War of the Gods

I don’t have time to really absorb what my mother told me completely. I had to play hostess to them and make sure the guest room was ready. I walk out of the small room regretting the fact that we didn’t go for the larger apartment like Alex wanted to.

“It’s nice to see your family,” Alex says seeing me in the hallway. “Let’s hope my mother can show up.”

Alex’s mother has a hard time making it to any of our events. I have met her twice, and out of those two times I wish I didn’t. She has made very clear that she didn’t approve of our relationship. Alex doesn’t listen to her advice because they have never really been close like she has once thought they were. He still wants her to support him, and he wants her to be there ever since his father died. He wishes go unanswered most of the time though.

“I hope so, too, Alex. It would be good to see her there at the party,” I answer trying to cheer him up.

“Why would you want her there? She hates you,” he points out giving me a questioning look.

I shake my head. “Just because she hates me doesn’t mean that I have to be rude to her or not like her. Sure, she isn’t my favorite person in the world, but I won’t act like she is something stuck to the bottom of my shoe. She is important to you, so I have to learn to love your family.”

Alex wraps his arms around me and gives me a quick kiss. It’s times like these that make me want to love him. This time though the guy that I saw earlier today pops in my head. I don’t even know who he is, and why he would be jumping into my thoughts for that matter.

“Come on, Eutropia. Let’s go to bed. We have to be somewhere tomorrow,” my fiancé says pulling me towards our room.



Being the center of attention deserves to go to people who know how to handle it or even like it. I have a hard time being at a party with a crowd of people that I don’t know. I haven’t meant half the people in the building. I know some of them are the people who work with Alex and Iason, but the others are a mystery. I’m assuming some of them are Isadora’s cousins or other family members that I haven’t met.

“Oh, there they are,” Isadora screams in excitement. “The two people who we have been waiting for have arrived, everyone.”

I look down at my hands trying to avoid this attention. My mother stands next to Acacius not really looking at me. She hasn’t been able to look at me all morning. In fact, she has been avoiding me as much as she possibly could with her staying in my house. I want to ask her what’s wrong, but I know she won’t tell me anything. I imagine it has something to do with Ares if I was going to make a wild guess.

Acacius walks up to us with a smile. “Eutropia, it’s nice to see you on the arms of a very strong man who can take care of you,” he says as he stops in front of us. He then pulls me into a hug and whispers in my ear, “Don’t let Ares get to you.”

My mother told him that I found out the truth that they were both hiding from me. I couldn’t help but be little bothered from them not telling me the truth until now. I hug him back and smile as I pull away. There’s something about knowing that the man that raised you wasn’t your father and how they lied about it that makes you look at them a little differently. It’s like they may have took care of you, but they didn’t give you something that you should have until it comes out like runaway train falling off its rails. They suddenly are like a stranger.

I wonder away from my parents talking to Alex. Agathe isn’t going to talk to me today because of the reasons behind avoiding me. I stand next to the drinks table. I grab a bottle water and turn to head back to Alex when I see the blond man from yesterday walking up to me.

“Hi. You must be Eutropia,” he says with that award-winning smile. His model-like face lighting up like the sun. “I remember you from the street. You were talking to Ari.”

It took me a second that he was talking about Ares. I’m assuming that he shortened the name to keep people from wondering what was going on or that the gods are here. “Yeah, he told me that we were related,” I answer trying to code the conversation like he was.

“I’m Apollo,” he introduces himself. He holds out his hand trying to be polite with his introduction.

I’m surprised that he is acting this formal, but I take his hand any way. As soon as our hands make contact there are two sharp pains on my forearms. Apollo’s eyes widen as he pulls me into the hall of the building so that we can have some privacy as he begins to inspect my arms.

He quickly rolls up my sleeves. There on my forearms are what looks like trees. They are both identical. They are both black and grey with little points on the end of the branches. Apollo’s hand skims across examining it. The points turn a bright red from his touch. They turn back to the dull grey that they were before when he pulls his hand away.

“That’s so strange. I have never seen a marking change colors like that,” he mutters to himself. He rubs his hip absently as if it’s in pain as well.

“Is there something wrong with you?” I ask him noticing him keeping his hand on his hip. It looks like he is trying to soothe an ache.

“I’m fine. I think you should worry about yourself. Don’t worry about the humans. They will think that it has been there a long time. Your fiancé may even think that he went with you to get it,” the blond man explains trying to keep my nerves calm.

I smile at him and get back to my boyfriend as quickly as I could. He snakes an arm around my waist as he talks to Iason. He doesn’t even comment on my long absence.

My brother Anicetus walks towards me with his wife on his arm. He gives me a huge smile. “Eutropia, it’s been so long,” he comments.

“Well, if you didn’t run of to Germany, we would be seeing each other more often,” I tease.

Bernturd rolls her eyes before scanning the room. She has never really liked me all that much. She has never said so. She never talks to me all that much. At first I thought it was because she could only speak German, but Anicetus told me that wasn’t true.

He laughs. “To be honest, we are moving here. They are starting up a magazine company here and offered me the job,” he tells me excitedly.

“He didn’t even ask me before taking the job,” Bernturd interjects quickly.

It becomes clear to me that she isn’t really mad at me, but at Anicetus. I can only assume how much this is going to take over the mood of the party if she is going to be pouting about this.

“Don’t start that here, Bernie. This is a party for Eutropia and her soon-to-be husband,” he scolds her. “Where is he by the way?”

“Talking to Iason Bawolf,” I reply turning to see him deep in a conversation with his boss.

The party goes on for another hour and half with people congratulating us on our engagement. There is a slideshow of pictures of Alex and I throughout the two years of us dating. There are a few comments on how cute we looked. This party only shows how close it is getting for me to truly decide if I should stay in the relationship.

I turn my head and see Apollo looking at me with his bright blue eyes. He reminds me of the sun in the way he seems to almost glow in the dark. He gives me a smile before nodding his head at the screen. I turn back to the screen showing some of the more recent pictures.

As people leave the building, they tell us how much we deserve each other. I let out a sigh of relief when everyone is gone. Isadora is already picking up the mess while Alex is talking to Iason again. I decide to start helping Isadora with the mess.

“Who was that blond man?” she asks when I’m next to her.

“Oh, he was a cousin. He lives in Sweden,” I lie. “I didn’t think he would be here, to be honest. He rarely gets any vacation days at his work.”

She looks at me for a second. “I never heard that you had family in Sweden,” she comments.

“I didn’t talk about him much,” I reply looking at her curiously. “Besides, what does it matter?”

“Well, I saw you go off in a hall way with him,” she points out looking directly at me.

“Isadora, I’m not cheating on Alex. I would never do that. He wanted to ask me some questions in private about a job offer for when I get out of college. He didn’t know if he had to go back to work later, so he asked me now,” I answer hoping she will believe that.

She just nods her head before going back to cleaning. I help her for a few more minutes before Alex calls out for me. I walk off hating that I’m leaving her still with a huge mess to clean up, but she just tells me to go on.



Alex doesn’t ask about Apollo. He just tells me it was nice getting to see all our friends and family. I quietly agree with him because I don’t have much to add to the conversation. Something about the way he is acting though tells me he knows that he saw me with the blond god, and he knows who the blond is. He’s just not bringing it up. It’s almost like he wants me to tell him about it.

I look at my arms looking at the markings again. I can only wonder why they popped up when I touched Apollo. They look like little trees, but the fruits light up at touch, but when I touch it, they stay that grey color. Maybe they only light up when a god touches it?

“I still can’t believe that I let you get those things,” Alex comments looking at my arms.

I smile. Apollo was right. Alex thought I always had these. “Well, at the time, you seemed to be all for it.”

He shakes his head. He actually doesn’t like tattoos on woman. He has one, but it’s something that he got when he was sixteen. He tells me this was from when Iason and Cassander Fix talked him into getting one. They were apparently wild back when they were teens. I didn’t know Alex when he was sixteen. I met him a year after he got the tattoo.

Cassander is another guy that works with Alex, but I don’t see him as much. I didn’t even see him at the party. Everyone calls him Cass though, and he is one person that I’m glad that I don’t see every day. Alex never invites him to our apartment even though he says Cass would never hurt me. Something about Cass tells me he would without thinking twice about it. He always makes a point of telling me that I dress like a whore and that Alex needs to learn how to control me better if he sees me. It’s something that I try to ignore, but there have been a few occasions where I cuss him out.

“Well, they are well done. I guess I can’t complain about that,” he mutters more to himself than me. “Anyways, are your parents staying here tonight?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me what they were going to do.” I step out of the car walking to our apartment. “Maybe.”

We don’t say anything else. We just move in silence trying to think about what’s going to happen next. Thoughts of why Apollo appeared at the party consume me. He never really explained why. He was just there. Then I start to wonder if Alex will ask me who he is just to see what I say. In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure what I will say. He will want more information than Isadora.

The apartment is like we left it. The living room is spotless like I always keep it, but there is something telling me that someone was here while we left. Something that I couldn’t quite shake. Alex doesn’t seem to notice it as he sits down on the couch turning on the TV.

I walk into the kitchen to see a note on the fridge. I reach out and pull out from under the magnet. It’s from Ares. The letter seems to be urgent and written in a hurry, or he really has bad hand writing.

Eutropia, when you get the chance come to my temple alone. There is something that we need to talk about. –Ari

I could tell that he was trying to make it as clear as he could without letting Alex on to what he was saying. I stuff the note into my pocket wondering when I will be able to sneak out of the apartment.

Ares’s temple is on the far side of town. It’s going to be a quick walk to it from my home. The temples make a huge circle around the city. The only one in the city is Zeus’s while the rest are on the edge of town marking the city limits. Everyone likes it that way.

I can only wonder what Ares wants to tell me. There seems to be something big about it. Well, of course, it has to be important for him to need to tell me something in person alone. Of course, I can also ask him about the two markings on my arm. Maybe he already knows about them, and this is what it is about, but I don’t think they have anything to do with what he wants to talk about.

“Eutropia, where are you?” Alex calls pulling me out of my thoughts.

“I’m here,” I answer walking back into the living room with a forced smile.

He pats the spot next to him. He doesn’t look at me. His face is pointed at the TV watching some car chase. His cheekbones cast soft shadows on his face from the light of the screen making him appear a little more attractive than he is. Then I see something else in his face. It’s not the friendliness that I have come to know, but something more aggressive that he has always been hiding. I don’t know why I never noticed it until now. Could it be because it’s something that just appeared inside of him?

“Eutropia, sit down,” he barks at me getting annoyed.

I comply and sit down next to him. I can feel this is going to be pleasant in any form. “What is it?”

“Are you going to tell me how you know a god?” he asks.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I tell him trying not to shrink away from him.

“The blond man that you were talking to at the party. He was a god,” he informs me anger ringing in his voice. “You were talking to him like you knew him. Tell me how you know him.”

“He seemed like a normal person to me. I met him that day. I thought he was one of the waiters. He asked me how I was liking the party,” I reply nervously. I’m a bit afraid that he will call me on my lies.

He looks at me trying to decide if I’m tell him the truth, and he thankfully takes my nervous as something else. “I guess that’s what they want you to think. I’m sorry for going off on you,” he apologizes after a few minutes of silence.

I just nod turning my attention to the television. What was I going to tell him that it’s fine? Hell, I just lied to him. I knew the blond guy was a god. The note from Ares rings in my thoughts again. How am I going to get to the temple? I remember that Alex won’t be home tomorrow. I could count this as a blessing that I can run off tomorrow.

It’s not long before we both yawn and get ready for bed. I fall asleep next to him in the bed. I begin to dream.

I stand in a building that I have never seen before, but Alex is here. He stands next to Iason just in front of me. I can’t make out what they are saying even though I’m standing next to them, but Iason points to a screen. I look at it and see the images of the temples. Each one has someone walking out of it. It isn’t hard for me to realize that it’s the gods.

Ares is leaning against a column smoking a cigarette in front of his temple. Apollo is walking down the steps of his with a brunette woman that looks like him. The same girl is sitting on the steps of Artemis’s temple. I quickly assume that she is Artemis.

I turn to look at Iason and Alex. Why would they have these pictures? I can wonder for long because then I feel a pair of arms wrap around me. There are tattoos covering the tanned skin. I immediately recognize them as Cassander’s arms. One arm moves up and a knife appears in the hand as it reaches my throat.

“I always known that you were a dirty slut that went for gods. You couldn’t be with a human, could you?” he whispers in my ear before moving the knife across my throat.

I startle away grabbing my throat. I look around afraid that Cassander is in the room with me. I get up and rush to the bathroom looking at my throat, but there is nothing there. No scars, red lines, or blood. It’s just my tan neck.

I grab the sides of the sink trying to calm my nerves. I can feel my heart beating heavily in my chest as if it wants out of my chest. I look at myself in the mirror. What the hell is going on with me?