OF WAR Anthology Novels 1-3

by Lisa Beth Darling

  “Stin iyia mas!”

  After taking the first sip, Zeus handed the chalice off to Apollo who then handed it to Alena—who always felt funny about taking her sip and so, generally, only pretended to do—who handed it to Eros. The others quietly waited to take their turn drinking from the cup making its way around the table. When the chalice finally made its way back to Zeus, he sat and Aglaia began filling his plate with items he pointed to with a greedy finger. His plate full, the rest were then free to partake of the feast, each with a Muse or a Grace to assist them with everything from putting the food onto their plate, to cutting their meat, filling their chalices when they were empty, and if asked to do so actually feeding the Olympian they were attending that evening.

  They ate as though food was going to stop being made as of tomorrow. The food was delicious, truly first rate, but each of them—to one degree or another—simply dove in and started shoveling it down. No thought for fat or calories or even how full one was getting. Being Olympians, Alena understood they didn’t have to worry about mundane things such exercise, fat and calories, but the sheer amount they threw down was astounding. No human stomach could possibly hold that much without being violently ill, and yet there they were like pigs to the trough. Not once did any of them ever pat their stomachs at the end of a meal and groan about how full they were or they couldn’t eat another bite while discreetly undoing their belt a notch. They could always eat another bite; in fact, when it came to dessert and the Ambrosia served after it, it seemed one more bite was mandatory.

  To feast with zest and zeal was one thing, but for all of their Opulence and Power the Olympians were far less civilized at the dinner table than the people of Ceres Agar were after three days with no food. Except for Ares, who understood how to use the knife and fork present next to his plate, the others simply grabbed at the banquet with their bare hands or instructed a Muse or a Grace to do it for them.

  Dinner with the In-Laws—always such a treat.

  “It’s delicious, Great Mother,” Alena complimented quietly and very politely after taking her second forkful of roasted lamb. She knew that Hera hadn’t cooked anything served tonight or any other night. No, Hera either conjured it up with her magick or had her servants do it all for her. Part of Alena held that fact in very low regard. Looking away from Hera and back to Ares, behind him her eyes sadly fell upon Thalia, Muse of Comedy. The irony of the God of War being attended to by the Muse of Comedy wasn’t lost on Alena, and she might have cracked a smile or given out an unwilling blush of color if it hadn’t been for the fact that she found herself loathing the Olympians for turning such graceful and divine creatures into lowly hand servants.

  “Thank you, Alena,” Hera said in a proud tone just as though she’d spent days preparing the feast.

  Before Alena had time to realize the words were in her head, they were out of her mouth. “You must give me the recipe.”

  Ares froze, forkful of shrimp and feta halfway to his open mouth, his eyes alone turning from his plate to his Mother, to his Wife, and back to his Mother as the rest of the eyes in the room followed suit.

  Delicately finishing her own fingerful of lamb, Hera swallowed hard, waited while Calliope dabbed the grease and a spot of mint jelly from between the corners of her mouth before taking a drink of Nectar. If the comment came from Aphrodite, Hera would have taken great exception. Alena spent her entire life in the Mortal World, even when she was in captivity in Cernunnos’ Keep; such small talk was expected and considered proper etiquette among the Mortals. “I’ll see what I can do about that,” she remarked coolly as she settled her chalice onto the black marble table.

  Alena turned her eyes back to her plate not knowing if she should mutter the customary ‘thank you’ or not. She just took up another forkful of food and quietly slipped it into her mouth, feeling the weight of her Husband’s disbelieving stare.

  A deep and authoritative voice broke the heavy silence. “You cook for him?” Zeus broke off a bit of crust from the bread in his hand and shoveled it into his wrinkled mouth as he stared at her.

  Looking up at Ares, Alena was speechless. Zeus never addressed her; in fact, he hadn’t spoken a single word to her since before Ares and he left for the Underworld so many months ago. Rising from hunching over his plate, Ares gave her a slight nod. Her heart and digesting stomach aflutter, Alena felt that rush of color break out on her face as she put down her fork and answered, “Yes, Great Father, I do.” Then she realized that was only half the truth and stammered, “I did, up un-til…” Her brain started to short out, and Alena started to panic. “A—a…well,” she couldn’t find the word and the more she reached for it the more it danced just out of her grasp, and Zeus stared at her with his old eyes boring through her. The rush of color in her cheeks went from a feminine blush to a deep crimson and she broke out in light beads of sweat. She grabbed the first word that offered her rescue. “Ri-right-righteously…I did.”

  Damn it! Not righteously. That was totally wrong.

  Yet, strangely enough, on some deeper level, it felt right.

  Then the word popped into her grasp. “Recently,” she said clearly but quietly, “until recently, I did.”

  At the head of the table, Zeus nodded. “It’s too difficult for you to stand at a stove doing menial labor now, is it?”

  By the clearing of Ares’ throat, Alena understood that he wanted her to just agree with Zeus and let it go. “S-some-thing like that.”

  “But not exactly?” Zeus prodded.

  “No.”

  Ares interrupted, “She cooks for me because she loves me and because she likes to cook. Is that all right with you, Father?”

  Zeus’ cracked lips slowly broke out into a wide grin and those ancient blue eyes took on a devilish sparkle. “Oh, she’s got you whipped, hasn’t she, boy?”

  “I’m not a boy,” Ares challenged and across from him watched as Eros pursed his lips at him with a hint of satisfaction. “I’m not whipped.”

  “Oh yes you are,” Zeus countered, “look at how you jumped in to defend her.”

  “She’s my Wife, Father. What kind of Husband would I be if I didn’t come to my Wife’s aid?” Ares tossed his napkin onto his full plate and sat back in his chair. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, if I did that…I’d be you.”

  Letting out a snort but not commenting on Ares snide remark, Zeus turned back to Alena. “You treat him like any other man? Like a Mortal?”

  Alena didn’t understand the question. “I treat him…” she looked over to Ares for the answer but he didn’t seem to have it either, “like my Husband.”

  “You cook for him? You clean for him? You fuck him?” Zeus challenged in rapid fire but gave Alena a second to let it sink in while he downed the last bit of bread in his hand. “You’re not his Wife, you’re his slave, but somehow you became the master, and that one doesn’t even realize it. Typical.”

  Raven started squirming inside her the same way Alena wanted to squirm in her seat as she sat under the scrutiny of the God of Gods. “Typical? Of what? W-women?”

  “Your kind of woman,” he spat. “A dark soulless Celtic whore, ensnarer and enchanter of men. What did you do? Cast a spell on him?”

  “That’s enough, Father,” Ares said sternly. “You say nothing to my Wife for months and then this filth is what comes out of your mouth?”

  “I quite agree,” Hera interjected from her place at the head of the table.

  “It’s my table,” Zeus reminded them. “And she didn’t answer. Answer!” His old but sturdy fist crashed down upon the marble table causing the banquet to jiggle and chalices to fall.

  “No! What…what do you think I am?” Alena stammered as Raven rolled and she put her hands on her stomach. “I would never hurt my Husband, I would never trick or de-de-dis-dissect him.”

  “You’d have a hard time actually cutting through all that muscle, don’t you think?” Zeus shot back, even though he was aware of what she’d meant to say. “What’s wrong
with you, little witch? Is your mind deceiving you these days?”

  A very loud growl brought the attention of everyone seated to Ares as he turned away from Alena and toward Zeus with his teeth bared. “What do you know of it?”

  “I’m not a witch, I’m a Fey,” Alena reminded him. “I’m Human.”

  “Fae,” the word slithered from Zeus’ lips as though it were oozing poison, “I know, so why don’t you tell him?” Zeus pointed to Ares as he smiled a little wider, popped a cherry tomato into his mouth and bit down, a dribble of juice running between his lips and down to his white beard.

  Despite the candles and the cheerily burning hearth, the temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. It was in the way Zeus uttered the word ‘Fey’, so like he said ‘Celt’, but with more loathing. “I’m a Fey,” Alena asserted, “F-E-Y. Not a Fae, F-A-E.” If Zeus thought she was a Fae then that might explain his hatred of her. Faes were among the most beautiful creatures ever to walk the earth and they were notoriously evil. Their simultaneous hatred for and lust of men knew no bounds; neither did their cunning. “They…they are…distant, very distant, Cousins to us. We are not like them,” she stammered in a whisper.

  “No?” Zeus leaned forward with purpose as he looked past Apollo to stare directly at Alena. “Your kind still come from the same place.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Hera asked. “You think she’s of the Dark Kingdom?”

  Those at the table gasped before they began talking at once and interjecting their opinions.

  “That would explain a lot about her, don’t you think?” Apollo asked snidely as he looked at Aphrodite.

  “Yes, it would,” she agreed readily. “It would certainly explain how you managed to get tall, dark and gruesome to fall in love with you. And why you love him back.”

  “Only a witch from the Dark Kingdom could fall in love with War,” Athena said quietly. “Or at least make him think she did.”

  Spurred on by the shouting around them, Raven started doing summersaults inside her and Alena grabbed the table, the pain in her abdomen pushing her to rise but….

  …Get out…

  The voice was clear as day as it echoed in her head. The clarity of it forced her the small way back to her chair in disbelief.

  “Quiet!” Ares roared. “I’ve had enough of this, Father. My Wife is not a witch, she is not a seductress from the Dark Kingdom sent to worm her way into the Olympian fold.”

  “No? Tell me, Magdalena, are you hearing the voice and the thoughts of that little bastard you’re carrying? Do they echo in your head? What do they say?”

  “All women talk to the babies they carry,” Alena countered, trying to remain calm even though Raven was punching and kicking with much force. She looked to Hera and Aphrodite for back up and found it reflected in their eyes.

  “But yours talks back, doesn’t it?” He didn’t have to hear her answer; Zeus saw the agreement in her eyes and on her ashen face. “That’s a trait not found among the Fey of the Golden Lands but among your kind. Witch.”

  …Get out…

  “No,” Alena gasped quietly, wanting nothing more than to heed the voice in her head and waddle her way out of here just as fast as she could. “This happens to all women,” she stuttered as her eyes grew distant and her attention held captive by the tiny voice in her mind. To her regret, the eyes of the mothers around her turned sad as their heads ever so slightly moved from side to side and Hera and Aphrodite locked their gazes.

  All right, maybe it didn’t happen to all women, but Alena wasn’t all women. There were many things about her that were different and that could explain this odd phenomenon, but above all else this insult to her family, her ancestors, and her good name couldn’t go unchallenged. She couldn’t let Ares take up the sword for her. Those of the Fae, of the old spelling, who lived underground, beneath trees and rocks in the ever-glittering Dark Kingdom and those of the new spelling, who lived on top of the earth, in the trees, and walked in the light turned their backs on each other well over a thousand years before Alena was born. “Though I wasn’t raised there very long, I was born in my village,” Alena said, her voice growing a little stronger as she tapped her finger on the table rapidly for emphasis even as her brain started to fill with a dense fog. “My…mother…Maven was born and raised there, in the Golden Lands. My father was N-n-Norman MacLeod, a human man. My gr-gr-grand-mah-ther came from the village.”

  Waving a hand amiably in the air to indicate he had no argument with what she’d just said, Zeus took a sip of Nectar and watched with a keen eye as Alena did the same. “Your grandmother, Morrowind, tell us more about her.”

  …Get out…You don’t belong here….

  With her hands now rubbing her belly and her breath hitching in her throat, she turned her eyes to Ares, who was staring back at her with just as much intense curiosity as the rest of them.

  Morrowind.

  Alena could recite her father’s ancestry back five generations, but her knowledge of Maven’s began and ended with Morrowind and, unfortunately, Cernunnos. “She was of my village.”

  Sitting back in his chair Zeus motioned for Aglaia to refill his chalice, drinking nearly half of the contents before he settled far into the chair. “That’s it? She was of your village. Who were her parents? What did they do?”

  The sumptuous dinner began churning in her stomach along with Raven and all she wanted to do was heed the voice and get out of there. “It’s not true. It’s not.”

  Eros broke the little parlay between his stepmother and his Grandfather. “Yes, Zeus, what proof do you have of any of this? Show us.”

  Ares’ upper lip curled into a snarl when his Son jumped to Alena’s defense before he did. What right did Eros have to do that? “If you have any, Father, now’s the time, otherwise…” his head lolled to the left on his brawny shoulder as though his neck had no bone, “shut up.”

  From his place at the head of the table, Zeus smiled again. All of them were waiting for him to step up and lay a trump card on the table. Problem was he didn’t have one. All he had were suspicions, tons of them. “Granddaughter to Cernunnos, you lived with him, you had him inside you,” it came out as a delighted sneer that made Alena’s blood run cold, “do you really think such a monster would choose a Fey from the Golden Lands to breed with? What could such a pitiful creature ever offer the Lord of the Forest or his offspring? Why would he fight so hard and search so long for you? Why did you have the power to make all of his dark dreams come true if you’re so innocent, if you’re from the Golden Lands?” Leaning forward as far as he could, Zeus continued. “Your presence at my table offends me, witch. You eat of my food but only pretend to drink from my cup. The fact that you live on my Mountain and that you have vexed my Son—turned him into your little pussy-whipped puppy—makes the Ichor in my veins boil. Nothing causes me more agony than knowing you’re carrying that mud-blood.”

  The word brought an instant reaction from Raven in the form a kick so hard her plate bounced on the marble table.

  “Mud-blood,” Zeus said again but louder and with more conviction and gave an evil grin when the table jumped again and Alena let out a cry of pain. “It will never belong here; never have a place among the Olympians. It’s an outcast like its wicked witch mother! It will never be one of us!”

  Eros and Ares stood at the same time. Ares reached across the table for his Father’s throat while Eros stood guard over Alena. Zeus backed away just out of Ares’ grasp and watched with that hideous old grin as Ares’ brawny arms flailed in the air, his finger stretching and clawing the air an inch before Zeus’ face. “She doesn’t have an evil bone in her body!” Ares railed. “Is your hatred for me so deep and burning that you would spread these malicious lies about my Wife? A woman who has done nothing to you? Who stood up for the Olympians even when that traitorous bitch handed her over to Cernunnos like chattel? You’re pathetic, Father.”

  “You’re pitiful, Ares. You too, Eros,” Zeus spa
t without having looked up at his Grandson. “She blinded you with that fake innocence and charm. You don’t fool me, witch. I know what you are.”

  Zeus disappeared from the head of the table.

  The evening in shambles, the other Olympians swiftly departed the Grand Palace to gather and gossip in small factions.

  Chapter Three

  We Belong Together

  Ares pulled a stunned and stumbling Alena through the doors of the Grand Palace and out into the frigid air of the Olympian night. While she told Ares she talked with Raven, it was only metaphorical. Alena sensed what Raven thought but she didn’t hear him, until just now. He was extremely clear in his desire to leave and why. It didn’t mean anything, that’s what she told herself as Ares practically dragged her toward the top of the steps. It didn’t mean that she was evil or her son was evil or that any single syllable that fell from Zeus’ venomous lips was true.

  With nothing but anger for his Father in his head and his heart Ares yanked her toward the thirteen marble steps to the snow below. Alena tried to follow but the steps were icy, her sense of balance severely lost to her, and now so was her mind. Still looking back over her shoulder in shock while being pulled forward, her feet intertwined. Normally she’d have her arm looped through his as they walked but now he had her by the hand and the length between them formed a pivot point. Gravity took over as it grabbed a hold of that big belly, and with Ares’ unwitting help with forward motion. She nearly hurled to the top of the steps, with a nice half-twirl for accent and added speed, threatening to bring her feet completely out from under her and crashing down the entire flight of unyielding stairs.