The Capitoline sky was bronze. Not really, by nature. But that was the effect. Thick. Twisted. Ready to toll if struck with enough power. I breathed it in like incense, the air thick with rain that hadn't yet descended—but with the pent-up pressure that would eventually be unleashed.
My sandals slapped the marble in a ragged rhythm. No echo. The stones wouldn't dare to speak. I walked with hands locked behind back, clasped, as if studying a fresco. The gods were mute witnesses—Venus, Mars, even quake-prone Minerva, their forms shining but unchanging. They were afraid I would say something worse than a thunderclap.
Rather, I walked away.
The streets at the base of the hill were filling. Romans were not congregating with joy, not in celebration—but in the kind of silence of funerals, when someone too important to be mourned is laid down. Eyes were raised. Children were wrapped tighter to chests. Men hugged their wives like shields. The air was haunted, and the Forum still echoed with the sound of the laughter of Gaius. Somewhere, someone was still yelling.
Lucanus found himself level with me, panting and not accustomed to running. His face was a pale mask of cold ashes.
"Dominus" he whispered, not wishing to draw the notice of the gods, "shall I call upon the augurs?"
I laughed.
Loud. Ugly. Guttural.
I never walked any less.
"Call the augurs and have them strew their chickens upon the steps of the Senate. Have them cast entrails, foretell by bone and blood. Tell them this, however—Jove is not a message. I am the sender."
He stopped walking after that. Perhaps wisely.
I stood at the Temple of Saturn. Fitting. The old father. The one that was overthrown and hidden, wrapped in legend, relegated to the stories of time and harvest. I placed my hand against the stone entrance. Warm. Sort of. The kind of heat that came with something that had not been handled in centuries.
I pushed it apart.
The air within was thick with stale praying. Not the desperate kind that are breathed, but the muttered-by-rote kind. The altar was dusty. There were two coins scattered upon the floor, forgotten by some believer. I walked around the idol, glanced over the shadows at its back. And then—
I spoke.
Not Greek. Not Latin. In a language more ancient than domination. The initial noise that a storm has ever produced.
"Come out" I said. "I know you're there"
And in the darkness behind the statue, something moved.
He crawled, crawled rather than walked, crawled forth from under the pedestal. Reeds like hair. Eyes dark, eyes filled with memory. He no longer had a mortal name. Not a name that mortals would know. Mortals had named him Faunus. Lupercus. Panic. Ancient deity of the wood and the hunt. Once honored with sweat and knives.
And now a rodent in Rome back streets.
He stared at me like a wild animal that wasn't sure whether to leave or bare its teeth.
"Jupiter," he croaked.
I knelt down before him, slow and hesitant. I looked deep into his eyes.
"What were you promised?"
He blinked. He parted his lips, revealing teeth.
"Peace," he uttered.
I laughed too.
"Peace," I repeated, "Is what dead gods want. Are you dead?"
He whimpered. That was all.
"Then you remember," I whispered, "you remember when they shouted our names, not chanted them. When the temples were tall by conquest, not by donation. When the offerings bled, not burned."
Faunus closed his eyes.
"I will strip each of them of their masks one by one. Minvera will have to answer to her thinkers. Mars will have to face his army. Venus? Let her try to outlast desire. Let us see what happens to her."
He winced.
"Do you want to serve another time?" I asked. "Not as a memory. As a god."
His head cocked to the side. Confused. Fear and hope wrestled in the recesses of his face.
"I—I remember the taste," he admitted. "Of adoration. True adoration."
I stretched and placed my hand upon him. Carefully. As in breaking a seal.
"You will eat again," I informed him. "But first—go to the River Tiber. The river still carries your name. Drown yourself there. And when you awaken, you will remember the rest."
He took off without another word. The gods above would take notice. Another ripple.
I did not budge at first. There is a discipline to stillness. It made mortals more nervous than thunder. When a god stands still, it is not a matter of doubt—it is the second before explosion. I stood before the altar of Saturn with fingers running over its cratered stone rim and I waited.
Not with ears.
With gravitation.
Faith makes a sound. Fresh faith is fragile. Like a spill of wine upon dried-out earth—it crackles, hardens, is lost. But rebuilt, clawed its way back to life from the grave that centuries had piled upon it—it rings. Like bronze striking bronze. That ringing had begun. It had begun in the Forum. In the shout of Gaius. In the trembling lips of Lucanus. And now went spreading, searching out lips that remembered to pray, although their tongues were rusty with centuries' silence.
I emerged into the dying light. The sky was dark iron, hard and unforgiving, no pastel hues, no sweet orange. This was not a sunset. This was the top of a tomb.
The grave of a god. And I have offended.
Minerva was gone. Flown perhaps to libraries that were not yet consumed by flames. Mars departed next, sneaked away to the barracks of the intellect where boys still mouthed glory to each other. But Venus—oh, Venus—remained. Stood frozen on the steps, one hand to her breast, to determine if she still had a heart to be frightened.
"Why him?" she asked, not quite above a whisper. "Faunus? He's a joke to even among the mortals."
"Because he is hungry," I said. "You aren't."
She glanced down. Her elaborately styled hair drooped a little under its heavy burden. She was in the shape that they had adored her in. But commerce is love and I just changed the rate of exchange.
"I tried," she whispered. "I tried to be relevant. They made me lipsticks. Statues. A planet."
I moved nearer. A chill filled the air between us. "You let them."
A shadow of a feeling crossed her face—anger? Mourning? Remorse was too mortal. "And what would you have me do, Jove?" she said. "Shriek? Reduce cities to ash until memories of the old rituals were evoked?"
I smiled.
"Exactly."
She curled her lip, not with distaste, but with the horror of recognition. She knew that I was correct.
I simply left her to it.
The walk to the Aventine was a slow walk. Intentional. I wished that. A god won't hurry. A god won't flutter eyelids. A god materializes. I walked past alleys slick with wine and with urine, market stalls abandoned hastily—plums skittering under the wheel of a cart, fish still alive against marble—past gardens where men had debated politics. Their whispering was silenced now. The city was holding its breath.
There was a child in front of me. He was probably six. He cradled the loaf of bread in his arms like an object of reverence. His mother shouted at him. She saw me. She opened her mouth but she hadn't made noise. She dragged the boy, moved back into a doorway, kept her eyes lowered.
I did nothing. That was what destroyed them more than any amount of flames.
I approached the Temple of Mercury—empty. Always empty. The merchants had long since exchanged their devotion for bargains. But this night, its stairs were illuminated by torches. Little ones. Sympathetic ones, too. But enough.
A man was at the top. Balding with nails that need to be shaved, fingers stained with ink, a cheek with a cut. Scribe, or taxman. A man knowing the lie of the bureaucrat.
"I've kept the books." He said. "I've kept the old calendars, the dies fasti. The processions. I've... I've waited."
I looked at him. He didn't blink.
"You say the names?"
"Yes."
"You recall the forms?"
"Yes."
"Then kneel."
He knelt.
I laid my hand upon his forehead. I gave him no vision. I gave him no ecstasy. I simply turned that area of his brain that had lain dormant so long. I lit the match. And he cried.
"Let them know," I told him. "Inform them that Mercury walks."
He wept. Not with joy. But because the old deity hadn't died. His deity had merely been waiting.
And so went on.
I opened the hinge that would not rust at the gates of Janus. I stepped into the earth and the wheat bent like troops in the field of Ceres. I left a print all over each forgotten altar. I made the world suffer with my presence.
And slowly—oh, slowly—the veil was lifted.
A senator slit a lamb's throat in the street at dawn, muttering Latin prayers he hadn't spoken since childhood. A general swore that he saw Mars in his tent, polishing dusty armor. A mother screamed when her stillborn infant drew a single breath and whispered, "Nona" before dying a second time.
Evangelization resumed.
Not the sanitised, metaphor-softened myth the Church had alchemied off our bones. No. Actual belief. The kind that taints. The kind that aches.
I never returned to the Pantheon. It had been a cradle. I had grown beyond.
Instead, I rose.
I climbed the heavens.
The Romans consistently maintained that we were above. On Olympus. But Olympus was Greek. I desired stone and law. I chose a height above seeing. No mountain. No cloud. Not heaven.
Orbit.
I recoiled at the firmament—far-off, vast. A radiating star to whom now they bowed. I was no longer of flesh. I was now the axis. The point fixed. The eye in their sky that blinked lightning.
Again, they offered children.
Once more, they threw gold into the Tiber.
They remembered my name—albeit not in rhyme. In fear.
And the other gods?
They now had a location.
Mars returned to war, but only on knees. Minerva commanded, but never asked. Venus sang again, but with teeth to crown the songs. And Faunus—wretched Faunus—he laughed now. Louder than any man is compelled to. He walks barefoot in dreams to tell mortals that divinity is not tamed.
Rome woke.
The statues shed tears of blood. The Senate burned its bills. The calendar was reset.
And I watched.
Not in guardianship.
Not as a father.
As Jupiter
The correction.
The silence before and after each scream.
Even the gods themselves would know.
An additional ripple. And the wave, also.
**
The skies were almost exactly like the poets wrote them to be—huge and clouded, streaming with a gentleness that was not quite air, not quite mist, but thicker, made of legend and memory. White stone towers erupted out of nothingness, their foundations melted away in a whiteness too similar to a dream. Marble colonnades wrapped themselves in impossible shapes, held not by stone nor by arch but by the will of the gods. The sky here shifted not with weather, but with mood—with my mood. It was filled with the scent of ambrosia and ozone and old incense and broken vows.
And at the center of all this was my throne.
Not carved, not wrought—willled into existence. A seat of power sits upon thunderhead and order. Its edges quivered like heat upon bronze. It was not made to rest. It was made to hold. And I rode upon it with absolute perfection.
I looked down upon Rome like a man upon ants—interested, not fond. Their temples had fattened. Their lips, lubricated with prayer, anointed my name with oil. And they were made to bleed where I desired. Creatures. Virgins. The willing and unwilling. I made no distinction. What is consent to a god?
The suns whirled around me. Not constellations. Those are tales that people told to one another to feel guided. No, the dead suns and living suns whirled above, quivering like nerves under the gaze of a skull. I listened to them breathe. Slow. Forever.
She moved without sound.
Juno.
Not cow-eyed, not jealous, not the caricature ridiculed on stage. No. She moved at a slow pace, a pace reserved for remembrance of when she was duly honored—just when the girls wore their hair in imitation of her, when brides cried out her name at their nights of marriage.
She hadn't spoken to me since the Forum. For I reminded them all of function. But I had waited. I always do. Time is nothing to me. I am older than sequence.
She stood before me with a stack of hair atop her head like a crown. Hands clasped at the navel. The robe she wore was glossy, a deep grape colour. The lips were worn-soft, not pout-soft. Familiarity made her flesh.
"Jove." she said curtly.
That was it.
No call. No protest. No allegation.
I thought about her. She was almost godlike again.
"I've never stopped being your wife," she said. There was a pause. Then—more softly—"You just stopped being my husband."
I laughed. Not mocking. Not cruel. With compassion.
"Mortal titles," I told him. "Wife. Husband. Those words belong to documents of property and broken treaties."
She raised an eyebrow, but only slightly. "And what am I, then?"
I shifted forward in my throne. I moved cautiously. Intentionally. One hand placed on the armrest topped by a boar's head, the other placed upon the one topped by an eagle's claw.
"You are... enduring."
She blinked. Not the reaction she had expected.
I stood. The throne didn't creak. Gods don't creak. I drew nearer to her. The stars behind me were repositioning themselves in my wake, reforming themselves to align with my breath.
"You've killed women," she said.
"Mhm," I replied.
"You've slept with them. Dozens. Hundreds."
I hadn't spoken. Still, she knew. She lifted her eyes to me—chin raised, lips set. But her throat contracted. I noticed that. That unconscious swallow. Not of pain. Not of fear. Of memory.
"You loved not one of them," She went on. "Did you?"
I smiled. Not a friendly one. A true one.
"No."
She had wet eyes. Not tears. Juno didn't weep. But there was something there that was moist, like rain and marble. She crept nearer. Her voice broke.
"But you loved me once."
"No," I said. "Not the way that you had imagined."
She lay still. She didn't stir. She only waited. And she spoke softly, "Then why hold me near?"
I stroked her cheek softly. With my backhand. The way a man strokes a pet that hasn't nipped him in a long time.
"Because you're mine."
She shook with her shoulders. She hated how much this word meant to her. She hated it. And yet—it was enough.
"But I hate them," she whispered. "All of them. I don't want to. I try, Jove. But I do. I do, and I don't know how to not hate them."
"Then hate them," I said. "I don't care."
"But you'll keep them."
"Yes."
"And you'll keep me."
"Of course."
She was breathing rather shallow now. "And what am I to you, really?"
I didn't answer right away. I reached over and ran my fingers down the curve of her jaw. Rotated her face to the side, like I was studying a statue for defects. I looked down at her neck. The curve of her clavicle. The tension line of her shoulder, like she was braced against some unheard punch.
"You're my favorite," I told her.
She exhaled. Almost smiled. But there was pain. Always there was pain.
"And will never love me?"
"No," I told her. "But I will have you. I will keep you. And in time, that will be close enough."
She nodded.
She didn't buckle at the knees. Pride held firm. But within the back of her eyes, something froze.
Like an animal that had at long last accepted that escape would never be possible.
I placed my thumb on her lips. She kissed it. Instinct. Resignation. Loyalty. It didn't matter.
She stretched up—and touched my chest. Fingers trembled against the skin.
"You are cold," she told him.
"I know," I whispered.
And I led her to the edge of the heavens. Where there was no starlight. Where Olympus existed with their own gods.
We stood there. Her curled beside me.
Rome presented incense to both of us.