Flame's Embrace

by Pillar, Amanda

  If I kept to myself and trained in one of the private rooms, maybe I could get away without being seen. I decided to go in after all.

  When I pushed the door open, someone was working over the punching bag and by the quick succession of jabs, it was someone serious about what they were doing. The blows were hard, too. I could hear it in the way they connected with the bag.

  It wasn’t one of the humans, that much I knew. Which meant it was one of the guys.

  A small part of me wished it would be Heracles, back for some reason, here to give me advice and help me tire myself out to the point of collapse. But I knew I wasn’t going to see him when I turned the corner.

  Ares’ back was turned to me. His short, cropped hair was dark in the dim light and he moved around the punching bag on the balls of his feet, lithe and dangerous like the warrior he was. I watched him for a while, seeing him as a stranger might. Everything about him was attractive but in an unreachable away.

  How had it happened that we’d ended up together at all? It was a mystery. If there ever was a lone wolf, it was Ares.

  “Are you just going to stand there watching me?” he asked without turning around.

  “I was wondering if I should join you,” I admitted.

  “Please do.” He looked over his shoulder and his green eyes were practically glowing the color of jade. He stopped the punching bag from swinging after his last hit and held on to it with two hands. I knew what those hands felt like, how he could hold me in the same way and I would tremble at his touch.

  “Why are you so nonchalant about all of this?” I blurted out. I couldn’t help myself.

  “About Mount Olympus?” He shrugged, his lips pinching when I nodded. “The gods are full of shit. But you’ve noticed that, I’m sure.”

  He was right, they were.

  “Don’t you care where I go?”

  “Of course I do,” Ares said. “But I don’t own you. So it’s pointless enforcing what I want. You should do what’s right for you.”

  It was very noble, but his nonchalance still bugged me. Was he not going to fight for me? I wanted a man who was independent and Ares was the epitome of independence. But he was also detached and I didn’t know if I wanted that. Then again, I couldn’t help but feel like a walking contradiction.

  “Are we fighting or what?” he asked.

  I nodded and walked toward him. We might as well.

  We faced each other, sinking into battle stances. I was angry, frustrated, and I was the first to strike. I could see the way it affected Ares. He liked a good fight and when I started it, he reacted. It’d always been that way between us.

  “What if I don’t want to leave?” I asked in between punches. Ares blocked a hit that would have landed on his throat and tried to jab me in the ribs, a move I sidestepped easily.

  “Then don’t leave,” he said.

  I shook my head and ducked to avoid a kick. I spun around and kicked Ares’s leg out from underneath him. He hit the mat hard.

  “You’re more important than what we want,” he got up from the mat.

  “But you’ve never told me what you want.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t know what he wants,” Poseidon said, appearing in the training center from thin air.

  Ares rolled his eyes. “Don’t start with me. I’m in the mood for a fight and you can’t face me.”

  “Try me,” Poseidon snarled.

  I didn’t like that they were all pitted against each other now. It was like this whole thing had caused a rift between us. Was that what Hera had wanted? Because she was a bitch and I wouldn’t put that beneath her. Maybe she was just fucking with me so that my life was hell and it didn’t matter to her either way where I ended up.

  The idea just pissed me off, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek until it hurt.

  “Why do you insist on me going to Mount Olympus?” I asked Poseidon.

  I’d come here to forget about all my woes, to get away from everything and just train as hard as I could, but two of the guys were here now and I wanted to know what they were thinking. Might as well have it out once and for all.

  “Because you’re a goddess now. It’s not right that you live among the humans. You’re more than that.”

  “The humans are not good enough?” I asked.

  Poseidon sighed. “How can I explain it…? They’re just a blip on the radar, a hiccup in the sands of time. If you consider how long we live and what we deal with every day, they’re so inconsequential.”

  “Elyse was a human,” Ares pointed out just as I thought the same thing.

  “And you were perfectly happy staying here and being with me. Or what was that all about, if you think I was so inconsequential?”

  “You misunderstand,” Poseidon said.

  “Do I?” I asked, hating that we were having this argument when I just wanted to be in their arms and not worry about anything else. But that was me hiding from the problems, and if I learned one thing from Hades, it was that running from troubles only made them worse.

  “I think you just want her all to yourself, bro,” Ares said.

  Fuck, he was needling Poseidon. And it was working, too. It was unnecessary. The gods had always been fine sharing. Even Hades and Poseidon, the two brothers who’d fallen for the same woman, had managed to make their peace about this. Why was Ares making this a thing again?

  “I just think it’s where you belong,” Poseidon finally said.

  I shook my head. This was getting out of hand. Poseidon was showing a side of himself I didn’t like.

  They all were, in fact. Except Apollo, who seemed to be on par with what I was thinking.

  It was starting to feel like no matter what I chose, I was going to lose something. Or someone. Or all of them. How had this happened? Until now, no matter what had gone wrong, it had always been us against the world. X, the humans, Zeus and his shit with Apollo’s banishment, it had all been the kind of thing that the gods shared with me, that we did together.

  For the first time, it seemed like a line had been drawn and three of them were on the other side of it.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, flopping down on the mat onto my ass. “I’m not going to win, no matter what I decide.”

  “Sometimes that’s the curse of being a god,” Poseidon said as if he were giving a speech.

  “Yeah, thanks for that, Poseidon.” I sounded as snappy as I felt.

  “Elyse,” Ares said softly, and it affected my mood in a good way. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Even though Poseidon was pissed off, he nodded. He agreed on that, too. At least some of them were happy with me calling the shots, even though Hades still wasn’t on board.

  He was the first one I was going to lose, I realized.

  And the pain in my chest was ridiculous, my throat tightening. I just broke through to him and now he would be out of my life again. I could barely breathe. Fuck, tears were watering in my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said to Ares. And I really meant it, because he was trying.

  It just really wasn’t that simple.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke up the next morning to the feeling of someone watching me. Not someone, something.

  When I lifted my head, I jumped in my bed. A woman sat on the chair, long legs crossed over each other and golden hair braided over one shoulder. Her beady eyes were what really got me.

  “Hera,” I said, sitting up in bed, trying not to let her realize how nervous she made me.

  “I’ve never understood the concept of sleeping.” She looked amused, her perfectly shaped brows arching. “I would have thought that as a new goddess, you might have shaken the habit, but it looks like you really did need to recharge.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  She stood up from the chair and sauntered around the room, wearing her pearlescent Greek style dress wrapped around her perf
ect figure. She ran her finger over the windowsill and checked it as if to see if I had cleaned properly. I stiffened and didn’t want the bitch touching my stuff. I was very aware of her breasts in her dress as she moved around. She oozed sex appeal, but it was the kind that irritated me. It made me feel inadequate somehow.

  And I hated to be made to feel inadequate. It wasn’t my game, I liked to be on top. Ha. Damn, she was getting to me.

  “What’s time, really?” she asked, and I realized she was responding to my question. She wasn’t answering me, but I guessed it was better than nothing.

  Yeah, that meant she’d been watching me for a long time.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it your custom to offer me something to drink after I traveled to get here?”

  She’d probably zapped into my room which didn’t count as traveling, but I sighed. She was supposed to be some kind of divine royalty.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked dryly. “Or water?”

  “No, thank you. I can’t stand the food on this planet.” She scrunched her nose as if she might be sick.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes and kept the sarcasm out of my voice when I spoke again. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” I didn’t even sound as irritated as I felt. Point for me.

  “I was wondering when you were planning on joining us on Mount Olympus,” she said. “We’ve been awaiting you.”

  “I haven’t decided if it’s what I want to do yet.”

  “My darling.” Hera stopped and turned slightly toward me, looking at me with a shocked expression. “I didn’t realize you thought it was optional.”

  “I am not going to be forced into something.” My voice rose. “And if I don’t want to live there, I’m not going to do it.”

  Hera’s face changed. She’d gone from seemingly bored to shocked and motherly to bitch-from-hell. Because the woman in front of me suddenly looked like she was going to take my head off. Her eyes were fiery red and her whole body trembled. I sensed her power humming on my skin like tiny pinpricks and what I felt from her didn’t resemble the concept of a goddess of marriage and childbirth. At all.

  This woman was terrifying.

  “You dare reject an invitation from the gods, you lowly ingrate? You came to Mount Olympus with your impure blood thinking you have the right to call the shots when you are nothing more than a product of Zeus’ pity on a race that was already pathetic at its conception.”

  Swallowing down the fury bubbling in my chest, I held myself together. “As far as I know, I’m one of you.” I remained cool and collected, but on the inside I was a raging inferno. I pictured myself jumping the hag and scratching her eyes out. It’d be an ugly clawing catfight, not even a dignified act of war.

  “You will never be one of us,” Hera snarled with a voice that sounded a hell of a lot like X’s, which wasn’t something I wanted to think too hard about. That memory had me clenching my fists.

  “Well, then it won’t be a problem if I don’t join you on Mount Olympus.”

  Hera looked like she was going to blow up, her face reddening, her shoulders curling forward. I wondered if I would have to scrape pieces of goddess off my wall when this was done. But instead of losing her shit, she simply disappeared.

  Thank fuck.

  I inhaled deeply and let the breath out slowly, trying to pull myself back together. I was so angry, I felt like I could blow up. But she wasn’t worth the effort it took to be this upset. I just had to forget about her. She had done nothing but make my life hell the last week or so. And it wasn’t the first time she had done that. Hades had gone through shit because of her, too.

  And that wasn’t even with a pun intended.

  I was about to get back into bed when a sound from the living room made me groan.

  “Whoever the fuck is out there, I’m not in the mood,” I called.

  Hades stalked through my bedroom door, dressed all in black, and damn, he looked smoking hot.

  “God, I don’t have the time for this shit!”

  “Calm down, Elyse,” he retorted. He didn’t sound pissed, which was an improvement. Before he would have gotten as angry as me and we’d have it out. It didn’t even sound half bad. I wanted to have it out with someone.

  But then we would end up fucking and I couldn’t let him in like that when I was still so mad at him.

  “Just get out of here.” I suddenly sounded tired. Well, mood swings—check.

  “Can we talk?” Hades asked, his voice tame and a soft expression on his face. His dark eyes were pleading, and they touched me deep inside like they always did. I couldn’t stay mad at him for long. “I want to make it right.”

  “No pomegranate to trick me?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Stop, Elyse.” The way he said my name so seriously made me sit up and take notice. He surprised me a lot lately. “I’m here to help.”

  “Hera paid me a visit,” I said. “And she’s making it pretty damn clear that I’m not allowed to stay on Earth, even if I want to. After she told me what a piece of shit I am.”

  Hades shook his head, grumbling under his breath. “Don’t listen to the bitch. I can’t stand her.”

  “I know,” I added. “And I’m starting to understand why. But, I mean, I know the why of it all.”

  Hades nodded. “I wanted to tell you that you’re allowed to choose whatever you want if you walk the same road that Heracles did.”

  “What?”

  Hades sat down on my bed. “He chose to stay on Earth.”

  I nodded, aware of that. “And Zeus trapped him in the curse of watching over my bloodline for the rest of his life. Which is a hell of a long time for a demigod.”

  “He asked for the job,” Hades added.

  “He did?” I’d always assumed it was Zeus who’d forced him into the role to help humans. “Why?”

  “Because he knew what you Lowes could do. But that’s not the point. The point is, if you choose something with the courage of your conviction, the gods can do nothing about it. Humans have been given free will. And you were human once, as was Heracles. Which means that your free will is your secret weapon against us.”

  I’d never thought the gods had some kind of weakness, that the humans could have the upper hand somehow. It didn’t make sense. But in a way… it actually did.

  “So I need to know for a fact that this is where I want to stay, right? And then it will be fine?”

  Hades nodded. “But then you really have to know without a sliver of doubt.”

  Yeah, and therein lay the problem. I still didn’t know for a fact because I wanted my four men around me. Although, after seeing Hera lose her shit in my room, I was just about convinced that Mount Olympus wasn’t the place for me.

  “Am I meant to march up to Zeus and tell him this?” I was unsure how I felt about that, considering they had invited me, and gods were arrogant asses sometimes. But this was also about my happiness after everything I’d gone through.

  “No need,” a voice boomed from outside, accompanied by a crack of thunder and lightning lighting up even the inside of my apartment. I flinched from the noise.

  Zeus was here. Was he still pissed?

  “No better time than the present,” Hades confirmed with a shrug that was far too nonchalant because I was shitting myself. Zeus sounded furious and he’d never been this angry at me. Not even when I’d stood up to him. But I supposed Hades was right. This was my chance to stand my ground, to claim what I wanted and not waver back and forth.

  Hades took my hand and kissed my knuckles, his eyes burning into me.

  “Together,” he said.

  “Why are you being so nice about this?” I asked, willing myself to not fall under his spell and just do anything he said so I could jump into his arms quicker.

  “Because I love you and I want you happy. I don’t want to lose you and I know that sometimes there are differe
nt ways to lose people than them walking away.”

  Right then was when my heart melted. Hades always surprised me. Always. But this was by far the nicest thing he’d ever said or done to me. And we’d been through Hell and back, literally, fought each other, fucked our brains out, hated one another—but we always came back together for a reason. We were meant to be.

  “Together,” I said, squeezing his hand. We were going to do this.

  Hades poofed us outside so we were in the street, where Zeus stood in the middle of the road in all his furious glory, white fabric draped around his torso and over a shoulder. His silvery hair was like silk and it flew around his head as if he were electrically charged. Lightning and fiery flames danced from his fingertips. His eyes were white, without pupils or irises, and he was scary as fuck.

  I trembled, and not much scared me, but this here undid me. Hades squeezed my hand, reminding me I wasn’t alone here. He wasn’t running away but was standing tall by my side.

  “You turned down our proposition,” Zeus growled in a voice that sounded like thunder itself. The fire flicked and lengthened across his fingers. “Have you forgotten who gave you life?”

  “I haven’t forgotten my roots,” I replied. “But I haven’t forgotten who I am, either.”

  Zeus let out a roar and thunder shook the world around us, the ground quivering under my bare feet.

  Suddenly, Apollo was next to me. And then Ares appeared, too. And lastly, Poseidon stepped up. I smiled to have my four men with me.

  “You’re here,” I said to Poseidon. “Why?”

  “I smelled a fight and I thought I would jump in on the action.”

  “I’m staying here on Earth,” I declared, my voice strong and decision made.

  Poseidon put his hand at the back of my neck and kissed me, hard.

  “I guess I am too, then,” he breathed against my mouth.

  They were all here for me. And they agreed with what I wanted, none of them trying to change my mind, but rather smiling in approval. When I glanced at Ares, dressed in battle gear, he nodded at me too. And so did Apollo before him and Ares fist-bumped.