Melpomene and Ares, just after Marcie leaves
Melpomene wandered back through the entrance hall of the hotel after leaving Marcie, feeling on the edge of something. Perhaps on the edge of this party, perhaps slightly removed from all the people here. She didn't know what was going on with Marcie. She wasn't currently part of the game Apollo and Erato were playing. Calliope had told her she needed to come back to her sisters before the birth, but she wasn't ready to step back toward them in the way Calliope meant. She could picture the birth and the pain of it, but couldn't imagine her child as a baby. A fierce king, yes. A squirming pink bundle, not so much.
You've spent too long with Ares, her older sister had said. The annoying thing about Calliope was how rarely she was wrong.
She would not go back to him though, not now, but wouldn't deny either that he still had some hold over her. And if the what the fuck way he'd looked at her when he'd spotted her sitting with Marcie was any indication, she still incited some feeling in him too, even if it was irritation.
She had every right to seek him out, she said to herself. He was the father of her child and Marcie had asked her to deliver a message.
And perhaps the fates were on her side, because she caught him striding back through a corridor, presumably on his way back from the voice producing bathroom. "Ares," she said, coming up from behind him and speaking his name before he could get too far away from her.