The Immortal Game (book 1) (22 page)

They never spoke of Aphrodite’s affair with Ares, and Ruby tried not to think about it. She saw how Ares looked at the goddess sometimes. It was no different than the way other gods looked at her, but their shared history made it hard for Ruby to dismiss.

Sun filtered in from a dome of windows above the massive sitting room of Aphrodite’s abode. The middle of the smooth alabaster floor was sunken and rimmed with a couch that could easily seat thirty. Deep reds in the sofa played up the soft pinks of everything else. Cut red roses stood in waist-high vases. Their fragrance filled the room.

“What are you thinking?” Athena asked.

“There’s this guy,” Ruby said to Aphrodite. “I think maybe he wanted to go out with me.”

Aphrodite leaned in. “Did you?”

“No.” Ruby laughed at the idea. “I met Ares at about the same time. Anyway, he’s been hanging around my house looking for me.”

“He was asking a lot of questions,” Athena said. “I managed to stall him for the time being, but he threatened to call the police. I said she’d be back in a few days.”

“Why did you tell him she would be back?” Aphrodite gave the goddess of knowledge a quizzical look. “She’ll be married to Ares any time. This is her home now.”

“
I
know that, and
you
know that, but Mark
can’t
know that. This is a modern human we’re talking about,” Athena said. “He has to be told something logical and normal.”

“So,” Ruby said. “I was hoping you could …
distract
him.”

“Distract him?” Aphrodite pulled her head back in surprise. “How?”

“You could go to Earth, and you know … do your thing.” Athena said, catching on.

“My
thing
?” Aphrodite said, annoyed.

“You know, that thing where men completely forget about everything they ever cared about, when you walk into a room,” Ruby said.

Aphrodite looked from one to the other of them. “I don’t actually do anything, you know. I just walk into the room.”

“I know,” Ruby said, hoping to lessen the insult, if that’s what it was. “I know it’s not something you try to do, but it
is
what happens. I’m not asking you to date him or anything. Just distract him.”

“No,” Aphrodite said, without hesitation. “I can’t risk getting caught going to Earth. Have Ares take care of it.”

Ruby was shocked by her callous response. “Take care of it?” she said. “You mean … kill him?” She felt like she was in a gangster movie.

“I don’t know,” Aphrodite said. “Ares will think of something.”

Ruby looked at Athena but her face was impassive. She seemed to be fine with the idea. Ruby realized how much like them she had become in these months on Olympus. She wasn’t ready to kill Mark for her own gain, but she would easily send the goddess of love to manipulate him.

“That’s not an option. I don’t want to get Ares involved. I’ll figure something out,” Ruby said. She didn’t know how Ares might react to Mark poking around.

“Maybe Apollo will have an idea,” Athena said.

“Not Apollo.” Ruby stared at Athena in horror. “He reignited a war the last time a human got in his way.”

“Well, what can
you
possibly do?” Athena asked. “You can’t travel to Earth. You have no power.”

Athena was right. Ruby was completely reliant on the gods around her.

…

Ruby sat in the large leather armchair across from Ares. He moved a black bishop on the old marble chess board that sat between them. The ruby and diamond board sat in the corner of the room, but Ares never used it. He said he preferred this one and had asked Athena to bring it back from Athenaeum.

His reputation for being unbeatable was as present on Olympus as it had been on Earth and Ruby loved to tell Pan or Hermes how she had beaten him. Ares would listen to the story and smile, either proud that Ruby was smart enough to match his wits or lost in the memory of when they had met.

Ares taught Ruby tactics and theories. Her game improved greatly, but tonight she felt distracted by her problem with Mark and by Athena and Aphrodite’s reaction. She was worried that Athena would tell Apollo. If he found out, he might hurt Mark to spite Ruby as much as to solve the problem.

Ares stared at her.

She smiled quickly when she realized that it was her move. She had been attacking with her king, rook, and bishop. She thought she was getting herself into a good position, but Ares had built a fortress around his king and Ruby could not see how to get through.

She moved her pawn into the path of one of his. Sacrificing it was the only option she could see.

He half smiled and glanced up at her from under his black lashes. Her breath caught at that look. It was a good move.

He accepted the sacrifice, but she immediately saw her mistake. It had been a good move, but not a winning move. Ares was now in a position to advance his own pawn to the end of the board and promote it to queen, and that would win him the game. Ruby’s only hope was to checkmate him before he could do it.

She breathed in the smell of the rich leather in the room and felt the cold marble of the king between her fingers as she moved the piece.

Ash shifted forward, toward her. His chiton moved to rest below the olive skin of his collar bones. He looked straight at her as he moved his bishop. “Check,” he challenged.

She licked her parted lips and tried to steady her breathing. The game now looked similar to a practice problem she had worked recently. It gave her an idea. She moved her king to the right.

Ares nodded and tried not to smile, but failed. He moved his pawn closer to promotion.

Ruby moved her rook within striking distance of his king. She could checkmate in four moves, but Ares could promote his pawn in three. He would have to decide, defend his king or continue to move his pawn toward promotion and winning the game. If he went for the promotion and had missed anything in his strategy he would lose.

He moved the pawn.

Ruby met his eyes, blue, bold, and confident. A deep and carnal shiver ran through her. Only Ares would dare to leave his king open like that.

She closed in with her bishop. “Check,” she said with a heavy breath. Now he had no choice. He had to defend.

He moved his king to the corner. His cheeks were flushed. He licked his lips and let the flesh scrape between his teeth.

Ruby smiled at having his king on the run. She bit at her own lip and moved her rook to push his king into the path of her bishop.

He touched his chin and drew his finger across his jaw, thinking.

Ruby imagined her own hand there, and her lips. She swallowed and tried to concentrate on the game.

Instead of moving his king to a safer position he advanced the pawn again.

She saw her mistake, she could have checkmated him on the next move but only if he had defended his king. She didn’t care. Her hands were shaking with the desire to touch him. Her jaw clenched in a weak attempt to hold her body still.

Her next move was blind. She didn’t know what piece she moved or where. It didn’t matter, he had already won.

Ares knocked the chessmen to the floor in a single swipe of his hand. The pieces fell to the carpet in a quick succession of dull thuds.

He picked her up from her leather chair in one swift motion. Her burning lips met his. She wrapped her legs around him, each leg free from her peplos on the sides. The thin fabric between them did little to hide his rising excitement and the feel of him only increased the heat that threatened to overtake her.

He laid her on something soft and smooth, a couch maybe, but to Ruby there was nothing in the world but Ares. She thought of their virginal promise and moaned in frustration. They could only ever take it so far.
Why won’t spring come?
a voice inside her head wailed.

“I love you,” he whispered as she kissed the vibrating ridges of his throat. “I will always protect you. You can always come to me. You can always tell me.”

She stopped and looked into his face. “Come to you about what?” She swallowed and felt the heat of her desire vanish.

“About the human,” he said and kissed her. She pulled away and tried to sit up but they were too tangled and she couldn’t move. “Athena told you?”

“No. Aphrodite.” He ran his finger between her partially exposed breasts. “Don’t worry, she’ll take care of it.”

She broke away from him and sat up. “Aphrodite said she wouldn’t go.”

“I liked your plan,” he said. “It’s simple and it will work.”

“What changed her mind?” Ruby asked, suspicion fighting with relief that Mark would no longer be a problem. Of all her options seduction was the least severe.

His brow wrinkled. “I don’t know. Something about human clothes and new shoes.”

“So she won’t do it for me, but she’ll do it for you?” Ruby couldn’t help but state the obvious.

…

Ruby sat at a round table in the Great Hall. The platinum crown of laurels Hera had given her dug into her scalp. The Seasons sat across from her in their multicolored peploses and crowns of wildflowers. The four goddesses twittered and giggled at everything Ruby said and she found it difficult to have a conversation with them.

Ares sat at the raised table at the front of the room, at the Table of the Twelve. He rested back in his gold chair and joked with Hermes and Athena.

Aphrodite leaned over and motioned something to Zeus.

Apollo talked with Artemis, but the huntress always seemed uncomfortable in the Great Hall. She scanned the room as if she expected a deer to be flushed out from under one of the tables at any moment.

Ganymede, the teen with the shaggy bangs, was cupbearer of the gods. He filled Hephaestus’s goblet of nectar and glanced often at Aphrodite with nothing short of lust in his eyes.

Hephaestus drank the dark red nectar in two short swallows. He stood and hobbled on one crutch behind Aphrodite’s chair, but his wife didn’t look up at him. He continued to the edge of the dais and lumbered down the golden steps to the main floor.

Ruby wondered if he was coming to talk to the Seasons. He headed right in their direction. The girls took no notice of him. They were busy tittering as they watched Pan play his pipes for the Muses, who were dressed in almost nothing in an attempt to look like nymphs.

Hephaestus did not even glance at the Seasons, though. Instead he limped over to Ruby and lowered himself into the empty chair next to her. His disfigured foot jutted out from under the white tablecloth.

“You should be careful,” he said without preamble. They were the first words he had ever said to her.

Ruby’s eyes met his. They were deep brown and soulful. Was this warning more of what she had already gotten from Apollo?
We don’t want you here.

“Why?” she said, as if she were completely uninterested. She had started to feel like she belonged on Olympus.

“Ares had no regard for the sanctity of
my
marriage. I doubt he’ll have any regard for the sanctity of
yours
.”

Ruby’s head tilted. The laurel crown shifted. This was not what she had expected.

“I think he’s changed,” she said.

“Oh, I doubt it.”

Ruby didn’t respond.

Ares looked over and scowled. The god of war stood and the god of forge and fire shambled away.

…

The next morning a black bicycle appeared at Athena’s door. The frame fit Ruby perfectly. It was so light she could pick it up by the crossbar with one finger. On its stem was Heph’s symbol, two crossed hammers over an anvil. She had no idea how Heph knew she liked cycling.

The bike pedaled almost effortlessly in the clear morning. It had rained overnight and the air smelled fresh and clean.

The paths of Olympus were endless and they constantly changed. She would sometimes start out on a familiar path only to find that the scenery was now different and that there were new wonders around each bend. Occasionally she would see some of the gods out, strolling or picking flowers, but often it was as if she had Olympus to herself.

She rounded a corner that normally brought her to the edge of the river Oceanus, but today there was a sea of lavender instead. The fragrance hit her senses almost as strongly as the intense purple color. She stopped her bike in wonder and let it gently rest on the ground.

The plants were still wet from the rain, but she walked into the field of knee-high lavender anyway. She closed her eyes and breathed in the slightly woodsy-camphor smell. She smiled to herself. Not much happened on Olympus. The gods kept themselves busy with games, and nymphs, and gossip, but she thought that the natural splendor alone could sustain her for an eternity.

“Beautiful,” a man’s voice said close to her.

Her heart thudded like a herd of cattle running through her chest. She opened her eyes. Zeus stood no more than three feet in front of her.

The king of the gods smiled and reached out to touch her cheek. His fingers were smooth on her face. A chill went through her.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I could never bring pain to such beauty.”

Ruby doubted if Zeus’s idea of pain was anything like a human’s.

“The bike is a gift from Hephaestus, unless I miss my mark,” he said. “You’ve caught the interest of more than a few gods, I see.”

She shook her head, wanting to deny such a thing, but no words would come out of her mouth.

Zeus chuckled from deep within his chest. His fingers trailed down her neck.

She swallowed reflexively and he smiled.

“You even feel different,” he whispered. “Your energy …” He inhaled deeply but didn’t finish the thought. His azure eyes glazed over and his widened lids relaxed.

A cold sweat chilled her as she realized that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She often spent hours riding her bike on the paths of Olympus. Ares would think nothing of it if she were gone for the entire morning.

A high pitched noise grew in her head, stress, or fear, or … No, it was a distant whistle, she realized, from somewhere up the path behind her. Random notes turned into a tune. She froze.

Zeus looked at her. His jaw tensed. “Who is that?”