The Forge King Read online

  Hephy occasionally suffered bouts of jealousy, but they were less now than they used to be. He trusted in me more and more each day. Which was why he was my perfect mate—he would not judge me for who I was or for what I’d been, which was still very much a part of me. I might not sleep around anymore, but that didn’t mean I regretted my past. All those trysts had helped shape me and had directly led me upon the path that I now walked, that of being a perfectly contented one-man kind of gal. Which seemed nonsensical because I’d not been created for the monogamous lifestyle. All wanted me. But they only wanted the pleasure they could gain from me. The actual person, the soul behind the beautiful body that was really me, few, if any, had ever truly cared for. I did not doubt that I could look like a wildebeest and my Hephy would still choose me. Because he did not merely love the outside, but he loved more the within, a feat I wasn’t even sure Ares could have ever truly claimed.

  Ares had loved me, but I wouldn’t say a large part of that wasn’t because of how I looked too.

  I sighed, running my fingers over the luxuriously soft rabbit pelt as Hephy planted a row of drugging kisses along the soft swell of my lower stomach. He said he loved my soft curves. Once, I’d been much thinner, but Hephaestus liked me this way, and I liked me more too.

  “Hephy,” I murmured drowsily.

  “Hm?” he asked, pausing in his adoration of me.

  I wrapped my legs around his lower half, squeezing him with my thighs, feeling the deformed bumps of his withered legs, and smiled, so deeply satisfied that I knew I’d been given a precious, precious gift. One I would never stop being grateful for.

  “Will you share my bed this eve?” I whispered into the stillness of his heated chambers. Lately, he and I had been so busy, wrapped up in the cares of our work, we hadn’t made enough time for one another, a problem I sought to remedy immediately. I traced the hard line of his nude back with my long fingernail, completely at ease and content for the first time in a very long time.

  We were both covered in the dew of our arousals and the sheen of our ejaculations. I’d covered his forge in diamond dust, not that he minded. He liked my glow.

  And maybe it made me disturbed, but if I had to wear anything, the only thing I really liked to wear were Hephy’s pearls. Make of that what you will.

  He wrapped his meaty palm around my arse and gave it a good shake, making me squeal with delight, and though I was very pleasantly sore, I could already feel my body buzzing with the building need for more.

  I was an insatiable goddess and could keep him up for an eternity if I really had a mind to.

  “Haven’t you had enough, female?” he grunted with a pleasant, rolling chuckle that felt like brushstrokes against my skin.

  I sighed again, a lovestruck fool for him, and I knew it.

  “With you, not ever.”

  At that, he stopped moving, looking down at me with his severe face and dark, lightning-streaked eyes, and I felt the lighthearted mood of just seconds ago shift to something heavier and deeper.

  “Do you really mean that?”

  My brows pinched. I was confused why he should doubt it. He knew I was gone on him. Like so gone there’d never be any coming back from it.

  He shook his head, tracing a design into the curve of my perfectly formed cheek.

  “Of course, I know you love me, Dite. It’s just…” He trailed off and pulled away from me, and my heart literally squeezed like a vice in my chest, making it bloody difficult for me to even take a proper breath.

  I clutched at my chest as I watched him roll up to a sitting position and wrap his beautiful arms around his beautiful legs and stare pensively at his forge ahead.

  The room grew thick with unsaid things, and I was scared. So very scared. I’d never loved anyone the way I loved him. I was a goddess crippled by the one thing I should have been in complete control of.

  Wondering if I’d done something wrong, I slowly sat up, using the silken strands of my golden hair to cover my body like a blanket.

  “Heph. Hephy?” My voice broke as I reached for him, but I stopped myself from touching him at the last minute. “Have I done—”

  He growled from deep in his chest as he turned to me, and I saw that there was rain in his eyes, tears he could not cry, could never cry, and instantly, heat flooded my own.

  “Oh, Hephaestus,” I murmured, wrapping my hands around his head tenderly and pulling him to my breast. “Those dreams again?” I whispered when I felt his body ease against mine.

  He loosely wrapped an arm around me, his hand landing on the outside of my thigh. I loved when he touched me. Hephy and I were both the same—we required an extraordinary amount of touch in our lives. But neither of us minded since we were both cut from the same cloth.

  Born deformed and to the worst parents imaginable, Hera and Zeus, he’d been immediately rejected by his egg donor and tossed off of Mount Olympus. The very notion that that bitch could have done that to him and yet still demand his fealty in all things made me hate her more than I already did.

  There was bad blood between Hera and me, and all of it stemmed from my forbidden attraction to the one thing she called a blight on her queenly legacy. She’d called Hephy a cruel joke of the Fates and hated him for being so much less than perfect. She’d made it her life’s mission to see me fail, and that impediment could have been enough to separate lesser lovers, but Hephy had ultimately chosen me. I adored my male.

  I traced a heart-shaped pattern with my finger onto the spot of his chest over his own rapidly beating heart. He latched onto my wrist, staring at me intently.

  “I am sorry, my darling one,” he murmured tenderly, and I shook my head, crawled onto his lap, and hugged him full body.

  “They are only dreams. You know how I really feel for you. In no life would I ever choose your brother. He wasn’t right for me, Hephaestus. You know this.”

  Sighing heavily, he forked thick fingers through his hair, causing the dark tips to poke up every which way, which was also ridiculously adorable. I grinned softly, patting them back into place.

  “I know, I know,” he said, blowing out a harsh breath. “In truth, I think it’s Mother again.” His words were sharp now, full of malice and barely leashed hate. “She loves to taunt me, mock what we have.”

  Hate like he and I felt for Hera might sound awful, but then again, Hera was the worst female in basically the history of ever. She was petty. Vindictive. Cruel. And I loathed her with every fiber of my being. The only thing she ever did right was when she’d created Ares and Hephy.

  Apart from that, she was sick and twisted, and I would not care if she never spoke to us again. But her cruelty came in inserting herself into our lives now, pretending to be the loving mother she absolutely was not, always around. Always lingering just on the fringes of our lives, and it wasn’t as though we could easily escape her. Not on Olympus, anyway. I always begged Hephy to leave here with me, to go to Kingdom, where we could start our lives anew, fresh, with no impediments at all.

  But he was devoted to his father, which would be a kind way of putting it. If there was one flaw in my mate, it was that sometimes I felt my love for him was not enough. He wanted, needed, the love of his father that he’d never gotten.

  In reality, none of us really knew if Zeus was his true father. Hera had decreed that it was so, but rumor had it that Zeus had had no hand in crafting my male. Not that I cared who his father really was—he could be the son of Apollo, for all it mattered to me. Hephaestus was mine, and I was his, and that was all there was to it.

  “I can speak with Morpheus, see if she has meddled. Make him stop,” I suggested, and he shrugged.

  “No. No,” he said again, steely determination in his word. “I know what we are. Who we are together. The nightmares plague me, it is true, but I have faith in you, in us. I always have, Dite, and I always will.”

  I waited to hear the telltale quiver of deceit in his words, that shivering timbre in his tone that would let me know
he did not speak as he truly felt, but it never came. He meant every word he said, and I knew this because I was the goddess of the heart. The soul. The one who could know the very depths and truths of a person’s innermost being.

  I framed his whisker-dusted cheek with my hand and looked at him until he was forced to look back at me.

  “I know you believe it, but sometimes it is worth hearing again and again and again, just to be reminded. I love you, Hephaestus. Only you. Though I know very well that I do not deserve you.”

  He scoffed. “You are more beautiful than all the stars in the heavens and roses in the fields. It is I who doesn’t deserve—”

  I placed a finger upon his full lips, quieting him instantly. “Do not look at my beauty and judge yourself unworthy. It has never been that between us, and well you know it. You loved me despite my looks, Hephaestus, and for that I am forever grateful. You’ve shown me what it means to love. To truly love. I desire you above all else. All that I am and all that I will ever be, it is yours alone. And I am not much other than a pretty reflection, in truth, my darling boy. It is you who is the most beautiful among us. For me, you are everything.”

  He trembled mightily and then kissed me. Kissed me hard. As if he were trying to brand himself on not just my heart but also my soul. I was lost for him. Absolutely.

  When the kiss ended, I shone like one of Apollo’s burning steeds, and he grinned, tracing a finger through my beautiful flame.

  “My goddess. My one true love,” he murmured tenderly. “How could I ever not need you? Not want you? Not… love you?” he whispered softly against my mouth before gently moving over my body, and this time when he loved me, he did it passionately, worshipfully, and with all the love that any man could boast.

  Aphrodite

  * * *

  A.T.C. (After the curse)

  * * *

  I sat up, staring around me, peering into the darkness of a place I didn’t even recognize. I never knew where I laid my head anymore. All I felt now was empty. Aching for a love that I’d never known in this new and awful world.

  Beside me lay two softly snoring forms. I vaguely remembered the touches, the mewls of pleasure and shared passions that had made me feel alive for the minutes it’d taken for us to do as we’d done in the secretive hush of night.

  And then once it had finished, I’d scrambled out the door on my knees and had vomited. Everywhere. Their delicate touches that had felt so good earlier now felt like rot spreading through me.

  But it wasn’t cheating when he didn’t want me. When he’d rejected me and tossed me away.

  So why did it feel so very, very bad? Why did their kisses feel like poison upon my lips? And their touches like fire that consumed my flesh? Why did I always feel like screaming? Or crying? Or simply closing my eyes and never opening them again?

  I was the goddess of Love. I was better than this. Stronger than this. I did not need anything or anyone. I had a task to do. A job to see to. Love to help restore what the curse had stripped from so many.

  And yet I did not wish to help anyone anymore. The need in me to secure happily ever afters was just gone. I was a shell now, pretty but empty of that which had given me life once.

  I stared at the beautiful lanky male with pale-blond hair lying nude beside me and then at our other companion for the evening, a muscular and short-haired brunette female with well-defined arms, who’d pinned me to the bed and had owned my body just as surely as almost any strong male could have. Perhaps even more so, because she’d very clearly known her way around the female form—there’d been no awkwardness or fumbling with her.

  They’d had their fun with me. For a moment, I’d been the goddess of passions again, bringing them to heights that they would never know again. In essence, I’d cursed them to compare all future lovers to an unattainable ideal, and I did not feel an ounce of regret about it.

  I shoved my hands through my bed-tousled hair and wondered, What now? I was not Demeter, who could go and grow a harvest from mere seeds. Or even pretty Persephone, who could make even the deadest buds bloom again. Athena, who ruled wisely. Or Ares, who made war. I could not travel the winds as Hermes did to deliver messages of grave importance. Or throw lightning at the foolish mortals below.

  I was just me.

  Pretty.

  Wallpaper.

  I existed solely for the pleasure of others to gaze upon me. But I had no purpose beyond that.

  I looked down at the warped wooden floorboards of this quaint little room and saw the tiny piles of Morpheus’s sleeping sands. Even in this new world, Hera haunted me. Even now, she was not content to let me linger in my agony alone.

  I dropped my head into my hands and quietly sobbed, shaking so hard I feared I’d wake my bedmates. Not that I really cared, but I wasn’t cruel. Or maybe I was.

  Honestly, I didn’t know what I was anymore. Shoving a knuckle into my mouth, I bit down until I broke skin and the heavenly aroma of lust bled through our disgusting room. I hiccupped, staring around me, having the mother of all existential meltdowns. Who was I now?

  It wasn’t merely losing Hephy that had turned me into this. I loved him dearly. But he’d been more like the straw that had finally broken this camel’s back. I had no one on my side. Not one ally. Maybe Hades, but he was consumed with fixing the pieces of his own broken romance, and I didn’t blame him.

  Calypso, who wasn’t quite Calypso anymore, didn’t really know much other than her desperate desire to bed Hades. Which, fine, I got that. I guess if the situation had been reversed I’d have been the same.

  But I couldn’t help but feel forgotten. Even Themis, whom I’d counted as one of my very good friends in the other time, hated the very sight of me now, and the worst of it was I didn’t even know why or what the other me had done to earn the censure of my peers.

  Whoever I’d been in this time, in this new world, no one liked her. Least of all, me. I was even at the point now where I’d considered going to Ares, out of some morbid curiosity, I supposed. I was no longer in love with Ares, but I was so desperate for an ally that I was even willing to break the one oath I’d made to Hephy eons ago. And though Hephaestus had made his position quite clear with me now, I still couldn’t make myself go to Ares yet.

  It was a sacred promise I’d given my mate. And though he clearly didn’t love me anymore, there was a side of me that simply couldn’t break faith with him.

  I cringed, feeling those words like a blow to my soul. Bile began working its way up my throat again, and I had to take three deep, slow breaths as I rubbed at my unsettled stomach. My breasts ached. I just didn’t feel well. I never did anymore.

  I rolled my neck with a heavy sigh and felt my form, felt the differences in it just since yesterday. My body was growing softer and softer. I was a goddess who’d lost all purpose and direction, and if I couldn’t find it again soon, then I would simply cease to be.

  I should fear that possibility, and yet Hades had his mate back. My friends were restored. I’d done what I’d set out to do. And without that goal in mind, I was no more than an empty husk.

  And the emptiness, it was spreading like ice through my veins. It hurt so badly, and I needed to make it stop. I needed to make this pain stop. There was only one way to do that. I’d hate myself for it later, but it wasn’t as though anyone would care.

  No one cared for me anymore. I sniffed up the tears and looked down at my partners for the night. The male sobbed when he orgasmed. I curled my lip.

  I placed my hand on the naked hip of the female, shoving my power into her harder than I should. She woke up with a startled cry, and instantly, I smelled the rosy scent of her orgasm.

  But her shock upon waking soon morphed into desire. Because that was all I was good for now. I was nothing other than lust.

  Useless.

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  She opened her arms to me, and I fell into them, closing my eyes and pretending the hard planes of her body were
sharper, more defined. Steely.

  “Hephy,” I whimpered, but she didn’t care. As long as she came, she didn’t care at all.

  And when it was all done, I walked out of that disgusting hovel, threw up, and never returned to either one of them.

  2

  Galeta the Pink

  I stared at the elemental once known as Calypso, now Thalassa, but now even more altered and entirely different. It would be interesting to learn who this new manifestation of the most ancient of goddesses would ultimately become. I’d very eagerly watched her and Hades’s reunion of just a few weeks past and felt deep in my heart of hearts that finally, finally the tide was changing for us in Kingdom now that we had most of our gods back on the board. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to indulge in the maybes of what came next, because I’d discovered something quite disconcerting this evening. Something that would immediately call Danika and me away. Far, far away. Which was exactly why we’d come.

  “Galeta?” Hades’s deep voice, which always made me just a little weak in the knees, if I was being honest, snared my attention. He sat beside Calypso at the smallish tea table full of delicacies of the sea and land.

  I gave him a nod of greeting but remained silent. It was with Calyssa, as I now thought of her, that I’d come to speak.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw that Danika had still not moved much. Even her wings were strangely silent behind her back. She was worried, poor dear. Of course, I would be, too, were I in her shoes.

  Hades took a deep breath, and again I looked back at him. It was clear I’d interrupted something. There was a bowl of cleaned carrots sitting on the table before them, and not for nothing, but just about all of Kingdom had heard the rumors of just what carrots meant to them. I swallowed hard, turning my eyes from that bowl that, for some reason, made me miss my own mate most fiercely. But the sooner I could right the wrongs, the sooner I could return to him. I balled my wee hands into fists.