"Eeeeeeeeeeat it! Eeeeeeeeeat it!" Ares was acting like a rowdy cheerleader as he cupped his hands around his mouth and encouraged Bellona. If he had a set of snazzy pom poms, he would undoubtedly have put them on by now.


    Bellona stared at the sachet whilst occasionally glancing up at the idiot who made it. This thing is going to be dangerous for my sanity, isn''t it?! Shit. If I eat it in front of him and start crying, he''s going to think I''m weird... He probably thinks I''m weird for punching him all the time anyway.... Ahhhhhh, screw it... Bellona brought the sachet to her mouth but hesitated again. Is it worse if I eat it here in front of him, or worse if I eat it while hiding away in the bedroom with Enyo... It''s terrible either way, but at least I won''t have to punch Ares again if I go in the room... And I''d probably run in there after anyway. Damn it, did Enyo see this coming too? Am I the witch or is she?! "I''ll eat this in the bedroom. Also, what even is this bizarre thing? Is it really something I should be having for breakfast?"


    "Eh, bedroom? But I wanted to know if it''s good or not... Ah, fine, but you have to tell me next time I see you! As for what it is, that''s a surprise, I really can''t tell you otherwise it would ruin a majority of what makes it interesting. Should you be having it for breakfast? Uh, no? Not really, but if Appa can have candy apple, then this isn''t any worse. It''s a sweet, but it is light and the flavour profile is fine for some early morning snacking, so its not the worst thing ever. I''ll be honest though, I just REALLY wanted to make it."


    "A sweet..." Bellona sniffed the satchel as she walked out of the living room but could only smell a hint of something tropical; meaning whatever it was would probably have a fruity taste of some kind. Damn that stupid mutt. Is he seriously going to do both sisters in with sweets? Should I even eat this thing? Can I just secretly throw it away... Why am I scared of a sweet?! What has that damn man done to me? Is this what Enyo felt?


    Thud


    Bellona had been so stuck in her head she accidentally walked head-first into Enyo as she was mulling everything over.


    "I see you''re struggling. Want me to eat it instead?" Enyo flicked Bellona''s forehead and held her hand out with a grin.


    "NO!... It''s mine, get your own you petty food thief!"


    "Possessive, much? Fine. Go on then. Eat it, coward."


    Bellona sat on the bed and crossed her legs, eyeing up the unknown sweet. She opened wide the top of the sachet and went to dip her finger in and test the waters.


    "Don''t do that, moron. Don''t ruin it by testing it piece by piece. What an absolute waste that would be. All the build up only to ruin it for yourself because a part of you realises that thing is going to force you to be honest. Just eat the damn thing already!"


    "FINE!" Bellona tilted her head back and poured a bit of the sachet''s contents into her mouth. She threw her head forward to glare at Enyo with narrowed eyes and waited for her tastebuds to set her down the path of no return.


    …


    "mm?" One of Bellona''s eyebrows raised as she felt something strange happening in her mouth but she obviously couldn''t open it to explain so she was by herself on this one.


    …


    "MM?! MMM!? M? MM!"


    Enyo picked up the sachet and disregarded Bellona''s earlier catty rejection of her request to share as she decided to try the food for herself. Whatever it was, it was doing a number on Bellona and Enyo couldn''t figure out what on earth was happening to her sister with just the non-verbal grunts she was hearing. Still, if nothing else, there was a wide smile on Bellona''s face that was indicative something was going very right. As Enyo repeated the actions of her sister, Bellona finally finished swallowing the food and started laughing until tears came flooding out of her like waterworks. Enyo couldn''t tell if the tears were from Bellona laughing too much, the joy she felt, the sadness of the problem she couldn''t get over, or maybe even all of the above. The only thing Enyo knew for certain was that this had cemented things. If Bellona wasn''t all-in on her ''Ares or no one'' mind-set before, now it was basically a permanent fixture in her brain. Of course this would still be ever at war with the ''Ares is Enyo''s'' train of thought, and whether this food-takedown of her emotions would make things better or worse for Bellona was yet to be seen. Would she accept and admit to her feelings and come to terms with them having to co-exist, or would she insist on the incompatibility of the two clashing ideas in her head and stubbornly refuse the olive branch Enyo had extended multiple times now. The food, whatever it was, had probably forced her to make that decision. What choice she''d come to was impossible to tell amidst the laughter and the crying.


    As for Enyo herself, she understood immediately why the sweet had vanquished her sister so thoroughly when the uniqueness of it became apparent. The powdery substance was mango sherbet and was the culprit behind why it had a tropical smell. It laced the tongue with an ever so slightly bitter taste that counteracted the other half of the equation, the golden balls. The tiny balls were cream flavoured and covered in a thin layer of honey, hence the golden colour. The sweetness of the honey, balanced out by the sherbet and rounded up together by the creamy aftertaste was refreshingly sharp. This alone was pretty incredible as is, but what really did her sister in was the trick Ares had hidden in the food.


    Pop


    Crackle


    It was popping candy. The tiny balls, imbued with traces annihilation magic to make them pop, would dissolve the cream onto the tongue as they crackled away in the mouth. The layer of sherbet prevented any discomfort as the flavours mixed together with the fun popping, creating a wholly different experience to any other form of food. Bellona was always the rascal of the family and she had a bubbly personality. The quirkiness of the sweet was probably the part that RKO''d her as not only was this food basically a manifestation of her personality, what with the playful dichotomy of sweet and bitter, but it showed a clear understanding. An understanding Ares frequently and openly complained he didn''t have of her. He would go on and on about how he didn''t understand what made Bellona tick. He didn''t know why she was punching him. He didn''t know why she was acting strange. What he did know, however, was exactly the kind of person Bellona really was, and that took paying a degree of attention Bellona hadn''t seen coming. Underneath all the mocking of her chest, behind all the playful fighting, he''d been paying attention. He''d taken to heart everything she''d told him about her history and come to the correct conclusion that she cared more about various matters than she''d would ever let show. That the theatrical and energetic popping of the candy represented perfectly the fa?ade Bellona put up while her complex personality, in the form of the delicately balanced sherbet, honey, and cream combination, did all the heavy lifting behind the scenes. The sherbet was her bitterness towards the Legion clan and her father, all the people who constantly dismissed her throughout her life. The cream was her soft emotional state that was easily damaged by these people even if she never made it obvious. The honey was her sweet kindness to those she cared about, like how she constantly tried to get Enyo away from her father despite rejection after rejection. And of course the popping candy was her tomboyish personality and the smirk she kept on her face throughout it all. Unintentionally, though, Ares had actually gone a step further. The popping candy was him. he was the beacon of joy that completed Bellona. His annihilation magic that formed the basis of the sweet excited her in ways she had never thought possible. When Bellona found the magic she wanted to dedicate her life too, she didn''t really need the fa?ade anymore. Its purpose was something far more important to her now as it was her connection with the man who was everything she wanted out of life. That playful bickering and back and forth they always had was something she wanted to always keep having. Bellona knew that her personality and Ares'' were almost eerily similar at times, but that was precisely what she was looking for. Someone who was fun to be around, but also understanding and caring beneath it all. He had the magic. He had the personality. Bellona had even admitted, long before she''d come to terms with any of this, that Ares was her type all the way back in Baja when she was messing with Enyo and now that had come back to bite her in the ass. Enyo knew this would happen. The second Bellona witnessed Ares'' magic in its truest forms via Perish Wheel and Grand Annihilation, Ares would become the perfect man that met all her criteria. The guilt for feeling that way towards her own sister''s husband to-be was going to eat her alive and she would genuinely stay quiet, watching those two be happy until the end of time. She would become the old maid she joked about becoming in Baja, wishing it could have been her in her sister''s position, all the while never quite giving up on the love she had for Ares and never bothering to look anywhere else.


    Enyo wouldn''t tolerate it. The insane devotion Bellona would have shown to a man she couldn''t even have, according to her and no one else, was something Enyo would never deny and something she didn''t want to see anyway. If someone showed that much pure, selfless admiration for Ares, Enyo wasn''t sure she could look them in the eye and say no; let alone to her sister of all people.


    Dominus was famous for once having said the following: ''Harems for certain people are unavoidable no matter your intentions. You think to yourself that you''ll only ever love one person, but then a second person shows up who becomes a gateway. Your resilience will mean nothing because the second person will inherently have something that no one who comes after will need, pity factor. Some manner of complex relation to the person will leaving you feeling like a terrible person if you don''t accept them. You may owe them your life. They might be someone who''s known you your whole life and been by your side throughout. They may just even love you more than your first wife or husband. The point is, guilt will be the driving factor that enables the start of multiple marriages. After two, from there, a third or a fourth isn''t as big a deal. You go from monogamy to polygamy, there is no other step that comes after spouse two. It''s just more of the same and, eventually, it becomes a familiar process that you already have a tolerance for. Harems aren''t a result of a person being infatuated with multiple other people, it''s a result of them feeling forced to love two; the rest is incidental.''


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Enyo was going to have to have a talk with Ares about him having multiple wives because she knew that, A; it was going to happen and B; he would take some convincing. It was a complicated discussion, certainly, but Enyo was going to have to make it clear she wasn''t bothered. Actually, it was probably the opposite. Enyo was the curious type, after all. If anything, it would probably end up being more her harem than Ares''... But he didn''t need to know that... Enyo wouldn''t be so easy going about who could join their family, but she wasn''t against expanding it. Harems weren''t uncommon in this world, not at all. Rich and powerful men and women would almost always have their own so Enyo wasn''t even remotely surprised someone like Ares would wind up with one, even if that wasn''t his goal. She''d practically acquiesced to it the second she accepted her feelings for him as his destruction magic gave him a status that was incomparable to any other. He wouldn''t try and use that status to form his own harem intentionally, but people would flock to him and it would probably just sort of happen. The main reason Enyo had no issues with it was because she knew Ares loved her from the bottom of his heart. So much so that he had no intention of marrying anyone other than her from the get go. He''d committed to her extremely quickly and never looked back, and that was all the reassurance she needed to know he wouldn''t become another Dominus who just piled on wife after wife; ending up with hundreds he didn''t care for. She trusted Ares to be responsible in matters of the heart and, deep down, although she felt somewhat sorry for Bellona and anyone who came after, she knew she would be irreplaceable. Ares, no matter who he met or married, would always have her in slot number one. Ares was not the type to sugar coat things. If, one day, he was asked to rank his wives, he would do it and he would put Enyo first every time. Ares would also no doubt make her the de-facto head of the harem and prioritise her in most matters. If Bellona could accept something like that, never being first in priority to the man she loved, then Enyo could do something as easy as accept Bellona. If anything, Enyo''s position in all this was the simplest! She was married to a person she adored. She was his favourite. Plus she got to play around with all the other women he brought home. Ares and Bellona would be struggling to come to terms with everything while Enyo was practically salivating at the thought of it! Of course, Enyo''s sexual degeneracy played a large role in her acceptance of things, but who was she to deny her cravings? Did Bellona think she would be safe from Enyo''s tyrannical sexcapades just because she was her sister? Hell no. If anything, it was the opposite as it just put her even more at risk. Did that make Enyo a freak? Yes. Had she accepted that back when she first got a taste of the world of pleasure? Yes. Was she ever going to stop? No. She would probably start ramping things up if anything. Little did Ares know, but Enyo had been keeping one more secret from him; something she only discovered recently when she went to learn a new art after learning about the existence of an open pillar she was VERY interested in. As it turns out, Enyo has an affinity for the ''pillar of pleasure'' that was somehow even stronger than her affinity for the holy pillar. It was important to remember that Enyo was a once in a lifetime holy pillar prodigy, a genius whose name would go down in history because of her sheer talent with the pillar... Ares was not going to get off easy when she finally got her hands on him, but he was most definitely going to get off. More times than he even thought possible. She was going to act shy like a maiden, and then she was going to devour him like a succubus the second he let his guard down. Ares was going to have to get very good at escaping Enyo otherwise he would be in some serious trouble going forward. The holy side of Enyo would not save him from the horny side. It was an interesting duality, but it was a lopsided one. The public got one half, Ares would have to bear the burden of the other by himself for now. If he was lucky, Bellona would join in and share the load before he turned to a husk.


    Speaking of Bellona, she''d stopped crying and was hiding in a pillow fortress she''d built while Enyo was mulling over various plans for the future. "Can I come in? Wilst thou lower the drawbridge?"


    "No."


    "I was being polite. I''m coming in anyway." Enyo barged her way in despite Bellona''s pleas not to. Partly because she wasn''t taking no for an answer as this was an important time for her sister, but also because her lie detector went off for the millionth time thanks to her sister''s pointless insistence on denying reality time and time again. When Enyo managed to crawl and dig her way through the number of pillows that Bellona had multiplied with her magic, she felt a wave of relief in her heart as she saw Bellona smiling like a girl in love... Well actually there was no like about it, she just was and it was plain as day. "You want to talk about it?"


    "No." Bellona rocked side to side while hugging a pillow with that same silly smile on her face.


    "Seriously, you do know I have a lie detector in me, right? So, you wanna say it or not?"


    Bellona leaned her chin on the pillow she was holding and looked straight at Enyo. "Yeah, I love your husband. I want him. he''s a dumb pooch at the best of times, he''s going to keep poking fun at the size of my chest forever, he''s an insufferable revenant with a foul mouth, and he''s going to inadvertently attract other women; but I want him. I want his magic. I want his food. I want to keep having silly arguments with him. He amuses me and I feel like we''re on the same wavelength as each other. I''m not sure if I should be telling you this, but it feels like he was made for me and not you. He is my perfect other half, and I want him. You''ve already made your bed by telling me I can share him, so now you''re going to have to lie in it. I won''t let you take back what you said, it''s too late for that. I will wait for the right time, and I will tell him how I feel."


    "The right time? Why not just go do it now? He''s literally in the other room, probably still trying to figure out why you ran away from him."


    "No. Firstly, I''ll let you have him for now. I''m not going to interrupt your lovey-dovey experience as a couple. You two haven''t even slept with each other yet, I''m not going to stick my head in where I don''t yet belong. You do you first and enjoy him to your heart''s content as I will do too when I get my turn later. Second, I''m really brute forcing this. I still feel bad, I''m just ignoring that feeling and doing what I want because I can''t pretend anymore. That stupid popping candy sent me over the edge of no return, but that doesn''t mean my other feelings on the matter are gone just yet. I want some time to get over that. Lastly, and this is the most important, I think the Vraizon situation needs to be sorted out first. You remember when Fate threatened you? Threatened to tell the Legion clan about you and Ares? I think Major will be able to accept it, barely. He''ll be irate and on edge, but if he learns that its not just you, but also me... Losing two daughters to the same revenant will be a line that he simply won''t accept having been crossed. I won''t do anything now for all of our sakes. I don''t put it past that man to try and kill us, let alone Ares. I''ve seen first hand the anger he''s capable of directing at his own children, there''s no reason to give him an excuse. Does that mean I''ll have to be patient for a long time? Yeah, and it fucking sucks. I''ll be jealous of you for a long time to come, but I can wait. This is for the best and I know it, so you won''t change my mind on this."


    "Look at you, being mature for once. See how easy this discussion was? You should have just listened to your big sister and admitted it from the start... Speaking off big sisters... Do you think Pele''s gonna want in on the action? It would seriously be absurd if all three of us went for the same man..."


    "Nah, she won''t be interested in Ares in the slightest. Besides, she''s got her eyes set on one of Calla''s kids, right? Skyzo, wasn''t it? That lazy assassin with the dumbest magic I''ve ever seen... Seriously, how could anyone be an assassin with that kind of magic?! It''s literally counter-intuitive! And the worst part is that it works, especially against Pele too... We''re getting side-tracked. Please don''t tell Ares about this, now''s just not the correct time for it."


    "Don''t worry, I wouldn''t regardless of whether you asked me to or not because he''d just say no to you right now anyway. I need to have a proper conversation with him about the future first, he''ll never accept you if I don''t."


    Bellona shuffled over to her sister and leant her head against Enyo''s bosom. "Thank you, sis''. Really, thank you."


    "Don''t thank me just yet, you don''t even know what I want from you in return."


    "... Should I even ask?"


    Bellona shivered as Enyo sensually stroked her face and dragged her thumb slowly over her bottom lip.


    "Depends." Enyo whispered into her sister''s ear, "Do you want to start mentally preparing yourself now for things I''m going to do to you in the future, or do you want me to take you by surprise?"


    With nowhere to hide from the maniacal sex pest that was her sister, Bellona fled the room and decided to leave that problem to her future self... I''m seriously going to have to put up a magical barrier when I sleep tonight... What the hell has happened to that damn woman to set her down this path?! Why do I get the feeling that mongrel Ares is somehow responsible for this?! That idiot has seriously twisted her... Whatever. Speak of the devil, Bellona came across Ares holding Appa aloft and spinning it in the air. "Idiot. Only children would enjoy that! Appa can float anyway, she doesn''t need your dumb-ass to lift her!"


    "Hm? Ares spotted Bellona and smirked as he put Appa down who then dizzily floated off to go find Leo and play hide and seek. "If it''s something only children would enjoy, then are you implying you want me to do it to you?"


    "Alright, that''s it. If I don''t beat some respect into you here and now, then my name isn''t Bellona!"


    Crash


    Somehow, miraculously, despite being indoors, the two''s squabbling managed to somehow kick up another dust cloud. They were seriously experts at doing this. That aside, their brawl continued for a few minutes until, as per usual, Bellona emerged victorious with Ares in a headlock. "ENYO! YOUR SISTER IS BULLYING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Maybe one day Ares would learn not to bother calling out for the other sister as it had failed him every single time he''d ever attempted it. These two were basically in cahoots and he wasn''t going to find the safe haven he was looking for in these trying times. "Ouch!" Bellona gave Ares a noogie as he struggled to remove her vice grip around the back of his head.


    "The popping candy was incredible, thank you." She let go of him and walked out of the living room while letting Ares know something he would definitely appreciate. "I''ll stop randomly hitting you from now on. Sorry about that, but it was mostly your fault anyway." With one final look, Bellona winked at Ares and left him to his own devices for now. As Bellona walked down the hallway, she chuckled to herself as she heard Ares celebrate the end of the unexplained beatings with a ''WOO!''. She held her hand over her heart as she imagined her future with the one man that could put a genuine smile on her face. Not the derisive, condescending, or teasing smiles she usually reserved for day to day use, but something truly heartfelt that only those she really cared about would ever see.