“Fine. It was Eris.” I looked at him reluctantly as he approached me, a fresh glass of deep red wine in his hand. He had a loose linen shirt on with a wide collar, and I realized it was the first time I’d actually seen him in a shirt. He’d been bare-chested or covered in hulking gold armor the whole time we’d been together.
Somehow, not being able to see the smooth skin of his chest, his rock-hard biceps and beautifully defined abdominal muscles, was worse than them being on display. For the love of sweet fuck, what the hell was wrong with me?
“I still hate you,” I told him, as he passed me the wine.
“I know. That is why I am making you drinks like a common peasant,” he scowled back at me. “That is how a person is supposed to rebuild favor, is it not?”
I stared at him. “Well, yeah, but you’re supposed to do stuff like that because you want to make up for what you did, or to prove you are actually a decent person. Not tell them that you’re doing it because you have to. You have no idea what interacting with normal people is like, do you?” I realized the truth of the words as I said them.
“I interact with many people,” he said gruffly, sitting down on the other couch.
“Gods and monarchs,” I scoffed. “How about normal people?”
“There is no such thing as normal in Olympus,” he said quietly, and drank from his own glass. Ironically, it was the most “normal” thing I’d seen him do.
“You know, I think you are completely deluded,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“What?”
“I think you are so out of touch with anything real, so absorbed by your godly power, that you are missing everything good in the world. Especially in a world like this.”
He gave me a patronizing look. “You know nothing of this world. I can assure you, you are sorely mistaken.”
I shrugged. “I will know about this world, soon. And I bet you anything you like that I’ll enjoy the fuck out of it. A hundred times more than you enjoy anything.”
He gave a bark of annoyance. “I am perfectly capable of enjoying things. Just not you, or this accursed situation!”
“Charming,” I muttered. “So, what do you enjoy?”
He looked away from me, discomfort flickering through his eyes. I knew what he was thinking about. Aphrodite. Unease crawled through me too, and I gulped at my drink.
“The ships,” he said suddenly. “I like being up on the deck of a ship.”
I grasped his words and clung on, relieved to talk about anything that wasn’t the Goddess of Love. “Ships! Yes. They’re good. I mean, from what I saw. I was a bit distracted.” I knew I was babbling, but carried on regardless. “Do all ships here fly? Why did that one have two wheels?”
“The solar sails soak up power from light, so unless it is dark they all fly. There are different types of ship, and that one was the largest class. It is called a Zephyr. It has two quarterdecks simply because it is so large.” Ares seemed just as relieved to be talking about something other than Aphrodite as I did, and I couldn’t help the boundless curiosity that welled up inside me.
“What other types of ship are there?”
“Crosswinds, Tornados, Whirlwinds.”
“I want to see them all,” I breathed. Something twitched at the corner of Ares’ mouth.
“They are how people travel between the realms. Athena and Zeus have sky realms so people need to be able to fly to reach them. Most other realms are islands in the ocean. Hephaestus has a realm inside a volcano, and Poseidon’s is underwater.”
A longing so intense it made my chest ache was building inside me as I tried to picture what he was describing. “Are they all run by Kings and Queens?”
“No. My realm is unique for its varied kingdoms. It is also considered unusual for its varied climate, only Apollo’s realm matches it for extreme weather.” There was pride in his statement.
“What are the sky realms like?”
“Zeus lives on top of Mount Olympus, and wealthy citizens live in mansions built from glass that are set in a ring of clouds around the peak of the mountain. Athena’s realm is industrial. It is made up of hundreds of platforms linked by bridges. She is one of the only gods who provides for every citizen in her realm, so it is over-crowded and has lots of places that provide paid work, manufacturing and such.”
He was frowning as he said the words, and a pang of annoyance stabbed at me. “Do you feel no compulsion to provide for the people in your realm?”
He shrugged. “They are not my concern.”
I shook my head. “You are not a ruler, Ares. You are just the owner of a very large toy.” His face flashed dark, sparks firing in his eyes, but I was frustrated enough with him that thankfully I heard no drum beating in response. “There is a difference between owning land and having subjects. Just handing off the care of the people in your realm to others without giving a shit about the consequences is not ruling.”
“I have never claimed to be a ruler. I am a God,” he spat. “The God of War. In my realm the strongest rule, and they earn the right to rule as they please. That it is how it is, and how it should be.”
“I disagree. I’m not suggesting you make Aries any less dangerous, or you remove the ability for those who are so inclined to kill each other for power, but there are plenty of things you could deal with to make it better for everyone else.”
“This is about the slaves again,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
“Fighting should be about glory and honor, especially in the realm of the God of War. Not loss of freedom and money.”
Ares paused with his glass half-way to his mouth. His eyes focused on me, and they were still sparking, but with something other than anger now. Interest, I thought, with a frisson of hope.
“You are saying that there is no glory in winning a fight that you are forced to participate in,” he said slowly.
“Yes. If you want a realm filled with glory, slavery is not the way to do it.”
“I have not considered it in that way before. The feeling when I fought as a mortal yesterday...” I blushed immediately, the memory of the kiss that followed that fight impossible to shift. But Ares continued. “People would fight for that feeling alone. It was glorious.”
“Exactly,” I mumbled, gulping wine. “Glorious. Glory. Addictive. You’d fill the pits without taking away people’s freedom.”
I looked sideways at him, my cheeks still hot. He sipped slowly from his glass, clearly deep in thought.
Why was I so attracted to a man who had the mental capacity of a teenager? A smoking hot body should not be enough to cause this level of reaction when he was fundamentally a jerk.
Because you know he can change. You know he just needs to understand what he has failed to see.
I almost shook my head at the thought. I knew that people who tried to change others were always disappointed. Not from personal experience, but from the many theater shows I’d seen. People could right wrongs, become better people, sure. That was the message behind countless shows and movies.
But to change who they actually were? That wasn’t possible.
I couldn’t kill my conviction that there was more to Ares though. I was watching, with a front row seat, as the man considered something he had outright dismissed a few days earlier. But didn’t the fact that he had never even thought about the fairness of his realm before now mean he was the worst kind of person imaginable?