⚔️ A Long, Slim Knife Between the Ribs
L&W14: The Temple of War has taught little Blossomtime well.
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
As the corpse crumpled at Kore’s feet, she glared at him. “Ares!”
“What? He was destined to die in battle tomorrow anyway.”
Clutching her hands to her heart, she turned back to the lifeless body, drew in a shaky breath, squeaked out a heartbroken whimper. He rolled his eyes, wondering how in blazes such a wispy, sensitive thing had practically sucked his and Eris’ souls out through their faces. The rosy-cheeked cherub stood gawking at the heap of dead flesh and the shade slowly detaching from it. After a few curious blinks, she tilted her head and leaned in for a closer look…
—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series
Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.”
ARES, GOD OF WAR
💥⚔️💥
As Enyalios strolled by, Ares collared him. The young battle god was drunk, but not yet stumbling-drunk like the rest of Ares’ sons, so he got saddled with the command: “Round up every female warrior in this place who is sober enough to muster up a shred of presentability. And send for Hermes.”
Enyalios groaned at the onerous task. Although Zeus used Hermes as his personal messenger, the Fleet Feet Pest had a weightier job in his winged booties: conducting souls of the freshly dead to the Underworld. Anybody who wanted to summon him outside his normal rounds had to offer up four spoonfuls of honey while standing on their head, chanting, “O Hermes, God of Stealth, I beseech your speedy wealth,” until he appeared. Only a few immortals had the clout to bypass this ritual. Ares did not rank among them, so Enyalios certainly didn’t.
“You’re a bastard, Father.”
Ares shrugged. “So my father says. Go. And crack the whip on it.”
When Enyalios returned with a pair of female warriors, Ares could tell in a glance. It wouldn’t be enough. So he closed his eyes, seeking out the vibrations of his daughters to yank them from their varied abodes, complete with armor, weapons, and any royal regalia they had.
A fierce collection of demigoddesses materialized, some more annoyed than others, but all knelt before their father to do his bidding. Since Harmonia was a deity in her own right, born of the Goddess of Love, he summoned her from where she’d been living in serpent-form beneath a temple, but allowed her the dignity of arriving by her own will.
She came immediately—of course she did. She was the Goddess of Harmony, and she adored him, so he hoped beyond all hope that her presence here could smooth things over. If anybody could help guide him in what he knew he had to do, it was his only divine daughter. Navigating tricky paths and sticky situations with grace, dignity, and deferential respect was not Ares’ strong suit. But it was Harmonia’s, so he groaned in relief when she glimmered into the gloom of his temple.
She was the only one who showed up unarmed, draped in a length of spun sea foam that shimmered like her mother’s irresistible smile. A thousand of the finest harp strings hung from her girdle, making an overskirt that sang the chords of her mood whenever she moved. “Father,” she said with a doting dip of her head. As she knelt with her half-sisters, the music sent waves of tranquility through the room.
Normally, Ares would have never allowed her in here. Not because she had anything to fear from this place. It was more the opposite—what she would do to the Temple of War if she stuck around for too long. The floor recoiled from her elegant feet; the stone pillars contracted as she passed. Under the influence of her aura, anybody having a lusty romp sighed louder. The brawlers stopped brawling and slipped into drunken toasting.
Eris snarled at her most hated enemy. But Ares had called for Harmonia to do her work, so the Goddess of Discord grabbed a full carafe of blood-nectar. Her misty wings snapped out in offense, talons bristling on the tips. More than one slow-mover got raked across the face as she grumbled her way to the stairs that led to Ares’ bedchamber, trailed by her mortal playthings.
He wanted to join them. Instead, he commanded his daughters and the warriors to provide an honor guard for Kore.
The Flower-Flinger scampered toward him. “Truly, my lord. All this fanfare is unnecessary. I can just—”
“No.” He turned his back on her and seared a message into the tanned strip of hide from a fallen foe’s back. He had to throw his first two attempts into the cook fire before he finally got the words right. At last, he closed his eyes and invoked the name. “IRIS.”
Upon hearing him summon the official Olympian Messenger, Kore’s aura paled to a sickly green. She looked like she wanted to turn into a serpent and disappear under a temple with Harmonia. “Ares, please. You don’t need to—”
When Iris appeared in her iridescent robes, he snapped off a bow. “Thanks for coming. I need your pitcher.”
The Mistress of Rainbows closed her golden wings and bowed in return. “Certainly, Lord Ares.” As Kore tried to slink back into the shadows but walked backwards into the breastplate of a glowering demigoddess, Iris reached into her bottomless purse to pull out the famous gold jug.
“Ares,” Kore whimpered.
The God of War grasped the sacred vessel with reverent hands.
“No, you truly don’t—”
A stream of silvery water from the River Styx doused the words of his message.
Kore winced off a frustrated groan.
After he handed the pitcher back, Ares unsheathed his sword and clenched the blade to slice open his palm, which he pressed against the leather as an extra measure. The imprint of his hand glowed for a second, sealing the message with his ichor and the infallible testament of its truth. If any of his message proved false, the consecration of those oath-binding waters would see him pinned to the banks of the River of Hate for a year without breath or nourishment, followed by nine more in exile.
He had no interest in that particular curse, so he’d been brutally honest in his message to Kore’s mother.
“My word,” Hermes quipped from over the War God’s shoulder. “Or should I say…your word, when no one else’s will do?” Only he chuckled.
Ares sheathed his sword and shifted, using his broad frame to prevent his nosy, gossiping half-brother from spying any more of the message than he’d already seen.
While rolling up the hide, Ares tried to ignore Hermes’ exposed crotch. Clad in nothing but his dusty travel cape and wide-brimmed hat, the brat had a habit of hovering on his fluttery boots with his nuts at eye level, especially when he wanted to be an annoying prick—which was about three-quarters of the time. Sometimes more. Particularly where his brothers were involved.
When Hermes spied Kore trying to hide amongst her armor-clanking escort, he flinched, then zoomed closer so he could mutter into Ares’ ear, “What in Tartaros’ crack is she doing here?”
“No idea,” the God of War lied. “That’s why she’s leaving with a full entourage and a Stygian-soaked message. I’m not taking the chance of anybody getting the wrong idea or hearing false rumors.”
The Conductor of Souls answered with a commiserating grimace. “Considering who might get the wrong idea, I do not blame you.”
Ares grunted in agreement.
“Sweet Blossomtime must have made quite the impact, if she can leave you with more brains than balls.” Hermes put his back to the girl and lowered his voice further. “Wise to continue that trend, brother, for you have no notion of the storm that will explode under your ass if you touch her.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“Trust me. You do not.”
“Yeah, great, thanks. I think I can handle one little flower goddess.”
“Mm-hmm.” Glancing around at just how many individuals it was taking to accomplish that handling, Hermes sniggered. “So I see.”
Ares let his shoulder bump the pest aside as he turned to hand the scroll to Iris. “Thanks a thousandfold. Deliver that to Demeter, along with this entire collection.”
Iris bowed again. “Lord Ares,” she returned, and the message disappeared inside her purse. Her wings unfurled, drawing an arced rainbow over the whole female lot.
Hermes snickered. “Quite the memorable day if the Brandisher of Blades is polite.”
“Just...” Ares jerked his head at the ghost of the mortal he had slain. The wretched thing still gawked at the knife protruding from its own corpse’s skull. “Now, please.”
“Please and thanks on the same occasion? I shall commemorate the day. But I’m not taking that. It has your stench all over it.” Hermes crossed his arms, then touched the tips of his toes together, boot-wings giving an impertinent flap. “You’ve cut it down before its proper time, and I am not explaining to Uncle why I’ve brought it. You have no idea the foul humor he’s in right now, and I’ve already had to stand beneath his blistering glare once this afternoon. I’m not doing it again.”
The God of War grunted out his frustration as he bashed the heel of his palm against his forehead a few times. “Hermes, just—I’ll owe you a favor, all right? This shit-for-brains was destined to die in tomorrow’s battle by my hand anyway.”
“Oh, you can see the future now? Have you become Hekate?”
“I am the God of War, little boy. Think I don’t know the ones who are marked by my hand when I smell their reek? This one was a coward and a turncoat. He was about to torque me off and get himself impaled on my pike, so would you just take it downstairs? Tell Uncle I’ll perform the Rites of Reparation when I’m sober again, all right?”
“You go tell him.”
“I surely would if I could.”
“But you can’t because you lack my unlimited pass to go get yourself charred by his gaze.”
Ares drew in a long breath, then forced it out through his nostrils. He knew better than to keep taking the bait if he wished for an end to the gnat’s buzzing, so he gritted off a grin and said, “Exactly my point or I’d carry it down myself. Thank you.” He snapped off his best rendition of a grateful bow, knowing it was the fastest way to get rid of his half-brother. He didn’t want that ghost lingering either. Just more evidence of the fiasco that had transpired along with Demeter’s too-tempting blossom.
Thankfully, Hermes tossed off, “Have a glorious day, brother. Just make sure it gets a proper funeral because I am not taking responsibility for delivering another restless soul.”
Ares smacked a hand on top of his sheathed sword. “I swear on my happy-happy blade.”
“I’ll call in that favor when I’ve thought up what I want.”
“Bless raining fireballs.”
Rolling his eyes, Hermes tapped his golden wand on the spirit’s head. In a spiral of feathers and blinding, golden light, the Conductor of Souls vanished with the ghost, leaving Phobos and Deimos to harvest the bone, sinews, hide, and fluids from the body for benefit of the temple. Ares’ cackling twins swooped in, knives and teeth flashing. Their dread gifts of panic and terror seeped back out into the room, grating against Harmonia’s tender waves and Iris’ pretty rainbows.
The whole damned scene echoed Kore herself. A disturbing clash of opposites.
Ares stared down at the source of his trouble, forcing himself to ignore the girl’s desperate last-ditch look. Such an unswayable hold upon hope. The Bringer of Blossomtime glanced at his glaring daughters, then edged closer, batting those big, green eyes. “My Lord Ares—”
“Now you,” he growled at her. “Most of your escort is mortal, so I’ll give Iris the honors of transporting you back home.”
The eyes intensified. “Will…will I ever see you again?”
He kept his gaze pinned out over her head. “We’re Olympians, Kore. Our paths are bound to cross at every formal and family occasion, once you’re properly married off and granted your seat on the Mount.”
He may as well have kneed her in the gut. Her chest shuddered as tears sprang to her eyes. Nemesis plague him, that was worse than the agony of pushing her away without even one good ravishment.
Then she started singing.
“Would you laugh if I asked you plainly?
It’s a question of the heart…mainly.”
Ares’ teeth slammed shut so hard they nearly pulverized each other.
The song sliced through the hazy din like his sword through necks. Even constricted with her cursed weeping, her voice was so clear that it halted chattering mouths and spun heads around.
“Find me here ‘neath the darkest moon.
Tell me, ‘Soon, my darling, soon.’”
And the worst of it, the sweetest little: "La-la-la...la-nana-ya-da..."
Her song skipped and pranced on like that, and it took every shred of willpower he had left to hold his ground, for Kore’s voice was everything that a goddess of Blossomtime’s bell-tones should be: a snowy-white canvas of innocence that required passionate staining at the soonest opportunity.
Their eyes locked. The Temple of War hummed into her, no doubt whispering all his secrets and weaknesses into her hungry ears. Mercenary gut-stabber.
Of course it was. The whole place had been carved by Ares’ will and his divine essence.
When Kore saw how close he was to giving in again, she slunk toward him the way she’d stalked him earlier. Her tears slowed. Her tune shifted. So did her voice. It grew fuller, bolder with every step. She sang in a completely different cadence—one that hit him even harder. This new song reached into him, clenched his innards, and wrenched them sideways.
“A twisted forest with no sunlight...you are there.
A hollowed-out sky, a blackened moon…you are there.”
Ares’ finger jutted at her, halting her in her tracks. “Shut it down,” he said, because suddenly that’s all he wanted—to be there, smashing every shadow that threatened her, banishing the dark night from her world forever.
It couldn’t last. It never did. This feeling of wanting to cliff-dive for her. To crush armies and end universes, if that’s what it took to champion her. But he already knew. Once he’d had her, the thirst would build again, and Kore was the type who would demand that he only ever quench it with her. Both her parents would demand the same, and Ares wanted nothing to do with those kinds of shackles.
One of the most foolhardy things he’d ever done—letting himself fall for the Goddess of Love. Another mercenary gut-stabber. No wonder Aphrodite could disarm him with a wink. Beguiling bitch.
And the greatest blessing of his immortal life.
Worshipping Lady Love the way he did meant paying her homage after homage after homage by falling in love after love after love. One of the best things he’d ever done. But yes. One of the most foolish, because now Blossoms had been flung into the path of his chariot wheels, so what could he do but crack the reins and roar?
Or retreat.
Something he almost never did, even when it kicked his ass.
Although Kore had paused several paces off, her aura lit the space between them, radiating her warmth all over him from her face, and especially from that softest target of her breast. “Sing it for me, Ares. You know the words I long to hear.”
Under the sniggers and jibes from every direction, his face burned. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I truly do not.”
Kore’s eyes beamed chastising amusement, for she wouldn’t release her death-grip on whatever harebrained idealization she’d painted over his name. Too much earth-goddess in her. They were nearly impossible to turn once they’d gotten themselves spurred into motion.
They were also the incarnation of sensuous fertility.
Curse her, she tipped her head back and opened her arms again, baring her throat, her ribcage, her belly, and that vital, nectar-infused furnace that he wanted to ram his blade into most. Get it nice and overheated. Reforge it—only she wouldn’t fucking stop singing, and that song wouldn’t stop ramming the gates to every place where he needed to keep her out.
Another earth-goddess weapon: creeper-vine infiltration.
“It burns and burns…”
She kept worming into his cracks, wedging them wider.
“It blazes. It razes everything down…”
He snapped his gaze away. “Oh, piss and blood, girl.”
“Entrancing eyes like falling off cliffs...
You are there.
Unbreakable chains, adamantine cage…
You are there.
Like the frothing clash of angry waters
Where two opposing rivers meet—”
Ares thrust the heat of his guts down his legs, out his heels, and into the floor. It singed her feet, making her gasp and leap back on her tiptoes—made her finally shut up. He pointed at Iris this time. “Get her outta here.”
Kore whimpered, but her eyes shouted her pain even louder, along with her shock and outrage. “How could you—”
“Now,” he growled. “Before I clamp that song off inside the crush of my grip.”
She blinked hard, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Believe it, he growled through the blistering flare in his eyes.
The Mistress of Rainbows stepped between them and offered a graceful bow to Kore. “Do I have your consent, goddess?”
The girl heaved out a ragged sob. Her gaze fell to the floor. So did three of her tears. She stared at the stones in desperate bafflement, but this was his temple, and he refused to let it hum any more of his secrets at her.
He couldn’t believe Harmonia wasn’t stepping up to calm him down, or at least beg him to play more nicely. But she didn’t so much as shift. In spite of the fact that her harp-string skirt was still vibrating in a perfectly tuned echo of Kore’s song, Harmonia’s aura radiated approval of his choice to ruthlessly sever this thing and send Kore home.
Snipped into solitude, the Bringer of Blossoming Creeper Vines stood there, panting and seething for so long that Ares slipped a foot back. He coiled at the ready for whatever she would let fly at him.
But the only thing she unleashed was one final bitter phrase. The music had leaked out of it, as though she had sung it countless times but only now understood the words: "Where the salt chokes off every sliding chunk of ice…you are there.”
Like a long, slim knife gently slid between his ribs.
His head gave a quick tilt. Yes. I am.
Her chin lifted. Her eyes shut as her head turned aside. The moment her resistance gave way, an iridescent flash struck the room. Thank Nemesis, thank Nyx, thank Tartaros, thank Styx, Iris transported the whole damned entourage away.
Finally, the temple exhaled like a long-held sigh. It slowly seeped back into murky chaos and lust-dipped debauchery. Ares’ worshippers traipsed off, clapping him on the back with snide comments they didn’t dare enunciate clearly enough for him to make out.
The God of War didn’t even annihilate anybody. He just snatched a full goblet out of the nearest hand and strode for the comfort of his throne.
A pulse of energy hit him before he got there.
Discordant and jagged, it whooshed past his feet and slammed into his guts. Grunting, he halted in his tracks, struck with intoxication, nausea, and an instantaneous, ecstatically painful hard-on.
What in the storm-puking pit?
On the wall behind the altar, an immense sculpture was embedded into the rock, made of countless polished skulls—human, horse, dog, all creatures fallen in battle. They drew the shape of one great ominous, human skull. The blank spaces for the eyes, nose, and wide, leering mouth were set with oil lamps. Nobody ever put flame to the wicks of those lamps.
They only ignited when somebody had done something that would incite war.
And not just any kind of war.
Divine war.
Customarily, Ares threw an immediate and cataclysmic debauch whenever those flames lit up. But considering who had come skipping through his temple, and especially the particular combination of individuals who would take issue with that, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know which deity’s outraging acts had set the Grin of Imminent War ablaze.
If he asked it, he had an awful—no, thrilling—yes, terrible feeling that it might murmur back, “You did.”
UP NEXT: Zeus has to rid himself of his own VEXATIOUS (AND ADORABLE) pest before he can get back to solving his problem.
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