Once, long ago, I believed the god of war was my father, but only because he was the first to hold me in his arms after I was born. His robes were stained crimson from a mortal battle, his cloak torn to ribbons from swords and morning stars, and his skin—warm from a vernal sun—smelled like salt and sweetened smoke. He had come to visit my mother’s burrow, far below where the earth is darkly quiet, to ask for her advice on a skirmish and ended up witnessing my delivery.

I arrived so suddenly that he had no chance to drain his wine and depart, as he would have preferred, for he was keen to return to the battlefield and avoid all matters that pertained to birth. He says that I came into the world with a cry that could have split tree roots and thunderheads, that would have made mortal kings bow. My voice, no doubt, echoed down every Underling passage.

“Hold her,” my mother, breathless but rosy-cheeked, had insisted of him.

And so he had, pressing me awkwardly to his bloodstained breast. A god whose heart was rumored to be hard and unyielding as quartzite, who was the goddess of death’s only son, and who raked in souls by the hundredfold without remorse.

“What will you call her?” Bade asked, cupping my head in his palm. His hand was large enough, powerful enough, to crush me into dust, and yet he held me like I was a fragile thing. A god-child made of damselfly wings and spider silk and daydreams.

My mother paused, wiping the golden blood from her legs. The air smelled green and spiced, like freshly harvested sage and the sloe wine she had spilled. “I do not know.”

“Her father . . . ?”

“No. I am keeping her a secret from him. At least, for the first few decades. She should grow in her own strength before they meet.”

“That is wise of you,” said Bade, but then fell pensive, gazing down at me, still crowned in my mother’s ichor.

“But a little goddess cannot grow up without a name to guide her path.”

There was a lull, only punctuated by the fire crackling from the hearth. This memory is not mine, but it has been told to me so many times that it feels like my own.