We knew what it was to love.
He would have to understand my plight.
Aphrodite shrugged. “Your mother sent her on an impossible quest. She created a mountain of multiple grains and told the girl she had twelve hours to separate them into individual piles or she would be fed to the harpies. And somehow, the girl did it, with the aid of spelled ants.”
“Ants?” I asked with a frown.
She nodded. “Whoever sent them to aid her never spoke up, but someone obviously had.”
I smirked, imagining the rage mother must have felt when she’d seen her game thwarted. “She bested you.”
She snorted. “Not just once.” Aphrodite stroked the girl’s cheek, a far off look in her eyes. “But three other times.” Glittering blue eyes locked with mine. “Each trial worse than the one before it. The second was to take a snippet from each golden fleece of the herd of sheep who lived across the river Styx.”
“Charon’s herd?” I blinked in disbelief. “He loves those damned things. He’s killed for less.”
She snorted, laughing softly. “I know. And yet your girl beguiled him with those pretty doe eyes of hers and he himself told her how to safely sheer them.”
I chuckled. “Sounds like her. What else did you make her do? Or…erm,” I stuttered, clearing my throat.
She didn’t correct me, merely smiled. “Third was even more absurd, if you can imagine. She had her grab water from the summit of Styx at the very highest point of the cliff, knowing yet again it to be impossible. But an eagle swooped in and carried her to the apex and once more she won.”
I laughed, feeling more than mere sorrow roil through me now. “I wish I could have seen it.”
“It was a glorious victory,” she laughed, voice sounding like resonate crystal and I felt drawn to it just as I always had.
Together we laughed, sharing a moment of bonding I’d always yearned for.
“You should have seen her face when she’d realized the girl had thwarted her every maneuver.”
I laughed. “I can only imagine the war path she’d gone on.”
“Oh yes, the gods she punished for helping the girl out. I think Hermes still piddles himself when he thinks of it.”
“Mother!” I said, the name coming out so naturally and easily. Because in this moment I’d forgotten that this woman wasn’t that. She and I were having a true moment of bonding, of joy even amidst my heartache.
The laughter died instantly between us. Her wide blue eyes stared deeply into my own and I felt her soul as my own, I felt her yearning, her desperate desire to be just that to me. In that moment, I felt her love like never before.
Frozen, unsure of what to do, I sat there. Clinging to my wife’s body with a bruising grip, wishing she were here right now with me in truth. But I would be with her soon. Death was not final for one such as me.
“I…I,” she said and then shook her head, pushing a strand of lush blond hair from her face, “Hephaestus, come, my love.”
Confused, I shook my head. Hephaestus, why was she suddenly calling out to him. But I understood the moment he returned with not just Zeus in tow, but Dionysus too.
Then she stood and turned toward the three men, her back to us.
“My counterpart was never clever enough to realize who it was helping our sweet Psyche out, but I realized the truth almost right away. I will not ask you what you hoped to gain from thwarting me at every turn Dionysus, some secrets are our own to keep.”
I gasped, glancing over toward Dionysus, I’d believed he’d betrayed my trust. I’d never quite trusted him. And yet, looking back I could see that he’d always been in the thick of everything. From the very beginning.
Dionysus looked at me, and we shared a look. One deeply heartfelt and full of raw emotion. I remembered my pledge to him, that when the day come that he needed my help I would give it.
I nodded silently to him. I would do it.
I would keep my pledge.
“Zeus,” Aphrodite said in her sweet, slightly seductive voice, “I called you here because I would ask a favor of you. For my son’s sake.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
I was not truly hers. And yet, I did not think that mattered one whit to her. She wanted my affection and I knew I already had hers. She’d tried for so long now to give it to me, the only impediment to our bonding was me.
Zeus shook his head. “Nothing is given for free, Aphrodite. Surely, you know that. And you’ve got nothing to offer me. Unless, you’ve decided to open your bed to new and exciting partners once more—”
Hephaestus growled, clenching his thick, hammy fists at his side. But Aphrodite walked over to him, took his arms, and wrapped herself up in them. Instantly the beast was transformed into a docile teddy bear once again.
The most astonishing part, it was not an act. I could feel her love for my Uncle. It was pure and raw and honest, just like mine for Psyche.
“Zeus, do not make me expose you. For I assure you, I will. You know who I am, and what I can do. I have already read your heart, and we both know there is something you want much more than my body.”
I frowned.
Between the two of us mother’s powers had always been far more potent, try as I might I could not read the King’s heart. But the look on Aphrodite’s face now, she was not bluffing, she knew something. Something that King desperately wanted.
I hugged my wife just a little bit tighter to me. Death was not permanent in our world. There was no sorrow in me now, for I knew that Aphrodite was doing something and not for own petty satisfactions this time, but for love of me.
And my heart…it thawed just a little bit more.
“You know what I am asking, don’t you Mighty King of the Olympians?”
I glanced toward my Uncle, but Hephaestus stared straight ahead at Zeus a slightly baffled look on his face too. Whatever it was that moth…erm, Aphrodite was doing, even he did not share in the knowledge.
But when I looked at Dionysus, I saw a ghost of a grin on his face. He knew. He knew something. I recalled the words he’d said to me long ago. How Psyche meant more to us than anyone could have imagined.
How could he have known that even back then?
Only the Fates would have that type of knowledge.
And yet…
Suddenly it all became clear to me. Why Dionysus had done as he’d done. I’d sensed it in the very beginning. He’d fallen in love. And every bit of this had been planned for love of a woman.
A fate, to be precise. But which one?
Dionysus looked at me, as though he knew I knew now. Silently he mouthed, “you owe me, boy.”
Then he turned back around and I blinked. What was about to happen? I wasn’t sure, but I felt the heavy hand of Fate in this place.
Suddenly a glow manifested on Zeus’s palm and when it faded, a glass encased golden apple rested on it. But it wasn’t really an apple, it was a drinking vessel. And there was only one drink of the gods that went in it.
“Ambrosia,” I breathed. The brew of the immortals. Any mortal who drank of it would become as we did.
“Mother?” I gasped, forgetting for the moment that she wasn’t that, because this woman, this duplicate of my mother was more a mother to me in this instant than mine had ever been in a lifetime.