Funny, Athene found it hard to let the words out at all. “His spawn grows in my belly, Kirke.” And those words, too, felt like they had ripped out of her gut. “I need a poison to kill it.”
Nodding grimly, Kirke patted her knee. “So you came to the witch. Yeah, well, easy enough. I just need some herbs from my garden.”
It was dark by the time they returned to Kalypso’s estate, and Kirke said she would get what they needed at dawn. Though Athene did not much fancy going in there with the pair of them, she didn’t really want to sleep outside either.
“You can bed down by the hearth,” Kalypso said. Perhaps the Nymph sensed Athene’s mood, for she kept her distance, save to offer a bowl of carrot and cabbage soup. After Athene took it, Kalypso drifted off into the other room, speaking to Kirke in hushed whispers. Would her half-sister divulge what Athene had told her? The thought of anyone knowing about it twisted in her gut. As if her shame would redouble for every person who learned of it.
The hearth space had been cleaned of the bowl of Ambrosia and the vestiges of the two Nymphs’ time there, and now all that decorated it was a lion-skin rug. She sat on it, sipping at the soup without tasting it. When it was finished, she set the bowl down, unlaced her sandals, and warmed her feet in front of the hearth. It was a pleasant feeling, reminding her of evenings she had spent like this with Hestia.
Hephaistos’s aunt, Nyx damn it all.
She could not ever imagine reclining at ease with the Olympian again. Hephaistos had taken that from her, too. Had taken … so much. Every moment that passed, Athene found some further aspect of her past or future infected with the taint of him.
Maybe Kirke was right. Maybe she should have asked Father to wreak vengeance upon him. Or Mother, even, who could have done so with more subtlety and perhaps even greater agony than Father. But vengeance was Athene’s to claim for herself. If she did not do so, could not do so, how could she even claim to be an Olympian? How could she ever again be herself, if she could not own her own memories?
Sunlight filtering in through cracks in the shutters woke her, and Athene rose with a groan. The hearth fire had dwindled to just embers. Did the Nymphs still sleep?
No, from the next room, the sounds of someone grinding stone upon stone sounded. Soft, not enough to have woken her, but now she heard it, it was definitely there. Athene stalked across the room and peered into the kitchen.
Working upon a counter, Kirke stood, pulverizing something with a mortar and pestle. In a pot, some bile-colored liquid rested, and the Nymph poured the powder she’d just made inside. Doing so, she must have caught sight of Athene, for she started.
“Nyx, Athene! Stop doing that. I don’t even know how you move thus, never drawing anyone’s notice.”
Training with Artemis, back when Athene was young. All the other Olympians were by far her elders. They had fought with Father in his war against the Ouranid League, had helped him win that Titanomachy, and thus earned their place on Olympus. Athene had been a babe then, and Father had named her to their number out of sheer adoration for her.
Athene drummed her fingers upon the counter. “I … I find myself wondering how Father would see me if he knew … what I had let Hephaistos do to me.”
Kirke abruptly dropped the pestle. “What you let him do?” She fixed Athene with a hard stare. “I don’t know what your father would say, Athene, but I know what our mother would say. She’d say you’re an imbecile.”
Athene flinched. Kirke thought Mother would be ashamed of her, too?
“An imbecile for thinking any woman ever allows herself to be raped. That you let it happen.”
“He … overcame me.”
“He chained you when you were asleep! He didn’t best you in combat!”
Athene winced at Kirke’s tone, not knowing what to say. She could neither deny Kirke’s words nor shake the sense of her own shame. How was she to reconcile logic and the gut-churning truth of her heart? “Is that it?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Yeah.” Kirke snatched the pestle and ground it a few more times, looking at Athene as if she were mashing her head. Then she stirred the pan, then poured the liquid from it into a clay cup. “I won’t lie. It probably will taste like chimera piss, and you’ll have stomach cramps something awful, but this will do the task without risk to your health.”
Do the task. A prosaic way of saying it would murder the babe.
Athene snatched up the cup, sloshing the liquid over her hand. It reeked of putrescence and Gaia-alone-knew what else. She felt Kirke’s stare upon her but didn’t turn. Damn it all. “If I don’t?”
“If you keep the child?” Kirke asked. “Well, no one needs to know where it came from. There will be whispers, but the Olympians have their share of bastard offspring, don’t they? Yeah, I don’t think anyone will guess the truth, maybe not even Hephaistos. Oh, but if he did, he wouldn’t be fool enough to say aught and risk word of his crime getting back to Zeus.” The Nymph cleared her throat. “Could be, in fact, now that I think of it, he never imagined a child would take on the first time like that.”
Perhaps not. Something about fortifying the flesh with Ambrosia seemed to reduce fertility, even as it eventually turned the blood to ichor. The more Ambrosia one consumed, the harder it became to have children, or so Demeter had told her ages back.
“Yeah,” Kirke said, “well, either way, slow vengeance is the most satisfying. You take your time, you plan your moment, and he can
