Mortal Gods by Kendare Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

turned to him with sane blue eyes. Her fingers bit into the bandage on his bicep, already soaked through with blood from a new cut. “I know what’s happening to you.”
    “Aphrodite.”
    “And I know what’s happening to me,” she said. “I don’t want to be mad. I remember who…” She paused and closed her eyes. “I remember sometimes.”
    Ares pressed his hand to her cheek. She remembered what she used to be, before her mind started to soften and burn. Her death was unfair and cruel, without dignity.
    “I’m ashamed,” she said, “of what I’m becoming.”
    He kissed her hair. “Let’s go.” His poor Aphrodite. It was difficult to keep his touch gentle when he wanted something to break. Something to cut. Something to crush.
    The urge subsided when they reached the mouth of the cave, a modest opening dug into a rock wall and grown over with ferns and moss. They’d have to bend their heads to go inside.
    “It isn’t much,” he said. The wind from inside was cold, and spoke of large, black caverns.
    Aphrodite squeezed his hand, and they went in.
    *   *   *
    Ares knew exactly when it was that they left the cave on earth and entered the cave on Olympus. He felt the gravity change. The rock walls increased in luster and somehow in boldness, like a blurry curtain had suddenly been drawn back. It was hard and sharp and beautiful. It felt like home.
    “How can this be?” he asked, and it was Hera who answered from somewhere in the shadows.
    “It exists because we remade it,” she said. “It exists because we have need.”
    “Mother.” Ares couldn’t see her. Even with immortal eyes, the dark was too complete. When he strained forward, he could barely make out her shape. She stood tall and proud, shoulders back, the curve of one hip thrust out, forming the perfect silhouette.
    “My son.”
    Aphrodite stepped away to let them have their reunion.
    “It’s true then,” he said. “You live.”
    “Is that disappointment I hear?”
    “No,” he said, but he heard something in his mother’s voice: a soft grinding, like a heel twisting against gravel. “I thought Athena and the girl killed you.”
    “Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.” Hera paused. “Well. Perhaps not greatly. I’ve missed you, Ares. The child of my husband.” As she spoke she came into the light. It took everything he had to keep from shrinking back, not to recoil when she put her hands on his shoulders, her right fist heavy stone and the left warm flesh with fingers that squeezed him.
    The perfect silhouette in the dark was a lie. It hid the awkward way her legs moved to compensate for the weight of stone across her shoulder and right side. Her body was a wreck of rock and fused flesh. But her face was the worst. Hera’s beautiful ivory cheeks were all but gone. Most of her jaw and lower lip had turned to mottled stone. It ground against her teeth when she spoke. Bits of cracked marble and granite rolled in her cheek like joints or cogs in a grotesque clockwork.
    “It’s not so bad,” she said, and tried to smile. “It barely hurts.” The stone pulled at the edges of her skin until Ares thought her lip would tear away and bleed.
    “And how are you?” Hera touched her stone hand to his bandage. “Are you weak from lack of blood?”
    “No. It’s not bad. Not yet.”
    “He’s strong,” said Aphrodite. “Still strong. And I found him.”
    “You did,” Hera said. Her eyes rested on Aphrodite and lost focus. “Death robs her of her mind, and me of my beauty.” She shrugged. “We’re lucky that it isn’t the other way around.”
    “Don’t be cruel,” said Ares.
    “I won’t be. Not ever.” Her expression softened as much as was possible. “For all of our past differences, I love her now. As much as if she really were my daughter.”
    Aphrodite wasn’t listening anyway. She swayed slowly back and forth to unheard music.
    “You sent her to find me,” said Ares. “Why?”
    “We’re all we