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To Hades’s surprise, Aphrodite did not leave once they were at the doors of Hephaestus’s workshop. Instead, she followed them inside.

The God of Fire was at his forge. He stood before the fire, his hair knotted on top of his head, bare-chested and sweaty as he removed a piece of metal from the fire. He turned to lay it on the anvil, intent on hammering, but he caught sight of Aphrodite, who had walked ahead into the shop.

Hephaestus’s eyes locked on her and darkened, and his whole body went rigid. Hades wondered if Aphrodite would interpret his reaction as anger or frustration at her intrusion, though he saw it as something else—obvious desire.

“Are you in need?” Hephaestus asked her.

“Whoa,” said Apollo under his breath. “It’s hot in here.”

“No,” she answered. She had her arms behind her back as she leaned against one of his tables. “Hades and Apollo are here to see you.”

Hephaestus’s gaze shifted. He hadn’t even realized anyone else had accompanied his goddess into his workshop, he was so consumed by her.

“Hades…Apollo,” Hephaestus said, tossing the piece of metal he’d been working into the quench tank nearby. “What can I do for you?”

“We must discuss weapons,” Hades said. “My first concern is the net.”

He hesitated to bring it up because he knew Aphrodite had accused Hephaestus of being responsible for Harmonia’s attack, believing that only his magic was strong enough to capture a god. The problem was, she wasn’t wrong.

He had built an unbreakable net, and all the gods knew it existed, including Demeter.

“I think we can agree that the net used to restrain Harmonia and Tyche was likely modeled after your own.”

Hephaestus did not speak, and the tension in his forge grew heavy.

“So how does one escape it?” Apollo asked and then looked pointedly at the Goddess of Love. “Aphrodite?”

Hephaestus’s posture was rigid, and Aphrodite narrowed her eyes.

“You don’t,” she said and then looked at her husband. “You must be set free.”

“Is there no weapon you could forge to cut it?”

“Nothing is impossible,” Hephaestus replied. “But I would need to know how they forged their net.”

Hades exchanged a look with Apollo. He wasn’t so certain that information would be easy to come by. He wished Ariadne had been willing to help with Theseus. He was certain she knew his operations, and if not how things were being created, she knew who was doing it.

“Then that leaves the weapon used to kill Tyche,” he said and looked toward Apollo.

“At first, I thought she had been stabbed by Cronos’s scythe, but her wounds had a different shape. More like an arrow, but a simple arrow would not have killed a god.”

“What makes Cronos’s scythe dangerous?” Aphrodite asked.

“It’s made of adamant,” said Hephaestus. “But adamant only wounds. It will not kill us. Whatever Tyche was stabbed with had to be…laced with something. A poison.”

Or venom, Hades thought.

“Heracles had arrows poisoned with hydra blood,” said Hades.

Before the hydra had come to reside in the Underworld, it had been in Hera’s possession. He wondered how much of its venom Theseus had sourced before Hades killed it.

“Well,” said Hephaestus. “It seems you did not need me at all.”

“That isn’t true,” said Hades. “I need armor.”

“You have armor,” Hephaestus said.

“Not for me,” Hades said. “For Persephone.”