Ares slammed his spear into the sand of the empty arena and waited for someone, anyone, to answer the challenge he had shouted three times into the golden tiers. No one came. The bronze coliseum ringed him with empty benches. He had spent the morning naming rivals aloud — Apollo, Hermes, Poseidon, even his own sister Athena — and demanding they meet him here to settle who deserved the title of supreme war god. The only reply had been a servant carrying a folded note from Apollo that read, in one line, that the sun god was busy tuning a lyre. He hurled the note into the dirt and kicked it. His vulture landed on the rim of his shield, gold arrow-feathers rattling. The bird tilted its red eye at him as if to ask what he expected. Ares knew the answer. Every god on the mountain called him a brute behind his back. A butcher. A dog Zeus pointed at wars no one else wanted. They laughed off his challenges before the words finished leaving his mouth. Aphrodite found him sitting on the arena floor with his blood-stained shield across his knees. She crossed the sand in gold sandals and sat beside him without a word about the dust ruining her hem. She fed the vulture a strip of dried meat from her palm. The bird took it gently, the way it never took anything from anyone else. "They won't fight me," Ares said. "I sent word to six of them. Six. Hermes didn't even open the scroll. Poseidon's page told mine that the sea god does not duel farmhands." He pressed his thumb into a rust-brown stain on the shield. "I can beat any of them. I know I can. But they won't stand in the ring long enough for me to prove it." Aphrodite lifted his chin with two fingers. She told him the problem was not his arm. The problem was the invitation. A brute sends a challenge and the gods roll it up and toss it in a brazier. A spectacle, though — a spectacle they cannot ignore. She reached into the folds of her skirt and drew out her shell mirror. She turned it toward him and showed him something in its surface that made him sit up straight. Ares did not describe what he saw. He only stood. He drove the butt of his spear against the shield three times until the sound carried past the arena walls and into the halls beyond. Then he walked to the arena gates, the vulture on his shoulder, Aphrodite a step behind. He would not send another scroll. He would announce a tournament at the next council — open combat, prizes, witnesses, every god named by rank — and shame anyone who refused to enter. Let them call him a brute after that.