Page 149 of Where Darkness Bloomed
“My forge is warm.” His deep voice sent sparks tumbling through her veins.
Her lips parted, longing threading through her, but what slipped free was a soft question, earnest, shy in its curiosity. “What are the forges like?”
He grew still, as if the question had taken him by surprise. Then his mouth curved against her throat. A teasing nip followed, and her breath caught.
“Hot,” he murmured—dark, velvet and promising.
His broad hand slid to the small of her back, fingers splaying wide as he brought her hips flush with his. Her heartbeat stuttered, but her brow furrowed at his answer.
He drew back just enough to see her face—then laughed, deep and resonant. The sound struck a flame inside her soul, igniting joy that warmed her from the inside.
Hephaestus smiled down at her, the same warmth lingering in his eyes. His thumb traced a slow circle against her nape. “They are infernos,” he explained, more gently now. “Built in the depths of the earth, where fire flows deep—”
He stopped abruptly.
At once, his body turned to stone. The hand in her hair went still, the warmth of his touch withdrawn. The easy intimacy between them fled, replaced by a taut, bracing tension that left her chilled.
Then he spoke again, quiet, clipped. No longer for her.
“What is it?”
Aglaia blinked, confusion rushing in. Until she saw the figure behind him.
Outlined in the haze of sunset stood a figure cloaked in radiance. Hair like spun gold spilled over one bare shoulder, a gauzy chiton draping her curves. A diadem of pearl, luminous as captured stars, crowned her.
Aphrodite.
Hephaestus released Aglaia slowly, his fingers slipping from her skin. He turned, leaving her facing his back. A wall of strength, now turned away.
“Why have you come?” he asked evenly. Neither cold nor welcoming.
Aphrodite’s teal eyes shimmered like fire-opals drawn from the sea, gleaming with warm light. A light that burned too intimately, making Aglaia squirm.
She smiled at him, soft and slow—a smile designed by the Fates to entice. “You refused Hera’s call to aid the Greeks,” she said in a honeyed melody.
“Troy will find no help from me, Aphrodite.” His reply fell bluntly between them. Iron-bound, final.
Surprise lit her flawless face, then melted into something softer. Pleading, veiled in grace. The tilt of her head, shift of her stance was seduction made effortless, woven into the fabric of her being.
“But surely,” she said softly, “you see the Trojans are more righteous than the Greeks. Agamemnon is a butcher.” Her voice was a lover’s sigh, coaxing and familiar. “Please, Hephaestus.”
His name on her lips was a blade. It sliced through Aglaia with cruel precision, carving deep. Her heart twisted, a slow ache blooming there, spreading wide.
Once bright and soft, the air between them now turned thick. It was cloyed with memory, old and heavy, lingering like smoke from an ancient flame. In the silence and the ache blooming within Aglaia, realization rose. Not new, but sharper than it had ever been before.
There had been whole ages before her. Eons. Thousands of nights where Hephaestus had lain beside another, flesh to flesh, as he did with her now. And here Aphrodite stood, the living echo of every one of them. Radiant and powerful, desire incarnate.
A chasm suddenly yawned between them, full of shared history and silent understandings. A fluency born of shared memory, a history in which she had no part. She stood at the edge, alone. Stranded. Unmoored.
The warmth of the sun vanished from her skin, a chill creeping along her spine like the first touch of winter.
When Aglaia found her voice, it was small. Breakable.
“I must go.”
Hephaestus turned sharply toward her. His gaze pierced the space between them, searching her face.
But she was already moving, her feet carrying her away in soft, swift steps across the sand. A show of composure, but a thread that frayed with every heartbeat.
