform me, reshape me. I’d felt those same eyes upon my waters. I felt compelled to learn who it was and I would kill it.

More time passes

---

I accomplished a miracle. I remembered shape. Form. I remembered how to become the body that I’d desperately wanted to have. It was like a lightning strike in my head. I woke up, and suddenly, it was all just there—how to reshape myself. Now I had flesh. I had limbs. I had a face. And I had teeth.

Slowly, I’d begun to fashion a home of sorts for myself down in the wet, empty waves. The first thing I’d done was create life.

But the life I created was dark and deadly and menacing, predators that were ravenous beasts, with fins full of deadly spikes and mouths filled with pointed fangs. Always hungry, the beasts attacked one another with a vengeance and violence that turned my dark waters red with their blood.

I sat upon a throne of their bones and wondered why I still felt so empty. I was more than this. Somehow, I knew that. My lot wasn’t simply to wither away in the bottom of the unknown and be nothing to no one. I was more. I was so, so much more. I clenched my hands. and my nails—now as long and thick as claws—punctured the flesh of my palms, and wherever my blood flowed, life was created.

I grinned.

What are you doing?

That voice that I was coming to loathe with every fiber of my soul echoed like a lament in my mind, making me angry, making me feel… shame. But she did not speak to me again, and I was grateful for it. Somehow, someway, I would find her, and I would destroy her completely.

I could not say how long it had been since my birth, but I knew one thing—I was a god. I was the god. I had seen the powers that lived within me. And each day that I remained in the darkness, in the below, I grew more and more impatient to begin.

Though, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to begin, only that I did.

All I knew was that there was a journey awaiting me, and that journey was my destiny. So I rose to the surface for the first time since I opened my eyes. I rose and I looked around at a world both foreign and somehow strangely familiar.

I saw things I never knew existed, or maybe I had known and simply forgotten. But I saw gods among us. Gods of the air and of the fields. They were all over, and they were not relegated to black waters where none knew of them. Only me. Only ever me.

And I thought that maybe, just maybe, I should come out of the darkness too. Maybe it was my turn. Maybe I would show them who I really was.

I frowned as a memory suddenly wiggled itself loose.

My name.

It was a strong name.

A powerful name.

Calypso, that damnable voice echoed deep inside of me, and I ached so fiercely that the waters around me began to boil.

“No,” I snapped at the ghostly creature trapped within me. “Never. I am not that. I will never be that. I am Thalassa, and the world will burn at my feet!”

No, that is not you. That is not us.

And for just a second, my soul clenched so fiercely that it brought heat to my eyes and a heaviness to my body that felt as if it would break me in two. But I was angry at the leech that continued to invade my spirit, and I screamed to the air around me.

“Go back to the bowels of the underworld where you belong, demon!”

I trembled, shaking so hard, waiting for her to say something more to me. But she didn’t. She was silent. She was blessedly gone, and my tremors soon faded away. I felt as though I would beat this beast who dared to challenge my might.

A slow-moving smile rolled over my face, and with a shout of triumph, I lifted my hands. The waters, not just my own but the waters in all of creation, reached out to me. I felt the fires of that power slam into me. It tingled. It was wonderful. And I didn’t feel so alone. I would rule them all. I would reclaim my throne. I would never be alone again.

I twisted, suddenly aware of another presence surrounding me—in the sky, in my waters, upon the lands. It watched me. I hissed, turned, and looked, soul pounding fiercely inside of me, and I wondered at the strange emotion that rolled through me.

Almost like hope and despair.

I roared because I wished the eyes to know that I was a beast, a powerful female. But the eyes did not leave me, and I felt things that caused me to suffer.

I did not recognize the emotion, only that it hurt. It hurt so badly I thought I might actually die from it. So I dove into my waters, swimming furiously for the deepest trenches, desperate to get away, to hide.

And only once I was down there did I forget that I was a powerful goddess. I curled up into myself. Water leaked from my eyes, and I could not control it. Wherever that water touched, it killed all the life that I’d made.

What was wrong with me?

I did not know how long I had hidden, but I felt angry at myself for that unforgiveable show of weakness. Whoever those eyes belonged to, they could just go hang themselves. They would never run me off again. Not ever.

I was Thalassa, and I was the goddess.

I rose to the surface again, kicking my feet and reaching for the sky with my long arms. My body was strong, my movements sure.

Last night, in the cave of wonders I’d built for myself as a home, I’d started to suffer with flashes of images so vivid that they’d felt as real as the breaths I took.

A man. And a woman who had looked much like me.

That man, with his olive-toned flesh and strong, wickedly handsome features, had dared to touch me. And when he had touched me shame had gripped my virgin soul, for I’d loved it, moaned for it, begged for more.

I broke through the surface, taking in deep breaths of salt-tinged air, and snarled as I looked around, feeling empty and aching fiercely inside. I hated it. I hated him, whoever he was, for daring to imagine he could touch me in that way. Make me want him in that way.

Whoever that man was, he and I were enemies.

This I knew.

This I understood.

Because when I saw him in my mind’s eye, all I felt was an aching emptiness that made me feel sick and violent and so damned alone. And though I could not remember what he’d done to me, I knew he’d done something. Feelings like these didn’t just happen for no reason. My body remembered the trauma my brain could not.

I snarled and shoved myself onto a rocky outcropping in my waters. I did as I’d done every morning since coming to the surface. I watched the lesser gods, watched them laugh and revel and play with one another and with mortals. They accepted the mortals’ praises and adulations as if it were their due. As if they deserved it.

I watched as Apollo teased and made sport of the pretty men and women surrounding his throne of fire. I watched as he simpered and pandered to the plebs with his silly words and vain-filled smiles.

I watched as Zeus played with woman after woman, promising them the whole world—until he got what he wanted from them. Then, he’d toss them out of Olympus without so much as a fare-the-well, his lusts sated and his promises long forgotten.

I watched as Hera, in her pettiness against Zeus, took her vengeance out on those very same mortals, turning them into twisted amalgamations of both man and beast.

I watched as they all lied, cheated, and stole over and over again. The party never ended for them. Their lusts and desires were a bottomless pit that could never be sated.

And the resentment in my heart grew. It festered.

I hated them all.

Every last one of them.

Because if any praises were due, then surely they were due to life. Surely, they were due to me.

The waters around me began to boil.

You are wrong, Thalassa. You are so very wrong.

I hissed at the voice to shut up, and it did.

I shot up, still trapped in the memories, the nightmarish visions of what the man with the dark eyes had done to me. I looked around at the darkness of my home, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I’d not been sleeping, but somehow I’d been entranced.

And the moment I thought it, I saw the golden dust of Hypnos’s sleeping power flicker by on a current. “Stay out of my realm, Sleep,” I hissed. “This is the only warning you’ll get from me.”

I felt the absence of Hypnos immediately. He’d left without so much as a word of parting. The bloody, self-righteous lesser god had tried to trick me. But I would be on guard to his wily ways from now on. I curled my lips in disgust.

I’d never say it out loud, but the trance had done me good. I felt more centered and rested somehow, less manic. And I could recall in sharp detail every nuance of what had been shown me.

I recalled not just my dream lover’s elicit touch, which had made me burn with shameful, depraved desires, but also his words, softly spoken, but strongly worded.

“You are mine, Calypso, as surely as my dark heart will always be yours.”

That name was no longer my own, and yet it had once been connected to me. And if it belonged to me, then it also meant that the dark-eyed man would come for me. I covered my chest with my hand and pressed, knowing I would not feel the one thing I needed to be whole again, the one thing I would need before I could enact my plan—my heart, the final piece of me that the dark-eyed man had stolen.

I had no proof of that, but my mind was showing me all that I’d forgotten. It was telling me exactly where to go—into the underworld, toward a lesser god they called Hades. He was the dark-eyed man, and he was my true enemy.

I grinned as my anger rolled like fine whiskey all the way through me. Finally, I understood all that I was seeing. Finally, I got it.

He had to die so that I could finally, truly live.

And then, once I was done with him, I would turn my sights on the shining, golden ones of Mount Olympus and burn them all down.

Pathetic lesser gods. They thought all that praise was theirs, but I knew better. They were vengeful, spiteful children who did not deserve their pedestal. The worshippers deserved a better god.

And I would be that for them. It was my praise the Olympians stole. My worship.

I planted my hand on my chest and pressed hard, echoing with the same emptiness that stretched inside of me.

I knew once I claimed my rightful place, I would heal again. I would be made whole again.

I would be… happy.

The voice that was always with me did not speak, but my body burned with her emotion—hate. Violent, twisted, warped hate, and it wasn’t directed at the loathsome gods of Olympus, but at me.

She was my enemy now.

I snarled.

---

I stood in my bedroom, staring at the diamonds encrusted on the walls and the floors made of polished ivory. Ribbons of sunlight streamed through the open French doors. My home sat on the second highest peek of Mount Olympus, a gift from Zeus for being so lovely, he’d said. In truth, he’d merely wished to keep me close that he might one day bed me, make me his conquest as he’d done to so many others.

But it had never worked because another had come before him, one who’d made my entire body burn and my skin tingle with deepest lust and desire. Hephaestus, the god of the forge and Zeus’ personal lightning maker. His body was a thing of deformed beauty and steely, rippling muscles.

His legs were crippled, his feet utterly useless. He walked with the help of a machine he’d crafted with his own hands. All the gods mocked him, ridiculed him for being less than perfect. But I was the pinnacle of perfection, and perfection bored me. Hephaestus had been utterly fascinating for me—gruff, surly, powerful. A lot like Hades.

And once upon a time, in another life, he’d been all mine. Yes, I’d had many affairs, but only because I’d been young, and as the goddess of Love and Lust, it wasn’t easy to turn off the thing that made me me. But Hephy had understood my insatiable thirst for more, and he’d never stood in my way.

It wasn’t until centuries later that I realized I’d stopped bedding others. It hadn’t been a conscious choice, but rather a subconscious one. The fact was that none had satisfied me quite as he had.

I’d fallen completely mad for my twisted male, and finally, we’d spoken of children, of building a life together, just us. Clutching the sheet in my hand, I collapsed on the bed, which was made up of nothing but silks and furs, and hung my head as I sobbed.

The words on the parchment were long and slashing, angrily written in his hand. Hephy had left me. For good, he’d said. Called me unfaithful, the Scarlet Woman, Jezebel. I cried.

The curse had taken so much away from us all. I was cursed to remember everything—remember his heated caresses, the way he made my blood sing and my flesh cry out for more and more of him, the way he’d cover me with his massive body and own me so completely, obliterate all other men or women from my mind and make me see, feel, and taste only him. Only ever him.

I also remembered my friends, my only true friends in this whole godsforsaken land—Calypso and Hades. My memories of them from the other time always brought me to tears, happy ones, but sad ones now, too, because of all we’d lost.

It would be so easy to turn my back on them. After all, it was my obsession with reaching out to Hades that had caused my Hephy of this time to sever all ties with me. He thought I wanted the god of death. After all, I spent all my time in the Underworld, trying to make Hades remember, trying to draw out the memories of her the only way I could, using the only powers I had at my disposal—that of the heart, of the soul.

Hephy had smelled the release of my Lust and had confused it with something else. He did not believe in me in this time. He did not know me because the past he remembered was one that had never happened to me, to the real me. He knew only of Aphrodite from this alternate and twisted time. The slut. The whore. The one who bedded men and women and refused his touch because he was a deformed and misshapen god who could never truly satisfy me.

My reputation on Olympus was as bad as it had ever been. There’d been a time in the previous world before the curse when I had been that woman. But my friendship with Calypso and witnessing the deep and abiding love that she and Hades had had for one another had opened my eyes to the truth I had buried in my heart all along. I’d simply not been equipped to understand it until then.

And now my Hephy, my truest love, had abandoned me completely. I swallowed hard, shuddering violently as I stared at the home that was lovelier than any other, dripping with rare gems and ostentatious luxury. But I felt nothing at all for it.

I felt dead inside. Empty. Without him to fill my bed, all of this was just stuff. Inconsequential nothings that would never make me happy. A part of me wished I’d never started down the road I had or made the choices I’d made. And yet, I suspected that the outcome might well have been the same if I’d remained here on Olympus with Hephy.

Either way, I’d been doomed to this fate, and deep down, I think I’d always known it.

I’d tried for weeks to unlock Hades’ heart, but no matter how much I prodded at his mind, nothing seemed to work. I’d sacrificed any time I could have had with my own mate to try fixing what had been broken between my friends. And not just because I’d missed them, but because they were the key to unlocking the happily ever afters in Kingdom. It was more than just fixing Caly and Hades. It was literally the fate of everyone else too.

But not only had I not succeeded, I’d further widened the gap between Hephy and I and cemented for him that I was no longer worth the wait. Whatever the Dite of his timeline had done to him must have hurt him deeply, so deeply that he was unwilling to even give me, give us, another chance. Hephaestus had always loved me more than he probably should have, especially in my younger years, but he’d been kind and ever patient with me, giving me the space and time to grow up so that I could finally see the man, the wonderful male, that he truly was. I’d done a lot to him in my time, a lot that should have severed his regard for me then. But it hadn’t. So whatever I’d done to him in this time, I couldn’t even begin to fathom how deeply the hurt went, and though I’d had nothing to do with it, I couldn’t help but feel shame for it too. Whatever this version of me had done to him, it had to have been truly heinous to make him abandon me this way.

I’d lost everything. My lover. My joy. My friends.

If only I could have made Hephy see that I’d never wanted Hades at all. Yes, the dark god was a thing of preternatural beauty and allure, but his heart, body, and soul had only ever belonged to Calypso. I was the most beautiful in all the lands, but not even I could have swayed his heart from hers. Calypso understood Hades’s darkness in a way I never could or would. Not even Persephone had been enough to force the most secretive of all the gods to open up. Only Calypso, the quirkiest, oldest, and most powerful among us, could have done that.

I shook my head, dropping my hand to the bed and releasing the grip I had on the divorce decree. Hephaestus had publically declared his severance from me on Olympus. I was no longer Aphrodite mate, of the mighty Hephaestus. Now I was simply Aphrodite… nobody at all. I swallowed hard, feeling sick to my stomach, and clutched at the decree with nerveless fingers.

Hephy and I had never officially married, but we’d been together many lifetimes and had been an acknowledged pair amongst the gods, to the point that even Zeus had stopped pestering me for a liaison, knowing full well that I would never betray my forge king.

Well, in the past timeline, anyway.

In this one, it seemed I’d given my body over to Zeus many times and then some. Hera loathed me—she had never liked being second best. I had no allies here anymore. I had no reason to stay.

I swiped at my cheeks with my thumbs, wishing I could go to Hephy’s forge and explain it all to him, make him see, make him understand that the woman he thought I was wasn’t me at all. Make him see that in my world, he’d been the greatest and truest love of my life. But he would not hear me, not anymore. I’d done too much to him in this new world, though it hadn’t been me at all. The memories he had of me were vile and ugly, and I simply didn’t know how I could overcome any of it. His reality wasn’t mine. As much as I longed for him, the attraction in this new world was simply far too one-sided to overcome.

No, there was nothing for me here in Olympus anymore. But there was still Hades and Calypso. And though I knew Caly would never wish this fate upon me and would admonish me to fix my own affairs—I grinned almost able to imagine her high-pitched shrill that I stop being a jackbanana, because bless her, she’d never been any good at phrases—there was nothing that could be done. I’d tried so hard to make my Hephy see me for who I really was, but…

I blinked, as I suddenly thought of something else. There was a reason and a purpose to everything. One merely had to believe it. Of all the gods on Olympus, I seemed to be the only one who remembered the alternate time in its fullness.

I had never believed in coincidences, which meant that if I remembered the alternate timeline, then there must be a reason for it. I’d tried to appeal to Hades’s heart, but he was morose, despondent, not the Hades of my time. He was different now. But also not quite like the older version of himself from the previous timeline before he’d met Calypso, that Hades had been cold and even at times seemingly uncaring and unfeeling. He was more like the nascent version of himself. Like the kind he’d been before I’d been conceived from the severed penis of my dear old daddy, Uranus. My origin story was weird and slightly repulsive, but it was a god thing and rarely had to make sense to be so.

I sniffed, rubbing my swollen nose, feeling miserable but also slightly hopeful. I’d thought myself an island, alone and forever apart from the land in which I’d once felt completely at home. But what if I wasn’t the only goddess who remembered? What if there were more of us out there?

What if…?

I stood nude, clothed only in the long blond strands of my gleaming, golden hair. It swished thickly around my ankles, nearly dragging on the pristine white floor as my heart suddenly turned over in my chest, pounding furiously within me.

“Time! Of course, you silly fool. She would know. Surely she would know.” I paced back and forth, seeing nothing, though my eyes searched the room.

Why had I never thought of her before? Surely, if anyone would remember the alternate threads, it would be her.

I grinned, hopeful and focused on something other than my own misery and anguish. I might not be able to save my marriage, but by damn, I would not let Caly and Hades suffer the same fate.

Wetting my lips, I thought of a garment built of the winds and of fire. I would go to her as the goddess I was. I would force her to see me as a power unleashed, even slightly unhinged should I not get my way—not hard to do considering I was a jilted lover, and as the goddess of Love, that was a stain I would never soon forget. The gown billowed like flame around me, moving in the supernatural breeze I’d fashioned it from, and I grinned.

I would go see Time and ask her what I should do. But first…

I squared my shoulders. If there was one thing I’d learned in my time with Calypso, it was that sometimes, to get one’s way, one had to throw a mighty tantrum to remind those around them who they really were.

I would not roll over. For any of them.

“I’m the goddess of love, dammit all to the Underworld,” I snapped, and with my chin held high I winked out of this space of existence into the darkest forge in the hottest heart of Olympus itself.

A loud, rattling clanging exploded like thunder and lightning all around me. Magma-intense heat shoved against my body, making me break out in a sheen of glittering sweat.

I lifted my eyes, and there he was, my deepest, darkest fantasy and desires. He was stripped down to his waist, his withered legs on display as he leaned against the fiery forge that would incinerate a mortal in an instant. His massive upper torso moved with the strength and agility of a predatory cat, and for just a second, I shivered, remembering just how those roughened and callused hands would move over me as though I were the finest of satin.

He raised his arm, ready to hammer down on the crackling fissure of molten white energy, when he suddenly stilled and twirled, nearly dropping his hammer as he clutched at the railing beside him.

Hephy had never much cared for using the steel legs he’d crafted. He’d only ever used them when he’d been forced to interact with the other gods. But with me, he’d always been free to be who he’d really been, trusting that I would never see him as less.

Setting his massive hammer down, he turned and reached for his mechanical legs. My heart squeezed. He did not trust me in this time.

I clenched my jaw, watching silently as he fitted the steel to his body, making him look half man and half machine. Normally, I was the taller of us, but with his steel legs, he towered over me.

His face was chiseled, so hard and severe that it looked hewn from stone. His jaw was square and looked as though it could cut paper. His nose was long and straight. His lips were full and the only soft part about him. I curled my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms as I fought the urge to rush him and devour his body as he’d once done to me.

Gods, I wanted him now more than ever.

“What do you want?” he snapped, causing his black eyes, full of lightning, to spark and roil. “I think I made myself very clear that—”

“You don’t get to decide that for me,” I snapped, taking a step forward and noting the way his spine went taut and rigid and his amazing pectorals tightened. His abs were sheer masculine beauty. Hades might be the more attractive of the two, but Hephy was harder, more severe, like steel wrapped in flesh. He could physically break me with his touch, he was that strong. And yet he’d never done other than cradle me with tenderness.

His nostrils flared and fury twisted his features. He’d never been what anyone could call beautiful or even all that attractive. What he’d been was sublimely masculine, hard like granite and so unyielding, save for me. He’d always been putty in my hands.

My pulse raced out of control in my body, making my ears ring with the rush of blood. To see him right in front of me and not be able to touch him or hold him was one of the cruelest fates I’d ever had to endure.

“You just can’t stop yourself, can you? You want to hurt me? Wound me? It won’t happen, Aphrodite. You’ve made an enemy of me, mocked and jeered me for the last time. We are through. Over. You will never hurt me again. Not ever.”

I swallowed the heavy ball of tears in my throat, refusing to let them out. Refusing because if I gave into my misery, I would never be strong enough to leave. And I had to leave. No matter how desperately I wished I didn’t.

“I know you don’t believe me now, but you will someday, Hephy.”

He growled, taking a menacing step forward as he balled his massive hands into tight fists. “Never call me that. I refuse to be your—”

“You are thick and stubborn and so damned beautiful it makes my heart weep,” I whispered. My voice had grown scratchy, and I had to clear it.

His jaw clenched, and the muscle twitched. I could read his disbelief and his hate.

I shook my head. “I know you don’t believe me, and that’s okay. But I am not the woman you think I am. Whoever that monster is”—I tapped my breast—“it isn’t me. I tell you again—I am not of this time. I am from another. And in that world, you and I were allies. Partners.” I took a step toward him, expecting him to roar or yell or even try to shove me back.

But he didn’t. He stood there, looking at me, and I finally saw something other than hatred. I saw the pain. Terrible, terrible pain. And it almost broke me, but I had to go soon, so I had to find my strength and press on.

“You knew me as no other knew me. The real me Not the silly female who lusted after tight flesh and wanted only the vain and superficial things of this world, but the one who laughed and cried and trusted you so completely that I handed over to you not just my hand, but my heart. You were the only one to whom I’ve ever given myself so completely, and deep down inside of you, you must know this is true. You may not want to believe me, but you know I do not lie.”

Fury tightened the mask of his features, but when I took another step toward him, he did not move, though he trembled with barely suppressed rage.

Being reckless, I did something I might never have done if I hadn’t been about to leave. I reached for his jaw, moving as though in slow motion, watching him as one might a venomous snake about to strike, wondering if he would pull away or even shove me back. But he did neither. He simply stood there, and when I touched the corner of his jaw, I felt the heat and warmth of him move through me like fire. I groaned from deep inside myself.

“Why do you toy with me, you bitch?” he asked, voice cracking as his eyes shone with wetness. I cringed.

He didn’t pull away. He looked broken, devastated. And when he raised his hand as though to shove me off him, he instead wrapped his thick, impossibly strong fingers around my slender wrist, holding me just as he once had, like I was fine porcelain and so easily breakable.

I tried to prevent it, but a single tear slid out of the corner of my left eye and rolled slowly down my cheek. His breathing grew harder, heavier, and I felt his eyes watching the movement of my tear.

“I will leave you now as you wish me to, my dearest love.”

He shook so hard, and I felt his internal battle. Hephaestus was so powerful, so brutally powerful, and it was that barely leashed beast within him that had always called to me.

I loved his dark side, craved it even.

“Why do you do this?” he asked, voice rocking through me with heat and pain, so much pain that I wanted to wilt from it.

I shook my head and searched his gaze, trying to find the one thing I knew was no longer there—his love for me. Just a glimpse of it would have given me hope to keep fighting, to keep hanging on. But all I saw was lightning and rage.

“I can’t live in a world where you don’t want me. Where you don’t love me.” I shook my head, and feeling that tear about to drip off my chin, I gently took it upon the tip of my finger. It had crystallized, and without overthinking what I was doing, I pressed that tear into the seam of his lips.

It was my love, my power. It was my heart. I would show him I hadn’t lied to him. I’d never lied to him.

I saw him breathe, saw the pink smoke of my majesty encapsulate his head like a glittering fog bank. But I had not tricked him. I had not forced him to love me. I’d not abused my power. I’d simply shown him my heart.

I stepped back, releasing my grip on him and forcing him to release his on me. When he opened his eyes, they raged with lightning, but his face had gone slack, and he looked at me questioningly.

“Who… who are you?”

I smiled sadly. “I’ve always told you who I was. Goodbye, Hephy. Goodbye.” Then I turned, and though I hoped that he might have called me back to him, he did not stop me.

With a heavy heart, I opened a tunnel that would lead me to Time herself. It was time to save the world.

---

I stood there, numb, staring at the space where she’d once been and wondering if she’d been telling me the truth all along.

The Aphrodite I knew was a monster. A heartless, ruthless, and cold bitch who’d ruined me and razed my trust in others forever.

And yet the woman who’d just been with me had spoken truth. I’d felt it in her kiss.

With a roar, I turned on my mechanical legs and took up my hammer, forging Zeus’s lightning with the fury and intensity of a man possessed.

Who was she?

Who was she?

Who was that woman?

I gained no answers from my smithy, but I did not stop until I’d collapsed from complete and utter exhaustion.