Work Text:
Artemis lasted an hour in the House of Hades before finding a place to hide.
She tried Zagreus’ room, first—or the room she assumed was his, on the basis that it displayed more individual character than the rest of the House put together—but it felt uncomfortable being there without his express permission, even taking into account the peculiar lack of doors. Her camp in the Olympian woods, after all, had no doors; but that did not mean she would have reacted well to the sight of a stranger warming their hands on her fire. Or to the sight of a friend. Or anyone, really.
And besides, he had questionable taste in wall-hangings. Artemis saw quite enough of Aphrodite’s bare chest without having it displayed in pride of place above the bed.
The garden around the corner was much better. No distracting wall décor, and the layer of leaves on the ground was almost as good as fresh snow when it came to announcing an unwanted guest. There was Hephaestus’ ridiculous sculpture at one end, true, but if she scampered up into one of the pomegranate trees, she could put branches between it and her and pretend she was on the surface, not down in the dreary gloom of the Underworld.
Artemis liked being alone. None of the others understood this about her. She’d taken to bringing up Callisto and the other nymphs as often as possible, to stave off the inevitable questions. Yes, she had friends, no, they didn’t particularly want to meet her family. Why? Because they liked being alone, too, and they didn’t have a gaggle of uncles guilt-tripping their every step.
Not that she said that part out loud.
Leaves crunched below. Artemis tensed, slinking further back into the shadows of the tree, for all the good that did her. She never could stay hidden when the goddess of love wanted her found.
‘Hello there, little huntress.’ Aphrodite was looking straight up at her with pure pink eyes, an edge of mockery to the blade of her smile. ‘Is this an ambush? Should I be alarmed?’
‘What do you want?’
Artemis knew her family found her abrasive. Waspish, if you asked Zeus; curt, according to ever-tactful Athena; when Poseidon was in his cups, a girl so sour no man would want a bite of that cherry, if one caught his drift. She didn’t do it on purpose—but how else was she supposed to react when they insisted on interrupting her solitude?
‘Your Uncle Poseidon is looking for you. Loudly and with much ambrosia.’
Wonderful. Perhaps his fruit-related metaphors would now include pomegranates, in solidarity with his chthonic brother.
‘Let me guess,’ Artemis said. ‘He wants me to wed Hypnos, or Achilles, or that shade with the tall white hat who so fawned over Uncle’s fish.’
‘Would Achilles be so bad?’
‘I know it’s difficult for you to grasp, but just because I admire the man does not mean I want him in my bed.’
‘Oh? Did I mishear you, then, asking him to show you his spear?’
Artemis blinked, confused. ‘So what?’
For a second, Aphrodite seemed at a loss. Then she said, ‘Very forward of you, Artemis,’ enunciating each word carefully. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you!’
‘What? You know I didn’t—I meant his literal, actual spear, and he understood me perfectly well, thank you very much!’
Aphrodite’s laugh belonged in a grander venue than this modest garden of the Underworld. ‘Oh, don’t be cross, I have to entertain myself somehow. This is a dreadful party. What’s a goddess of love to do?’
Artemis felt herself relax; or at least untense, to the extent she ever could around her fellow Olympians. There was something comforting in knowing that even Aphrodite needed respite from the chest-thumping and nectar-drinking going on inside.
Even if her respite was uniquely annoying. ‘Act like the goddess of love, not innuendo. I get quite enough of that from my uncles.’
One would think being a sworn virgin would protect Artemis from those endless boorish comments, but somehow that fact always fell by the wayside whenever Zeus hosted another of his feasts.
‘That,’ Aphrodite said with distaste, ‘I cannot deny.’
Artemis hopped down from the tree, landing silently on the flagstones, and immediately regretted it. Up in the branches, she’d at least been taller. Now here was Aphrodite, the full force of her presence underscored by those otherworldly eyes; and even knowing that it was impossible not to be affected by her, Artemis looked down to hide her blush.
‘Eyes up, Artemis.’ Aphrodite’s amusement was as sharp as her nails beneath Artemis’ chin.
‘I wasn’t looking at your—’ Well, she had been, if only to avoid meeting Aphrodite’s gaze, and now the words stalled on her tongue. That was the trouble with Artemis—she’d never mastered the art of speaking straight to the heart of a matter. She got bogged down in the details. It was why she disliked small talk. ‘Ugh. I’m not having this conversation with you.’
‘You know, it’s quite all right to be tongue-tied around me, dearest, everyone is.’
‘Not like I could see anything past your hair,’ Artemis muttered. ‘The hearts are a bit much, don’t you think?’
‘Why, how else will the poor mortals know who I am?’
‘I don’t know, every other thing about you?’
Too late, Artemis noticed the smile spreading across Aphrodite’s face. ‘Every thing, hmm? Why don’t you elaborate?’
‘If you want flattery, go find literally anyone else. Go find Zagreus. Surely he’s courteous enough, even for you.’
The smile faded. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I think he likes you better than he likes me.’
‘I don’t need your pity, Aphrodite. He’s got a picture of you on his wall.’
‘Well, who doesn’t?’
‘Me.’
Something dark flickered across Aphrodite’s expression. ‘And what were you doing in Zagreus’ room, sweet, innocent Artemis?’
Artemis flushed and jerked away, angry because she knew Aphrodite would take this to mean she was right, but unable to do anything but be herself. Well—on second thought, why shouldn’t Aphrodite think she’d dallied with the Prince of the Underworld? Maybe that was better than admitting she’d been looking for a place to hide from her family. Aphrodite didn’t deserve to hear the truth, not if she knew Artemis so poorly as to think she’d bed down with Zagreus, of all people, and in the middle of a party.
‘Feeling flustered, are we?’
‘Hardly,’ Artemis snapped. There was no living with Aphrodite when she got like this, deep in her own mystique. It wasn’t seduction, it was habit, and Artemis did not intend to indulge it. She settled her furs around her shoulders. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Aphrodite’s voice was tight and controlled. ‘Surely you don’t plan to go back inside and ask Lord Hades for help.’
Artemis jerked her head, indicating the massive stone door behind her. ‘The long way.’
If Aphrodite did not quite falter, it was as close as Artemis had ever seen her come. ‘It took our little godling months to even make it out of Tartarus.’
Artemis had the arrow nocked, drawn, and released in the time it took Aphrodite to say Tartarus. It flashed through the heart-loop in Aphrodite’s hair and thudded into the pomegranate tree behind her, splitting one perfect pink hair right down the middle. Yellow-green sparks crackled down the shaft, incinerating hair and arrow both until the only remaining sign that anything had happened was the thin smear of silver blood on Aphrodite’s bare shoulder and the puzzled look with which she regarded it.
‘You said it yourself,’ Artemis said, voice blazing with the expression of her divinity. ‘He’s a godling. I’m a goddess. The Underworld cannot hold me.’
As if in agreement, the door to the House of Hades shivered and ground open. Artemis did not look back, and if she found herself wishing Aphrodite would follow, the thought was quashed in the boom of it slamming shut again.
*
The requests from Olympus always called themselves invitations, but Artemis knew better. She either responded when she was summoned, or someone would hound her twice over on the next occasion or, worse, seek her out in her quiet places. She wondered if the other Olympians cast lots to determine who would deal with the stray sheep of the family, or if some misaligned sense of familial duty made them volunteer. Sometimes it was Athena. That was bearable enough; she was merely hidebound and well-intentioned. Other times it was Ares. Ignoring an invitation wasn’t worth the risk.
Still—the peak of Olympus was enough to make her miss the Underworld. At least Hades knew the value of corners lit by flickering torchlight. The halls of Olympus glowed with light that scoured even the hints of shadow from its golden surfaces. It made her head hurt, even before she had to sit through another interminable dinner, over-loud and over-lit and over-wined.
Aphrodite didn’t exchange so much as half a dozen words with her; at least, not until the ordeal was finally over, until Artemis’ thoughts had already turned to the dark silence of a night under the stars, the shining walls of Olympus receding behind her. It was only then that Artemis realised someone was following her; and, being so discovered, the goddess of love spoke first.
‘I trust you enjoyed the scenic route out of Hades?’
Something about the flippant way Aphrodite said this, without any of the wariness—dare Artemis think concern?—she’d shown in the House of Hades, made Artemis bristle. She whirled on Aphrodite, bow drawn.
‘Would you like a demonstration?’
‘I love getting shot at as much as the next goddess, dearest, but I’d simply hate to stain what I’m wearing today. Perhaps another time?’
Artemis’ aim wavered. ‘You’re not wearing anything.’
‘Am I not?’
That was permission, wasn’t it? Artemis let herself look Aphrodite up and down with a keen hunter’s eye and nothing more. Aphrodite’s hair swirled in a breeze that touched no one else, revealing here the curve of a hip and there the very top of a breast; but no matter how long Artemis looked, her gaze could not find a way through to what she wanted to see—or, she corrected herself, to what others would want to see, when looking at Aphrodite.
‘Enjoying yourself?’
Artemis’ eyes snapped back up to Aphrodite’s. ‘You told me to look,’ she said. ‘Or, you didn’t tell me, but I thought you wanted me to—’ Her mouth clicked shut. Her face was burning.
When Aphrodite laughed, Artemis had her bow halfway up again before she realised it was not a laugh of mockery but of delight.
‘You understand?’ Aphrodite said. ‘I only ever show what I want people to see. What is that if not clothing?’
‘That does not count.’
Artemis trailed off. Aphrodite’s hair was rising, spreading out around her head and behind her back like dawn. It would be easy to look down and map the cut-grass plains of Aphrodite’s naked body, to sate the temptation bottled in her skin like nectar; but Artemis kept her eyes resolutely on Aphrodite’s smile, until it twitched and failed and Aphrodite was undawned once more.
Artemis blinked away the visions her mind supplied, of what she had not dared look at in reality; and couldn’t help feeling she’d made the wrong choice.
‘I suppose you’re right, at that,’ Aphrodite said, in a poor approximation of her usual mockery. ‘Very well! Shoot me if you must. The blood will fade quicker than the wound to my heart.’
Artemis stared at Aphrodite, arms outstretched in a melodrama of accepted fate, and blurted, ‘I’m a virgin.’
It was almost worth it for the sheer confusion on Aphrodite’s face.
‘I mean, I’m sworn to—virginity. Like Athena. You know that, right?’
‘Yes,’ Aphrodite said, stretching the word well past its single syllable.
‘So it doesn’t work on me. You—’ Artemis gestured vaguely. ‘Your whole… thing, it doesn’t work on me.’
‘I see.’ In this moment Aphrodite was unreadable. Then she lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Let me tell you a secret: you’re not missing much.’
Artemis’ gaze flicked from Aphrodite’s eyes to her lips to her neck, searching for a safe place to settle. ‘Some goddess of sex you are,’ she said roughly.
‘Oh, no, you misunderstand. Who said anything about sex?’
‘That's what virginity means.’
‘Does it? I think it's all rather arbitrary. Shall never know the touch of a man, and all that? What nonsense! I wonder who got to decide that definition, hmm?’
There was something too smug about Aphrodite’s smile.
‘You didn’t,’ Artemis said.
‘Zeus and his ilk, they think nothing ever happens without a man involved.’ Aphrodite scrunched up her nose in distaste. ‘They've spent millennia obsessing over ritual virgins without once noticing those women quite happily having sex with each other. It's almost embarrassing. But,’ she added, ‘I don't think any of this is news to you, is it, Artemis?’
Artemis, whose whole body had grown increasingly warm despite the matter-of-fact way in which Aphrodite spoke of these things, could do nothing but blink.
‘Oh,’ Aphrodite breathed. ‘Or maybe it is? Never? Not even with Callisto? It seemed so obvious to me, the way you talk about her.’
The warmth collected in her cheeks, blisteringly visible in the frigid winter air. Artemis thought of every time Callisto had bedded down next to her on a hunt, almost close enough to touch; of the long, searching looks she gave Artemis over the campfire and the way she laughed them off when Artemis asked if she’d seen something in the woods.
She wondered how something like this could ever be obvious to a person. Perhaps one needed to be the goddess of love; or perhaps Artemis was awkward enough that everyone else was already divine by comparison.
‘I take it back,’ Aphrodite declared. ‘You are missing out.’
‘I am not having this conversation with you,’ Artemis said, the haughtiness in her voice no doubt spoiled by the embarrassment on her face. ‘And I’m going to—go now. Back to the forest. I have things to do. Hunts to… hunt.’
‘If that’s what you want. I only came to see you off in the first place.’
Artemis opened her mouth to deny this fact, then remembered she had drawn a bow on Aphrodite before she’d gotten the chance to say so much as an idle pleasantry.
‘Well. Good-bye, then—’ Artemis cleared her throat. She could never keep her balance on the stormy decks of Aphrodite’s presence, lurching from compassion to mockery to sincerity like Dionysus at his most annoyingly inebriated. ‘Lady Aphrodite.’
‘Farewell, Lady Artemis. And—’
‘Yes?’
‘You understand,’ Aphrodite said, ‘that you always have a choice?’
Artemis did not know how to reply, and so said nothing; and even halfway down the mountain, by the place where icicles screened one of her favourite caves from view, the place where, departing the latest Olympian feast, she normally thought of the perfect response to whatever barbed comment had caught in her skin; even there, Aphrodite’s parting words floated like nothing more than morning mists among the beehives of her mind.
*
Artemis asked the question one night on a minor hunt: only herself, Callisto—asleep already by the fire—and her companion Iphigenia, who had been mortal once and might better understand such things.
‘Do you think Callisto is...’ This was ridiculous. She was a goddess. She could ask this question without stumbling over the words. ‘Interested in me?’
‘Interested in what way, mistress?’ Iphigenia asked, unconvincingly earnest, her eyes too full of merriment.
‘Don't—’ Artemis reached for an arrow and ran the fletching along her fingers like a brush. Her other arm was wrapped around her knees, keeping the heat in. Keeping her thoughts in. ‘You’re toying with me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Iphigenia said, then ruined her placatory tone by adding, ‘Unlike Callisto, who I think dreams of you nightly.’
Artemis didn’t hide her face in her hands, but only because her fingers were too busy fidgeting with the arrow.
‘And do you think,’ she said, aiming for aloofness and missing the shot as unerringly as she usually hit, ‘that I’m interested in her?’
But that was the end of that conversation, because not even dreams of Artemis could keep Callisto asleep in the face of Iphigenia’s laughter.
*
Campfires had no doors, but Artemis was careful to build hers in the secret places of her lands. Her breath fogged in silence so frosty it was as if a single pure note had sounded millennia ago and the valley was yet to recover from its echoes.
This was the solitude Artemis built for herself. She had no need for doors, and yet wish for doors she did the evening Aphrodite appeared in the circle of firelight.
‘How do you always find me?’
‘I follow your footprints,’ Aphrodite said. ‘How else?’
‘But—’ Artemis paused. Aphrodite was right: there were her footprints, deep and clear in the snow. That wasn't right. She was supposed to move through her realm unseen, unheard, unfollowed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I thought you were doing it on purpose. I thought you only let yourself be found when you wanted to be.’
Aphrodite’s hair was flat and still around her shoulders, for once no different than a mortal’s. Artemis found that this fact no longer embarrassed her. It was, instead, comforting. Aphrodite had thought Artemis was lowering her guard deliberately, so she, too, had come unarmoured.
This was more thoughtfulness than Artemis would once have ascribed to the goddess of love.
‘What do you want?’
‘I thought we might talk.’
‘We have nothing to talk about,’ Artemis said, then contradicted herself immediately by adding, ‘I’ve given no thought to the… things you mentioned last time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really!’ The memory of Iphigenia’s laughter turned her ears pink; or perhaps it was the winter breeze. ‘I—there’s nothing to talk about. Between you and me.’
‘Artemis.’ Aphrodite waited, patiently, until Artemis finally looked up and met her gaze. ‘Have this conversation with me.’ And then, heart-stoppingly: ‘Please.’
Artemis’ pulse lurched. She tasted pine and snowmelt on the air, like a memory of simpler times; and she said, ‘What conversation'—a pause, the dart of her eyes finding Aphrodite’s lips—'exactly?’
Aphrodite hesitated, and for a moment Artemis dared think she might say something true—but then her mouth curled into its usual playful smile, and she said, ‘Do I fluster you, Artemis?’
Artemis' heart galloped like Poseidon’s horses; its drumbeat was Ares' call to war, the roll of Zeus' thunder, Apollo's chariot rattling across the sky. This was wrong. She was none of them. She was Artemis of the sacred wilds, and she would not tolerate being other than herself.
‘Why must you keep asking me that? What do you want me to say?’ The truth burst from her like a hunter from ambush. ‘Yes, of course you fluster me! You're—you and I'm me, and I don’t know how to act around you! Are you happy? Is that what you wanted?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, I'm happy. Yes, that's what I wanted you to say.’
Artemis licked lips chapped to cracking by the salt breeze coming off the Aegean. It didn't help.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am the goddess of love. I heed my desires, wherever they may lead. Is that so strange?’
‘You can’t expect me to believe that all this time you've been... pursuing me?’
‘I know,’ Aphrodite said ruefully. ‘Pursuing the goddess of the hunt? Not my finest strategy.’
‘Drop the act,’ Artemis snapped. ‘I know you're not really interested. You heard Uncle Poseidon. Can’t even get a mate.’
‘And why,’ Aphrodite said, ‘would I not be interested?’
‘Because I'm bony and awkward and weird—’
‘You are slender and lovely and wild,’ Aphrodite breathed, and one of her fingers was suddenly on Artemis' collarbone, tracing the contour from shoulder to sternum. ‘Sharp as one of your arrows. Beautiful as the arc of its flight. Deadly as the strike,’ and on that final word she drew her finger down Artemis' chest, letting it snag on the hem of her neckline before pulling away.
No one had ever called Artemis beautiful before. Not so plainly, at any rate.
‘I think we'll let the goddess of beauty make that determination, hmm?’
Artemis flushed. Had she truly said that out loud? Of all the times to develop a loquacious streak. ‘You’re seducing me.’
Aphrodite’s laugh was low and pure; richer, darker than the titter she employed on her usual conquests. ‘That is who I am, yes, sweetling. Kind of you to finally catch on.’
‘And what—what do you want from me now?’
‘An answer, to begin with.’
‘To what question?’
‘Oh, Artemis, surely you can guess.’
Artemis fingered the fletching of one of her arrows and said nothing.
‘Oh, very well,’ Aphrodite went on. ‘I can be direct, this once. Would you like to kiss me, Artemis?’
Artemis, who perhaps had guessed, said, defiantly, ‘Who wouldn't?’
Aphrodite laughed. ‘Athena.’
‘Oh. Really?’ Artemis wasn’t sure what was possessing her to follow this line of thought. ‘You've—tried?’
‘I didn’t need to try. She was at pains to let me know, and I thought it diplomatic not to mention that I had no interest in her, either.’
Artemis mulled this over. She’d always thought herself aligned with Athena on this matter, and perhaps she still was; but there were ways to be aligned that nevertheless sometimes crossed.
‘I...’ She hardly credited the words leaving her own lips. ‘I don’t know exactly what I want.’
‘No one ever really does, sweetling. It's the finding out that matters.’
What she did know was this: Athena's heart had surely never fluttered like hers did now, like she imagined a deer's did in the moment before the arrow flew.
The difference was, her prey did not typically want to be caught.
‘Except you,’ Artemis said. ‘You know what you want.’
‘Well,’ Aphrodite allowed. ‘Sometimes, perhaps.’
‘Because you’re the goddess of love.’
‘Quite.’
‘And lust. And sex.’
‘Yes, those things too.’
‘And you want me.’
‘Yes, Artemis. I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Have we not covered this? Because I am the goddess—’
‘No,’ Artemis said firmly. ‘That's not good enough. I don’t want you to hide behind tautologies. Tell me why. Truly.’
And this, Artemis thought, might be the end; and if she’d had the patience of a mortal, perhaps it would have been. But she wanted Aphrodite to answer this question, more than she’d ever realised, and Artemis could outlast the seasons themselves if it meant getting what she wanted.
When Aphrodite finally spoke, her voice was as naked as the rest of her.
‘There are two types of people who devote themselves to me. The ones who think I would do them a great honour by lying with them—and, even worse, the ones who think I should be so honoured.’
‘You want me because you can’t have me, is that it?’
‘No, little one. I want you because I might have you, and if I did, it would mean something. Do you know how many people I can say that about? Not many. It's lonely. And I think you understand loneliness better than any of us. You like loneliness.’
A silence passed that might have spanned centuries.
‘I like solitude. There’s a difference.’
‘Oh?’
‘Solitude,’ Artemis said, ‘is knowing who to share it with.’
*
Artemis knows her domain. She knows the gullies and the streams, the copses and the caverns, the places to sit still and watch and wait for hours, and where to go for the company of a cherished friend.
What she does not know is that Aphrodite carries her domain with her wherever she goes. It is there in the first brush of lips, wind-swept to honey-touched; in the way Artemis’ hip bones press against a body unlike hers, softer and fuller and just as beautiful. It is present in the way Aphrodite draws Artemis’ furs around her, afterwards, to prevent the sweat from cooling clammy on her skin.
And it's still there, the faintest trace, when Artemis wakes to find herself alone; because love is Aphrodite’s domain, and love is solitude beneath a waning moon.