“Hey, she knew about the betting pool and that if things ever happened between you, it would instantly trigger the delivery of the pot to the winner. Everyone who lost already knows.”
“That’s actually really shitty. Shouldn’t what happens between us be our own business?” Everyone always knew when he and Aphrodite had been fighting, so of course they’d know the rest of his business. Ares had never been particular about anyone else knowing about his personal life, but Morri was private.
He couldn’t believe she knew about the betting pool and didn’t say anything to him about it.
How had he not noticed it for that matter?
No wonder Aphrodite was always on pins and needles.
“Morrigan was convinced it would never happen, so she just laughed it off.”
“I bet she doesn’t laugh it off when everyone’s staring at her.”
Dagda shrugged and it pissed him off. It was like he was shrugging off Morri’s feelings. But the other god seemed not to notice. “Why don’t we go down to the mortal world and have few pints? Maybe leave a few sigils at old temples and refresh our powers.”
Any other time, Ares would be all for that. Refreshing his powers and getting some new prayers, there was nothing better.
Except sex with Morri.
That he’d never have again.
Godsdamn it.
He had to put her and what happened between them out of his mind. It wasn’t helping anything.
“I’m going to head back to my temple and catch a few hours sleep. There’s a situation earthside that really needs my attention and I want a clear head.”
“We really should catch up one of these days. Maybe hit Atlantis and share a nymph or two like the old days.”
The idea of that was so abhorrent to him, he almost made a face of disgust. Which bothered him more because when Dagda and Morri had first broken up, that was like their itinerary every weekend. He’d felt bad for the other god because for her part, Morri seemed unaffected by their breakup and had given her blessing to Ares carousing with him.
“Yeah, why not? By the way, those cases of ambrosia you were going to send me? Just send them to Morri.”
Dagda mock saluted him. “Will do.”
What a dick. What a pompous, glad-handing bag of dicks. Why had Ares ever thought he was good enough for Morri?
He hadn’t been lying when he said there was a situation earthside, but what he hadn’t said was that he was going to use his influence to try to resolve it with diplomacy instead of the blood and death that came with war.
The last few centuries humans had evolved weapons more horrible than anything he could conceive of, more ways to kill each other and hurt each other. If they neutralized themselves, there’d be no one left to tell the gods’ stories to keep them alive and they’d fade away to dust, too.
Back at his temple, everything seemed wrong.
He paced and paced, growing more agitated by the minute. Bone-deep exhaustion hit him, but he couldn’t be still. Couldn’t rest.
His whole world was wrong.
He was wrong.
All of the feelings he’d tried to hide in his random affairs, the way he eschewed connections with anyone but Morri, they all came crashing down on him in a tidal wave.
Ares realized he wasn’t any of the things he’d admired. He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t a good god.
He was selfish, petty, and a coward. He always had been. He’d been hiding behind a persona of the sexy bad boy who pretended he had no fucks to give, but cared. He cared about everything and he cared about it so much it hurt to breathe if he thought about it for too long.
No, he wasn’t in love with Morri, but that was only because he couldn’t love himself.
10
MORRI
Waking up next to Corvinus was not what she’d imagined when she thought about spending the night with Ares.
Although, maybe she should have.
No, no. She wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t going to get angry at Ares for being who he was. There was no reason for her to expect him to treat her differently than any other goddess he slept with.
Except there was. They were friends. They were best friends.
This was bullshit.
She flung the covers back and Corvinus squawked. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh? You’re not pissed that war boy isn’t here?”
“What did you do?” She narrowed her eyes at him.
Corvinus got up and stretched lazily before he answered her. “I told him to leave.”
“Why would you do that? If I wanted him to leave, I was perfectly capable of telling him to do that all on his own.”
“I thought we’d spare you the awkward morning after.”
Maybe he was right about that. They’d tried talk to about what had happened last night and it only ended up happening again. That wasn’t a way they could continue on. Not if she didn’t want to get hurt.
Then she noticed Corvinus said “we.” Usually, he’d rather be struck with lightning than mention himself and Ares in the same sentence.
“Did you two have some sort of bonding session I should know about?”
Corvinus shuffled his feathers in what looked like a shrug. “Maybe.”
“Or is it just because he finally gave you your way?” She eyed her familiar.
“I won’t say that wasn’t a boon, wasn’t a boon.” He shook himself. “Damn it, I hate it when I repeat myself. I’m a corvid, not a fucking parrot.” He sniffed. “Fucking parrot.”
“I think you have Tourette’s.”
“I think you’re an asshole. Asshole.”
“See?”
“No, that was on purpose.” He turned his wing around and inspected it, smoothing the feathers with his beak. “It’s also ignorant of you to think that Tourrette’s is only swearing. Plenty of people have it and it’s a serious disease that makes socialization hard.”
“You’re a corvid, not a people.”
“You, madam, are rude to bring it up.”
“Corvinus, stop playing around and tell me what he said.”
“Should I carry him a message that says check yes or no? This isn’t frigging Hogwarts and I am not an owl.”
“What you are is taxing my patience.”
Corvinus chortled. “When are you ever patient?”
“Corvinus!”
“Fine, don’t get your panties in a bind.”
“I’m not wearing any.”
“I didn’t need that visual.”
“Good. Carry on.”
“As I was saying, I just wanted him to put you first and he did. So I don’t hate him anymore.”
“Oh, honey.” She reached out and stroked her finger down his back.
“Hey, let’s not get overwhelmed with our feelings or anything. I didn’t say we were besties. I said I don’t hate him. And I demanded he get a perch for me at his temple. We’re over there all the time and I’m sick of not having my own space.”
She scratched the back of his head lightly. “Oh, I know. Who’s the best corvid ever?”
“Don’t patronize me.” Corvinus tilted his head into the scratch anyway.
“I would never. You made me very happy.”
“That I played nice with him, but not that I made him leave.”
She stopped scratching. “It was probably for the best.”
“Are you still going out with Poseidon Saturday?”
“I don’t know. Probably. I mean… if not for that stupid pizza none of this would’ve happened.”
Corvinus stomped his feet. “Okay, for that, I’ll be your owl. I’ll go scream my head off at that cyclops for letting that happen.”
“What’s done is done.” She flopped back on the bed and then pulled the covers up to her nose. “Oh no!”
“What?” He sounded like a parrot again.
“That damn betting pool.” She knew Corvinus was aware o
f exactly which betting pool. “Everyone knows. Someone just won an eternity’s worth of ambrosia.”
A knock rattled them both halfway out of bed.
No one except Dagda knocked like that on her door.
He’d heard. He was here to give her the biggest spoonful of a shit sundae.
Morrigan considered ignoring him and everyone else, hiding in her temple until this was no longer the biggest inter-pantheon news story of the century.
“Want me to go shit on his head?”
“No.” She grumbled. Maybe.
“Peck his eyes out?” Corvinus asked, obviously hopeful.
“No.”
“What about shoving my beak in his ear and woodpeckering—” Corvinus bobbed his head back and forth demonstrating “—until he fucks off to the pit?”
This time she laughed. “No, sweetheart. I’ll face the music.” She dropped a quick kiss on the top of his head and wrapped one of the blankets around him. “I know you had a long night. You stay here and sleep.”
“You could just say fuck off, Corvinus, and I’d fuck off.”
She laughed. “No, really. You can’t tell me you want to get up out of these snuggly covers where I’ve tucked you to look at Dagda’s smirking face.”
“Well, no.”
“See? I’m taking care of you the way you take care of me. Let me.”
Morrigan debated between making herself beautiful with the snap of her fingers, or answering the door as she was. Minus the naked part. When one banged on someone’s door this early, they deserved whatever they were given.
Dagda had started out a great partner. He’d been everything she was looking for in a god in the first couple centuries they were together, but as time passed and the humans’ devotion had changed, so had he. He wasn’t the same person and it the changes he’d made hadn’t been good ones.
In that instant, she decided that yes, she would make herself beautiful. She’d hold her head high and she wouldn’t give a shit what anyone had to say about her.
So she’d slept with Ares. It was a sad day when a god or goddess had nothing else to do with their long and mighty existence than give her grief about whose car was parked in her garage.
With a snap of her fingers, she was wearing her preferred uniform of leather pants, her New Rock boots, and an activist t-shirt. This one read, “Tree Hugger.”
“You’d best have a good reason for knocking on my door this early in the morning.”
“Early? Woman, it’s noon.”
She gave him a blank stare as if to say you know damn well any time you knock is too early. “What do you want?”
“I won the pot.”
Oh, that was all she needed. But she reminded herself of her earlier resolution. She lifted her chin and didn’t bother to pretend that she didn’t know what pot he was talking about. “Great. Does that mean I get a few bottles?”
“I saw Ares on the way out. I told him I’d give him a thousand cases. He said I should give them to you.”
Morrigan wasn’t sure if she was insulted or not. She decided to go with not because why choose to be pissed off? “Thanks.” She looked over his shoulder. “When are they coming?”
He handed her a box. “Here.”
“You miniaturized them? Did you do the protective charm first so the magick doesn’t affect the aging process?”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Of course. What kind of heathen do you think I am?”
They stood there staring at each other for a long moment.
“Are you going to invite me inside?”
“Probably not. Are you going to get it out of your system?”
Dagda had the gall to plaster the most innocent expression he could muster on his face. “Me? Get what out of my system?”
“The I-told-you-so that’s burning a hole on the tip of your tongue.”
He laughed. “No, we’re not really there yet. You just did the dirty. That’s not really anything to write home about. I always knew you would and really, until I found out about the betting pool, I thought you had. No, I won’t say I told you so until you’re playing happy family.”
“We are a family, Ares and I. No matter what happens. Goddesses come and go, but I will by his side forever. So don’t call it playing happy family. We are a happy family.”
“Come and go, isn’t that what he just did?”
Instead of letting it upset her, she shook her head. “This is why you can’t have nice things.”
“I have plenty of nice things. Like sharing nymphs with your new boyfriend.”
She sighed heavily, exasperated. “You know, for a while he was really into other gods. He and Balaticaurus had a thing for a quite a while when they met at Hadrian’s Wall. Ares really liked his horns, actually. That was one affair Aphrodite was cool with. She thought it was hot. You should be honest and tell him you want to fuck him. He might throw you a pity lay. You’ve been pining after him for years.”
“Maybe I will.”
Inspiration or maybe it was intuition that slapped her hard. “It wasn’t Fate at all with the pizza, was it?”
Dagda smiled at her, the expression almost too wide for his face, stretching it in an unnatural way. “Of course not. Why would Fate care where Ares puts his sword?”
“You’re a wretched bastard.”
“I’m a wretched bastard with an eternal supply of ambrosia and a fissure in the hold you have over the god I want.”
“Can you hear yourself right now?”
Dagda just smiled at her, his inner nimbus of light radiating out from him had gone dark.
“You need to leave.”
“You’re the one who is going to have to leave, Morrigan. I’m going to take everything from you. The same as you took it all from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My power. When all of my followers began to worship you and you knew it. You could’ve stopped it. You could’ve gone to your priestesses in a dream and told them of your consort. You could’ve saved me, but you didn’t.”
“Oh, fuck you. Poor little Dagda. If you were more than a guy beaming light sitting on a golden throne waiting to be admired, a god who gave a damn about the people who worshipped him, you wouldn’t have lost your power. And you know what? People still speak my name. In the dark of night under a full moon, women dance naked around fires and they tell me their hopes, their fears, their secrets. They ask for my blessing and I give it. In return, they fill me with power and longevity better than any ambrosia. You can’t take that, you have to earn it.”
“You didn’t earn it, you stole it,” he maintained.
“It’s always everyone else’s fault but yours. That’s why you’ll never mean anything to Ares. It isn’t because of me. It’s because you’re not good enough. Maybe he was taken in by you for a while, much like me. But the people he lets inside? They’re good, honest, and noble. They’re not petty, entitled, cruel—”
“Not cruel? He was with Aphrodite for eons. Love is as cruel as they come.”
“You don’t know what love is.”
A blast of light erupted from his fingers, and if he’d done something like this when they’d first met, he might’ve had enough power to kill her. As it was, she turned it back on him and blasted him off of her stairs.
With blood at the corner of his mouth, he said, “Aren’t you going to tell me to stay away from your man? From Corvinus? From everyone else you love?”
She lifted her chin again. “I don’t have to. Corvinus will tear your heart out and eat it. If I told Ares what you did, he’d rip you apart, limb from limb with his bare hands. And me? I’m not afraid of you, but I will mourn who you used to be. I’ll mourn the God of the Morning Sun that I loved in my youth. But you? You I don’t know. You are my enemy. And I promise you, if you come back on my temple grounds, I’ll obliterate you from existence.”
“You’ll end up in a box at the bottom of the sea.”
She wasn’t going to argue with him.
Instead, she just smiled and closed the door. Even though everything she’d said had been the truth, she slid down against the door and put her head in the bowl of her hands.
Morrigan had never felt more alone.
Or guilty.
It wasn’t her fault that Dagda had lost interest in man and didn’t notice his power dwindling away. It wasn’t her fault that she kept her covenant with her people and kept her power. It wasn’t up to her to make sure he did his job, to make sure he had power. He’d been a god grown a long time before he’d met her.
He was a twisted, rotten version of himself.
She did mourn the god he’d been. The light he brought to the world and to her.
Morrigan refused to internalize the blame he placed on her shoulders for all of his troubles, yet there was a seed of guilt there anyway. As someone who’d loved him, shouldn’t she have seen his descent into this madness?
And now, shouldn’t she help him instead of promising to obliterate his existence?
No, he’d threatened those she loved—her family. Fuck him forever.
Yeah, no matter what had happened between them, they’d always be their own little family. She hoped Ares didn’t forget that.
Maybe they needed the awkward morning after. They both needed to know that everything was okay.
Corvinus’s heart had been in the right place.
So had Ares’s. She wasn’t angry that he left. She’d been disappointed, but she could see now that he’d done it for her. Morrigan knew he’d never hurt her on purpose.
She did, however, have to remind her heart that to beat for him and him alone was not a wise decision.
If only she could get it to listen.
11
ARES
When Morrigan strode through his front door, ready to play Fallout and bearing more pizza and what she called “shitty beer” he was surprised, to say the least.
And ridiculously happy to see her.
Corvinus was nowhere to be seen.
“Are you looking for Corvie? He elected to stay home for this one.”
“Good. I haven’t made him a perch yet. I was thinking maybe even his own space with a little nest and a mini fridge.”
Ambrosia Lane 1-3: Saranna DeWylde Page 55