The Heart of War (36 page)

Zeus placed his hands on either side of Alena’s head, the Jumbotron above them went dark and then disappeared. “Diana! Diana!” Frightened eyes searched the room and found Ares, beginning to weep she reached out for him. “I didn’t know, I swear, I didn’t know. She was
my friend
.”

For a moment, Ares swallowed his anger and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know it’s not your fault. Take my hand, we’re leaving.”

“Leaving? What about Artemis?” Zeus cried. “I demand
vengeance
!”

“How dare you!” Apollo yelled. “You will not speak to my Lover that way. Artemis was my twin! For her death, I want revenge more than any of us!”

“No, Apollo,” Ares countered. With nothing left to lose and all Olympians his captive audience Ares finished his business on Olympus with a great flourish as he laid the last of his hidden cards on the table for all to see. “What you wanted
was Artemis
. You wanted her for
yourself
, you always did,” Ares leveled the charge in a very clear and very strong voice.

“You lie!” Apollo shot back.

“Do I?” Ares looked to his Father. “Didn’t you ever wonder why, at the tender age of six, Artemis came to you and asked you…begged you…to help her to stay chaste throughout her life?” Zeus did not answer right away, he just stood there staring at Ares. “What does a six year old girl know of sex, Father? What should she know? Nothing! But YOU…you…” he turned back to Apollo. “She ran to Zeus but she was afraid to tell her Father what you did, so she asked him to keep her chaste instead. To keep her safe from
you!
“

“Shut up, Ares! You know nothing!”

“I know you put your fingers where they didn’t belong,” Ares snarled. “Didn’t you? That one,” he pointed at Aphrodite, “is a vain bitch but you give Narcissus a run for his money, Apollo. You wanted Artemis for yourself, not because you loved her, but because she was part of you. The
best
part of you. She was your twin. The closest you could get to having sex with yourself without using the palm of your hand.”

“SHUT UP!” Apollo’s voice rumbled through the Great Council Chamber, but Ares would not be silent any longer. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t I? Really? Do you have any idea how many times Artemis came to me and cried over it? How many times she came to me weeping because you had tried to touch her. To seduce her. Any idea at all how hard it’s been for me not to kill you all these years?”

“It’s a lie!” Apollo shouted. “We all know he’s a liar! Nothing but lies ever slip from his forked tongue!”

Ares didn’t listen, he had the stage and the ear of everyone around him and he wasn’t going to give it up. Artemis was long gone and Ares vindicated in her death. It was time Zeus knew just what kind of a monster Apollo was. “By the grace of the Gods, you couldn’t bring yourself to force her, too much like raping yourself I would imagine. In your jealousy, you chased away every chance at happiness that came her way.”

“This is more than I can bear,” Zeus cried out as he threw his hands in the air in disbelief. Secrets were common among Olympians, big secrets, when they did something it was never small. This would rock Olympus for centuries to come. “I’ll deal with you later, Apollo and you as well, Eros. In the meantime, Ares, you
will
take your new bitch to Cernunnos.”

“NO!” Alena cried. “Please, my Lord Ares…don’t.”

“You will! You will take her to him, you will turn her over to him, you will do whatever you have to gain his confidence and find out what he has done with Artemis’ soul, and then you will kill him! Do this for me, my Son, I will return what is yours: your crown, your scepter, your place at this table, and your home here on Olympus.”

Alena’s eyes widened with terror when Ares began to nod. “No, you promised,” she whispered in horror. “You swore. Even if I mean nothing to you, surely your word means something.”
However insignificant.
“Please don’t take me to him.”

“You should return these things to me regardless.” Ares stood there considering her words for a moment. Ares came here with every intention of using this situation to regain his position on Olympus if he could, but now he found the price too high and that his desire to return to Olympus had waned. “If it is vengeance you want, I will get it for Artemis. Yet, if you won’t be satisfied until Alena’s blood spills then you can keep all that belongs to me; I don’t want it. It’s not worth it.”

A stunned silence fell over the Great Council Chamber as all bickering stopped and all eyes turned to Ares. “He’s in love with her,” Hera whispered.

“What is love, Mother? A concept made up by the Mortals so they can feel fulfilled. As most of you love to point out, I have no heart. Why don’t we just call it Justice? That is what I seek for my sister and she would abhor the idea of spilling Alena’s blood when Alena was the only one in this room brave and strong enough to stand up for Artemis. The rest of us, including me, failed her.” Ares looked down at Alena who was cowering in the chair with her knees drawn up to her chin.
I will not fail you, no matter what it costs me; I will not fail you, Alena.
He didn’t know what would happen when he held his hand out to her but Ares was very pleased when she took it and slid off the chair to stand next to him on wobbly legs. “When I am done, Father, when I have exacted Vengeance and Justice for Artemis, I will return here with Cernunnos’ head. In the meantime, this is my woman, she pledged herself to me,” Ares announced as he pushed her behind him with one hand and drew the sword with the other. “If any of you try to come near me or what’s mine again I will not hesitate to ignore my Father’s Law and kill you.” Keeping the gaze of all in the room Ares began to walk backward with Alena close behind him. When they reached the door, he laid his hand upon the knob, opened it, and then he scooped her up so that Alena perched in the crook in of his arm like an exotic bird. “Stay away if you know what’s good for you.”

Chapter Sixteen

Tell Me Baby, Do You Need My Love

1

Ares was in a foul mood and suffering from a splitting headache when he arrived back on the island with Alena. “Go inside,” he said gruffly and pointed toward the cliffs and the cave above.

“Ares—“

“Please, Alena, just do as I ask. Go.”

She didn’t want to leave him here alone on the beach, but it didn’t appear Ares wanted company, not hers anyway. In the face of his Father and the other Olympians, Ares stood tall and strong. He’d come to her aid just as he said he would and kept his promise. Alena was stunned. When Zeus said he would return Ares’ property and his station to him, she felt sure the God of War would sell her down the river. She wanted to thank him, wanted to ask why he had done it but she held her tongue. “Yes, my Lord.” Hiking up the hem of the dress, she turned to make her way up the long strange stairs leading from the beach to the top of the cliff. With a heavy heart, she walked a few steps until she got to the base of the stairs and there she turned around. Ares was sitting on the sand facing the water and the setting sun. He had thrown off the belt with the heavy sword and his thick leather vest; they were in the sand next to him as he sat there with his head down in his hands. She could not leave him there. Quietly coming up behind him, Alena sat down, wrapped one arm over his left shoulder and the other under his right lacing her fingers together and pulling him backward. Alena expected him to balk or to fight, but instead Ares settled backward into her arms, rested his head in the crook between her neck and shoulder as he let out an exhausted sigh. “I’m sorry I’m so much trouble, my Lord,” she whispered as she nestled her face into his hair.

Letting the softness of her touch and the warmth of her body comfort him, Ares closed his eyes and drew in the peaceful shelter she offered. “It’s not you. It’s Them.”

The Olympians were quite the Divinely Dysfunctional Family. Alena had never seen or heard so much bitter bickering from one clan. If that was her Family, she might be damn happy that she lived in Exile on a beautiful island such as this. “They’re awful,” she whispered in his ear, careful not to let any prying ears overhear. Ares gave out a deep chuckle and then another sigh as his hand rose up to caress her arm. She thought of how brave, how daring, and even dashing, Ares had been as he stood there telling all of them they could not have her. When she listened to him speak of Artemis, Alena nearly cried. Then she had been stunned into silence having expected the God of War to hand her over, maybe not with ease but readily enough, in return for his crown and scepter. “Thank you for keeping your promise.”

“You expected this chauvinistic pig to do less,” Ares mused, still with his eyes closed. “Everyone does.”

Under her hands, beneath the thick pad of fur her fingers were twirling, Alena felt the steady beat of his heart. It too was brave and strong. “Why did you do it?”

Last night, Ares indulged himself in the pleasures Alena had to offer not in the name of any barter. Not for any affection. Just simply because the opportunity arose and he took it as he always did. Come morning, Ares expected that he would turn her over to the Olympians in exchange for those things so wrongfully taken from him. For all her intrigue and mystery, she was still disposable. Unimportant. Superfluous. For centuries all he thought about was going home, and when the chance finally fell into his lap, Ares thought it was a Gift from the Gods.

Yet when Zeus unknowingly presented all of them with irrefutable proof of Ares’ innocence, he had the gall to make more demands upon him instead of lifting Ares’ exile. It wasn’t that Ares minded going to War, it was after all his Thing. He wanted revenge for Artemis as much as much as any of them. Couldn’t Zeus see that? Surely he did, he must know this much about his Son. It was then that Ares realized none of it was about Justice, just Power. Nothing ever changed on Olympus. Standing there in the Great Chamber, Ares started wondering why he even wanted to go back to Olympus. Why return to all of that bickering and backstabbing when he could stay on his island with her?

Last night she was expendable. Tonight that was no longer the case and he wasn’t sure where the tide turned or even how it had done so. Ares understood that Vindication wasn’t the Gift the Gods sent him; Alena was. With five thousand years behind him and, if all went well, another four or five thousand ahead of him, Ares was too old to mince words, too old to play stupid or coy. He wondered how much time his pretty little Fey had ahead of her. “I’d rather have one night with you here on my island than ten thousand more nights with them on Olympus.”

“And still I am alone except when I’m with you. Then I am whole, no longer restless, and no longer weary.” In her arms, Ares turned around quickly, put his arms around her, and brought her down to the warm sand. Staring into those stormy eyes Ares couldn’t hold the words back any longer. “I love you, Alena.”

Alena closed her eyes as his words washed over her. “Yet you told them that you don’t love me,” Alena prodded, keeping the bulk and warmth of him close.

Ares opened his eyes as he tilted his head upward to look at her. “I don’t recall saying that. Do you?”

Alena opened her mouth to speak but then closed it once more. No, he had not told Hera that he did not love her. Ares said he had no heart. That was a lie, he had a heart, and she could feel it beating away under her hand working its way deeper and deeper into her soul with every pulse. It seemed he had quite the slippery way with words. “I see you’re an excellent strategist, my Lord.”

“I know you think I’m a brute, an ogre, who can’t stop living in days of old when men owned their women. It’s not true,” Ares mumbled. “I don’t own the women here and I do not own you but I am charged with protecting all of you. If I hadn’t said and done the things that I did, Alena, my Family would have been able to keep you on Olympus until the day you died if that’s what they wanted. That is not what I want.”

“Very tricky, very slick,” Alena complimented. Yes, she had been scared out of her mind listening to the way Ares spoke about her, as though she were chattel and not even present in the room. Now she could see that his old chauvinistic ways had some merit, a definite method to the madness.

“I am not tricking you now, so listen to me; I
love
you, Magdalena, you hold my heart in your hands. I have never felt anything like this in my life. Nothing this strong and undeniable except battle. Battle is not warm, it is not soft, and it is not peaceful. I can’t bear the mere idea of being without you. Tell me you feel the same. Not because you have to, not because of some silly spell you think you live under.”

“I fell in love with you the instant I saw you.” Alena wrapped her arms around his bare torso as the faint memory of her first night on the island came to her mind. Vaguely she remembered opening her tired eyes, seeing his handsome face over her. She remembered kissing him and telling him that she loved him. “You’re everything I never knew I needed.”

“Then I am right; one night with you
is
worth more than ten thousand nights on Olympus without you.” She was everything he had ever wanted and more. Ares was going to enjoy taking his time in showing her all of the secrets of making love and reveling in being the only man she would ever lay with. Such a gift was rare indeed and he should treat it with great reverence. “You will never want for anything. I will lay this world at your feet and pray to all of the Gods that it is enough to keep you by my side.”