I was born with a large chest. My body was cursed. That’s what the wood nymphs whispered behind my back, my breasts like ripe figs, so full they looked ready to burst, my waist thin as a grapevine you could snap with one hand. When I walked, those two soft mounds would sway, and even the wind stopped to stare. My mother was a priestess in the Temple of the Moon. She got pregnant at the sacred altar and died giving birth to me, refusing to the very end to name my father. The night she died, twelve laurel trees bloomed silver outside the temple. By dawn, every last petal had fallen. The priestess gathered around my cradle and called me an omen. A nymph too beautiful, they said, in the sacred grove of Artemis, was a disaster waiting to happen. I grew up in that grove, treated like a slave. They wrapped me in thick wool robes from neck to ankle, made me hunch my shoulders and lower my head, forbade me from ever looking a man in the eye. “Thena,” the high priestess Teya said, jabbing her finger into my forehead. “You think that body of yours is for seducing men? This is Artemis’s sacred grove. Step out of line, and I’ll feed you to the sea monster Scylla myself.” I didn’t know what stepping out of line meant. All I knew was the ache in my chest from the bindings they made me wear. In summer, the fabric rubbed my skin raw. In winter, the cold turned my fingers blue. But no matter how tight I wrapped, those two stubborn mounds pushed through, refusing to disappear. I cried into the spring more times than I could count, begging my mother to tell me why she gave me this body. The spring never answered. Only the wind rustling through the laurel leaves. Everything changed on a spring evening. Helios’s chariot had just crossed the sky, painting the grove gold and rose. I was walking back from the stream with a clay jug on my shoulder, water sloshing, when I heard sounds coming from the olive grove behind the temple. Muffled sounds. The kind you’re not supposed to hear. I put down the jug and crept closer. Teya was on her knees. Her robe had slipped down to her waist, exposing the dry, wrinkled skin of her back. And standing in front of her was a man I’d never seen before… No. Not a man. A god. He was shirtless, his body carved like a statue, every muscle holding enough force to level a city. Dark brown curls hung past his shoulders. His eyes were amber, burning like twin fires in the twilight. He had Teya by the chin, tilting her old face up to his. “Tell me,” he said, his voice low, like a blade dragging across a shield. “Who’s the most beautiful nymph in this grove?” Teya trembled. “The… the moon goddess’s handmaidens…” “No.” He let her go, his gaze sweeping past her, past the olive branches, past the floating dust motes in the golden light, and landing straight on me. My blood turned cold. His eyes moved down my face, past my trembling lips, and stopped at my chest, pressed tight against the edge of the clay jug, rising and falling with every panicked breath. “You.” He walked toward me, and with every step, the leaves on the ground seemed to shrink back. “What’s your name?” “Thena…” “Thena.” He rolled the name across his tongue like he was tasting it. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you afraid of me?” I nodded. Then shook my head. His scent was too much, iron and blood, the smell of a battlefield. It made my knees weak. “I’m Ares,” he said. “God of War.” I knew who he was. Son of Zeus and Hera. Every nymph knew the stories, once a god like him set his sights on you, there was no escape. My knees buckled. The clay jug slipped from my fingers. Ares reached out. His fingers hooked the strip of fabric binding my chest, moving so slowly I had all the time in the world to run. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. He pulled.
The linen tore like butterfly wings. My body, bound and hidden for seventeen years, broke free and stood naked in the twilight, bare to his eyes, to the fading sunlight, to the wind. I gasped. Tried to move back, but my feet wouldn’t obey. His gaze dropped to my chest. His pupils flared. His amber eyes filled with something I didn’t understand, something hungry and wild, like a man who’d been walking through a desert for a thousand years and finally found water. “Teya,” he said, his voice gone rough. “You were right. This body really is cursed.” He paused, bent his head, and brought his nose within a breath of my collarbone. “Cursed by me.” He inhaled. The warmth of his breath hit my skin, setting off a ripple of goosebumps down my neck, my arms, my spine. “You smell like…” His lips brushed my earlobe. “Spring.” I shoved him. I don’t know where the strength came from, but my palms hit his chest solid. I felt his heartbeat, loud and fast, just like a mortal man’s. I staggered back, stumbling over shards of the broken jug. Blood welled from my foot, but I didn’t feel it. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed. Ares didn’t follow. He stood there, watching me flee, watching my hair whip in the wind, watching my bare shoulders disappear into the trees. Then he bent down and picked up the torn strip of linen, still warm from my skin. He lifted it to his nose. “Thena,” he said, like a spell. The sound followed me through the olive grove, through the laurel trees, through the dying light. It sank into my bones. That night, every nymph in the grove heard me crying. I curled up in the darkest corner of the moon temple, moonlight falling cold through the high windows. I tried to wrap my chest again with the torn cloth, but my fingers shook too badly to tie the knots. Tears soaked my knees, my dress, the stone floor. Teya found me. The marks from Ares’s fingers were still fresh on her cheek, purple and swollen. She looked down at me with eyes that held nothing but disgust. “You think you can run from this?” Her voice echoed off the temple walls. “When a god like Ares wants something, no one stops him. No one.” I looked up through my tears. She bent down, close enough that her lips almost touched my ear. “I heard Ares was badly wounded at Troy. A spear went through his thigh. Right through the tendon.” She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. A god who couldn’t perform. “Lucky you,” she said, her voice turning light, almost cheerful. “Better a broken god than a beast. At least you won’t have to bear children.” She patted my cheek. “Besides, they say men who can’t do it in bed make up for it in other ways.” “I don’t want to marry him…” “Don’t want?” Teya’s face went dark. “Who do you think you are? A bastard with no father. Ares wants you, that’s more than you deserve. If it weren’t for that body of yours, that slut’s body, a war god wouldn’t even look at you.” She spat the word slut like it was poison. I cried again. That night I dreamed. Ares’s hands moved up my legs, and everywhere he touched, my skin caught fire. His lips pressed against my stomach, and I heard his voice, low and shaking, like the ground opening up beneath me: “Thena. You can’t escape me.” I woke soaked in sweat. My hair was plastered to my face, my neck. The blanket had slid to the floor. Between my legs, a heat I’d never felt before, spreading through me like spring floods breaking through ice. I bit my lip until I tasted blood. Shame shook me down to my bones. Outside, the moon hung cold in the sky.
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