I blinked, instantly recognizing one, and with that recognition, I hastily dropped my arm and the bolt. It clattered harmlessly to the dirt beneath. I studied the female I knew. She looked different from the stories told of her, but it was impossible not to know who she was at a glance.
Skin the color of sea foam, with black hair that glistened like heated tar, dressed in a gown of writhing coral-blue sea snakes, and looking around my forge, very clearly unimpressed, was none other than the great water elemental herself.
I couldn’t begin to fathom what the elemental was here for. I clenched my jaw, recalling instantly what I’d done to her mate, and wanted to kick my ass for it. In my anger, I’d not thought about the female Death called mate.
But I definitely should have.
It was known that Thalassa was as unstable as the waters she called home.
But oddly, I didn’t sense a threat of violence from her. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t one—if she wasn’t in the mood to commit homicide, she wouldn’t. But her moods were as mercurial as the tides and could shift on a dime.
I looked at the other female helplessly, trying to ascertain just who she was. She had dark-brown hair that fell down her back, and was dressed in most unusual garb, a scarlet corset threaded through with golden thread, a shredded moth’s-wing-looking skirt that fell to her ankles but was slitted so high up one thigh it exposed the fishnet stockings and thigh-high pirate’s style boots. Beneath her arm, she gripped a tricorn hat, and she was looking back at me with a blank but somewhat kind expression. She was pretty enough, but that was the extent of what I gleaned from studying her.
She smiled easily, and I couldn’t place who she was, and Thalassa certainly wasn’t looking as if she planned to make introductions. But if this mysterious woman hung with the temperamental elemental, I could only assume they had to be friends of some sort. Odd, since I’d never thought of the elemental as the friendly type.
I grabbed a towel not quite as oil smudged as the rest and cleaned myself up as best I could. Thalassa had still failed to acknowledge me.
She was walking along my work bench, which was full of half-worked projects, pursuits I’d had to push aside whenever Zeus demanded a new toy to play with, trailing her fingers upon them and leaving wet smudges in her wake.
I mentally cringed but kept my face impassive. I’d perfected the art of never letting anyone know exactly what I was thinking by merely looking at me.
I grunted, trying to draw her attention and bow, as was due an elemental of stature such as she.
But she refused to turn.
“What is this?” she muttered to herself, picking up a barely sculpted mold of clay that was currently little more than the beginnings of a woman’s face. “Garbage,” she whispered to herself as she continued to twist and turn the object before her face before tossing it over her shoulder.
Fire began to churn in my belly as I fully expected to see the lump be squashed into ruination by her casual mistreatment of my things. But the pretty brunette moved with a quickness I’d not expected and effortlessly caught the clay, barely denting the forehead before shrugging a quiet apology at me.
I studied her again. She was certainly not a god. I felt no pulse of power from her. And yet she was definitely something. She set the clay down gently on the bench and turned back around.
It appeared I’d be forced to decipher the meaning of Thalassa’s sudden appearance on my own.
“Great Goddess Thalassa and… friend,” I hedged, not sure what to call the strange female, “be ye welcome here.”
At that, Thalassa finally turned, and her hair began to billow behind her towering body like a banner whipping in a powerful breeze. Her wave-filled eyes churned and frothed with imperious fury as she gaze down her pointed nose at me. “She is no friend. She is a hag fish who insists on following me around wherever I go.”
Though she glared at me with hot fury, her words were said without rancor, and I detected a soft curling of the corners of her lips that told me she meant none of what she’d said.
The woman in question snorted and rolled her pretty brown eyes. “What my mother-in-law, Calyssa, actually means to say is, ‘Hello, forge god, meet my daughter Nimue.’”
I did not fail to note the casual correction of the great elemental’s name and nodded in appreciation. Sometimes merely calling a god by the wrong name was enough to get on the bad side of history, and at all costs, that was a fate I wished to avoid.
“That’s what I said,” Calyssa snipped before adding, “Hag fish,” with an obvious note of affection in it.
Nimue walked toward me, her posture sure and powerful as she held out her hand to me. I was grateful I’d worn my legs today. The last time I’d gone without them had been when Aphrodite came upon me unawares. I’d not felt comfortable going without them since.
I took her much smaller hand into mine and gave it a gentle up-and-down shake of greeting.
She smiled prettily. I decided instantly that I liked her and was grateful for the buffer between Calyssa and me.
“How might I be of service to you both? Have you need of my smith—”
Calyssa hissed. “Do I look as though I need you, Hephapotamous? No, didn’t think so.”
It took every ounce of control I possessed not to frown. “It’s Hepha—”
She held up her hand. “I’ll call you whatever the hells I feel like calling you, Horace. Are we clear on that?”
I glanced at Nimue, who just grinned, as though thoroughly enjoying her mother’s rants. I shrugged. As far as insults went, I’d suffered through worse. If the elemental wished to call me other than my birthright, I didn’t honestly care.
Calyssa a mother. I’d heard rumors of it. All the sea animals were hers, but I’d never actually happened to meet one of her walking, talking offspring before.
“Mother,” Nimue said sternly but gently.
And would wonders never cease, but Calyssa actually clamped her lips shut, but not before glaring at her daughter.
Nimue turned toward me. “You’ll have to forgive her. Between you and me, she’d really rather roast you on a spit for what you did to Papa.”
The winds at Calyssa’s back grew more powerful, but no matter the charge of power I felt growing off of her, the elemental kept herself firmly in check. A fact, I had no doubt, that had less to do with me and far more to do with the human she called daughter.
Very interesting.
Grunting, I shook my head. “You’re right, I did. I would ask your forgiveness, goddess. I was not in my right frame of mind that day. Hades caught me at a bad moment.”
I didn’t often apologize, but in this I had been entirely in the wrong and could acknowledge that.
Just like Zeus’s or mine sometimes would, lightning danced in her wave-filled eyes. And I knew enough to know that meant whatever she felt, the emotion was an extreme one.
“She forgives you,” Nimue said boldly.
“Not. I do not,” Calyssa hissed and spat by my foot. The ground now suddenly burbled quite loudly with a fissure of heated magma.
I casually slid my mechanical foot out of range of the steel-destroying venom of hers. Obviously, I was going to have to work harder to earn her forgiveness.
“Okay, so if you’re not here for my goods, might I ask why you’ve come?”
Calyssa sneered. “I’d really rather cut your tongue out. Gods, your voice.”
“Mother,” Nimue chastised, and my fingers dug into my palms.
I knew what my voice sounded like—the insult was nothing new—but I’d been nothing but kind to the elemental, and now my patience was starting to wear incredibly thin.
If not for the young Nimue, I would simply vanish until they’d left. But I sensed that the human had a great kindness in her, and I did not wish to act the brute the entire world thought of me as.
Shoving a strand of dark hair out of her pretty eyes, Nimue gave me a soft smile. “I do apologize for her. She’s not normally s
o—”
“Prickly?” I supplied. “Forgive me if I find that hard to believe.” I even gave her a grin. I rather enjoyed the little human. I could see why Calyssa kept her around. She sparkled with verve. Rare to come across such when upon Olympus. We were all a bunch of jaded piss pots.
Nimue giggled, and Calyssa glared at us both.
“Be quick about things, child, or I’ll do what I came to do. Your father will just have to forgive me after the fact. As if I couldn’t handle little Hercules on my own. I’d break you, boy.” She snapped her fingers, and my forge trembled as though an earthquake had torn through it.
Bits of rock fell from above, pinging off my head and making me wince as I brushed them aside, and Nimue shielded her head with her tricorn.
“Mother! Enough, really!” She twirled on Calyssa, lifted a hand, and wagged it angrily at the goddess, an act I was sure no one else in their right mind would ever do or, if they did, would instantly regret. “I vow I’ll send you packing. You promised. Now don’t make me summon Sircco. You know how he gets when I do.”
Far from looking put out, Calyssa grinned, showcasing pointed fang-like teeth. But she said not another word, and I had no bloody idea what that had been about, but I was rather certain I’d be better off not knowing. Calyssa’s mind was a dark and foreboding place at the best of times.
Still, if they weren’t going to get to the point of their coming, they were going to have to leave. I had far too much on my plate.
“Nimue, I am extremely behind on work today. If it’s not too much of an imposition, I would ask that you get to your purpose for coming here already.”
“Watch yourself. You’re only lucky you’re not lying broken at my feet. Once upon a time, I was called the god killer. Don’t ever forget that,” the elemental hissed, sending an arctic blast of air through my chambers and cooling my heart flame by several degrees.
Her tone was cold, serious, and deadly, and I instantly knew two things. One, the goddess had only been playing before, and two, as much as she teased the girl, she was extremely protective of her. I’d have to tread very lightly where Nimue was concerned.
I dipped my head in acknowledgement and noticed she looked a little less ruffled for it, but she had her eye on me now.
I glanced at the girl.
“Hephaestus, we’ve come to take you to trial,” Nimue said.
“Excuse me?” I asked, sure I’d misheard.
Nimue nodded, pressing on, undeterred. “By a jury of your peers.”
I looked at Calyssa, trying to discern whether this was another one of her silly games, but the goddess was licking her lips and flexing her now claw-tipped nails as if she were playing with deadly knives. I had no doubt she’d skin me alive if she could.
A tremor rolled through me. “Might I ask why?”
It was not Nimue who answered, but the elemental herself. “Because of you, you giant walking dick bag. You handed my friend a notice of divorcement. Did you think you could just walk away from your duties? You know how this works.”
I blinked. Aphrodite and Calyssa weren’t friends. I doubted Aphrodite had any true friends at all. “Friend? Wait. What? I’m confused—”
Calyssa laughed, but the sound was full of hubris and rage. “Oh, I don’t doubt that, Testicle Face.”
My lips set into a stern line, and my nostrils flared.
“Mother!” Nimue snapped, but this time Calyssa wouldn’t shut up.
She held up her hand. “I spare his life, and that is enough, Nimue, but the douche rag can’t just walk away from what he’s done. You want a divorce, then we do this the good old-fashioned way.”
She grinned and cracked her knuckles, an evilly gleeful smirk curved her lips into a sharp crescent, and dread settled in my bones.
“We do not need to do this. She doesn’t want me. Its easier this way.”
“Oh my freaking gods!” Calyssa scoffed and tossed her hands up. “Your arrogance is what offends me most. I could just kill you.”
I snorted. “We’ve already established your undying hatred of me. May we move on from that now?”
She called me arrogant, but her face was one giant ball of it. She glared daggers at me. “I hate you. I hate the very sight of you. Cannot stand you. You and your entire bloody family. But I love her. She is the only one I would call friend in this entire godsforsaken realm, so no, I do not give my consent to this divorcement.”
I’d thought it impossible to be shocked anymore, but that was exactly what I was. I blinked. The great and powerful elemental was friends with Aphrodite? I shook my head, having a very difficult time making sense of that.
But more than all of that, I wanted to tell her that she had absolutely no legal right to withhold consent; she was not a member of Olympus. The elementals were an entity unto themselves, but I actually wanted to live to see the morning, so I tried another tactic.
“You would do that to her? You claim to love her. Do you not recognize how cruel that is?”
Finally, finally, I could see her listening to me. She cocked her head, staring at me as though she weren’t sure whether to kill me or remain as she was. Deciding that continuing to talk was the better part of valor, I pressed on.
“You would reveal her wrongdoings to the entire throng? Expose her in that manner? I am giving her what she wanted, what she’s always wanted, and I’m handling it privately, for her sake. Are you seriously incapable of seeing that?”
I knew the instant the last seven words came out of my mouth that I’d said wrong. In a second, Calyssa grew, towering above us both like a giant raging pillar of water without female form. And her words were terrible, unholy things to hear.
“I find you, Hugo, guilty!”
The roar made my ears bleed, and then that water crashed over me, lifting me high into the sky, and I knew no more but darkness and death.
Calyssa
* * *
I could sense Nim’s disapproval, and it shouldn’t bother me. But bloody hell, it did.
I had the comatose body of Horse Face trailing behind me in a glittering net. I’d not killed him, only made him feel as though I’d used my waters to tear him into a thousand bloody pieces. He’d live. He’d have a headache the size of the Underworld, but bloody hell… he’d live, so what had I done wrong this time?
We were traveling to another part of Olympus. And while I could have simply winked us into Themis’s lair with a snap of my fingers, I wanted to glory in seeing the terror gleaming in the eyes of the glittering throng as they witnessed the strongest amongst them looking like a gutted fish in the noonday sun as he floated airily behind me.
Thankfully, Hades had kept Dite preoccupied. I didn’t think my BFF would have approved of my tactics.
I glared at my daughter-in-law, more like a daughter true to me. I was so happy when I’d discovered that the repairing of Hades and me had brought all our children back from the darkness.
Nim hadn’t told me much of her time in that hole, only that they’d always been there, protected by something greater than even me. Which had offended me, except I knew she was right because I’d never sensed her still being until one day she’d reappeared. Only true and terrible power could have hidden them from me thusly. And that thought did offend me. I did not enjoy the notion of not being the most powerful in the universe.
“Well,” I snapped, noticing Hermes streaking past us from the corner of my eye. No doubt he’d be running off to tell Mummy Dearest all about the crazy elemental who’d destroyed her twisted son even worse than she could have ever dared. I grinned at that thought. Oh, I did enjoy making the glittering throng piss themselves.
Nimue, who was one of the few in existence who could actually ignore me and not die for the impertinence, lifted her nose in the air and said nothing.
“Fine, then!” I snipped. “Don’t speak to me, but I got the job done, which was a sight more than what you—”
“I was getting to him!” she snapped right back, and I grinned
, hip bumping her.
“Ah, I knew I’d get you to talk with me yet.”
“Dear gods, argh!” She tossed her hands into the air and glowered at me. “You’ve got the devil in you this time, Mother, more so than before. Papa ever tell you that?””
I patted my hair. “Why, thank you, dear.”
“Wasn’t a compliment, Mom.”
I could handle the hate from anyone, anyone but my family. I smiled softly at her, silently asking if she still loved me anyway, and she smiled softly back. She was annoyed, but she did love me, and that was enough to keep me happy.
She blew out a deep breath. “Papa sent me with you to keep an eye on you. You weren’t supposed to actually kill him.”
“Nim, I’ll forgive you your humanness that you actually believe him dead. He’s merely been twisted into a pretzel. He’ll live. And he got a free spine realignment out of it too. Honestly, I’d say I was too kind.”
“Mother,” she grumped.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Fine. I promise to let you speak with Themy once we get there. I’ll be a good little girl and keep my pie hole shut. Deal?”
“I don’t believe you,” she said but with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes.
I shoulder bumped her. “Well, you’re right. I was lying. But I do love you, Nimue. And being one hundred percent sincere with you now, I’m glad you’ve come. If you hadn’t, I might have done something I really regretted. Your father will be so proud of me. I’m becoming positively domesticated.”
Lifting a brow, she turned to glance over her shoulder, no doubt looking at the flying pretzel, and then turned back to me.
I grinned. “Could have been worse.”
“Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
I snorted. But she was absolutely right at that. We walked on in silence, and suddenly I wasn’t having quite as much fun as before. Nimue was physically here with me, but her thoughts were a thousand miles away. I glanced at her, giving her a small smile. But she wouldn’t look back at me.
Nimue was very, very silent, and there was heaviness on her now that hadn’t been there before, and I had a feeling I knew why. “They will be all right, my Nim.”
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 42