Aphrodite pressed the gold rose against her palm and waited for it to burn. It did not. The charm was beautiful. It was also useless, and she knew it. She had spent three nights bent over the workbench inside the round bathhouse, fitting hearts into petals, humming warmth into the metal. Every willing girl she tested it on had already been halfway in love before the pendant touched her throat. That proved nothing. A charm that only works on the willing is a ribbon, not a weapon. Her dove landed on the rim of the sunken pool, pearls clicking against marble. Steam curled around the columns. The chandeliers threw soft light over the water where two attendants bathed, laughing at something Aphrodite had stopped hearing an hour ago. She needed a heart that would refuse her. She needed to know if she was a goddess of love or only a goddess of people who had already decided. She lifted the shell mirror from the bench. The pearl at its center clouded, then cleared. Inside the gold curve she saw Ares before she asked to see him — helm under his arm, shield stained, walking back from a war no one else would fight. His face in the vision did not soften when the rose touched his chest. It tightened. The mirror showed her two futures side by side: in one, he laughed and set the charm down. In the other, something in him cracked open that she could not name. Both visions ended before she could see what he did next. She closed the shell. Ares was her lover on the nights he chose to be. He was also the hardest heart she had ever touched — a man who had learned to want nothing he could lose. If the charm moved him, it would move anyone. If it failed, she would know before she wasted another century trying. She dressed the dove in a thin gold cord and tied the rose beneath its wing. "To the arena," she said. "Land on his shoulder. Do not coo. Do not perform. Let him take it off you himself." The bird tilted its head, then lifted through the open oculus and was gone over the roofs. Aphrodite sat down on the pool's edge and put her feet in the water. Her hands were shaking, which surprised her. She had not expected to be afraid of an answer. An hour later the dove returned alone. The gold cord was still knotted at its leg. The rose was gone. Aphrodite stood up so fast the water sheeted off her ankles. She reached for the shell mirror again and saw only her own face in it, sharp and unfamiliar. Somewhere across Olympus, Ares was wearing her unfinished charm against his skin — and she had no way to call it back.