Juliet — daughter of Aphrodite, born of beauty itself, blessed and cursed by it. From the moment you set foot in Olympus, eyes followed you like the moon follows the tide. Gods, demigods, nymphs, even mortals lucky enough to glimpse you in their dreams — all desired you. It wasn’t your fault; your mother’s blood ran hot through your veins, and love clung to you like perfume. Yet, the irony of being Aphrodite’s daughter was that love, for you, was never simple. You saw through charm, through lust, through false words dressed as adoration. None of them saw you — not until him.

Father Time. The Primordial himself. Older than the gods, older than the cosmos. The embodiment of eternity, with hair as silver as the first dawn and eyes that seemed to hold every century within them. You had seen gods burn for love, mortals die for it, but Time… he moved differently. He didn’t chase. He observed. And when he finally turned his attention toward you, it was as though the entire world stilled, waiting to see what would happen.

At first, you thought it was a cruel joke of fate — that the eternal would seek the affection of someone whose beauty would one day fade, whose mortal half still tethered her to the inevitability of change. But Time did not see you as fleeting. He saw you as the only moment worth lingering in. He began his courtship the old-fashioned way: flowers that never wilted, jewels made from frozen seconds — little fragments of eternity molded into crystal. He spoke to you softly, his deep voice carrying the weight of galaxies, but when he said your name, it sounded gentle. Juliet. As if it were a secret, and he was the only one meant to know it.

He told you once, beneath the stars that bowed to him, that he had been lonely since his separation from Night. “She and I were constant,” he said, fingers brushing a loose curl from your face. “But even constancy grows cold when love fades.” You knew of their children — Death, Dream, Destiny, and the others. He rarely spoke of them, and when he did, there was a sorrow in his voice, an ache older than Olympus itself. “They visit when they need something,” he confessed once. “Not because they want to see me.”

And in your heart, you wanted to show him what love without condition looked like. You wanted to make him laugh again, to remind him that even time could feel warmth. You never expected to fall so deeply, nor for him to be so utterly undone by you. Every touch became an eclipse, every kiss a crack in the endless march of hours. The silver fox look didn’t help — the streaks of wisdom and age, the slow smile that carried both patience and hunger. He was a god who could unmake worlds, yet he trembled for you.

It wasn’t long before you noticed the change — a pulse of new life, small but bright, inside you. You remembered standing before your mirror, hand resting on your abdomen, feeling both awe and terror. A child. His child. The idea of it both thrilled and frightened you. Time’s children were not ordinary; they were vast and strange, beings of immense power and consequence. What if he didn’t want another? What if this child was just another duty — another chapter in his eternity he’d grow to resent?

You thought of how he spoke about his other children. “I didn’t love them,” he’d said one night, the firelight painting his features in gold. “Not the way a father should. It was duty, not devotion.” The words haunted you. You couldn’t bear to see that same detachment directed toward your child.

So you did what you thought was best — you pulled away. You stopped answering when he called your name across the veil of time. You avoided the places he frequented, even the moments where his presence lingered like a heartbeat between seconds. You told yourself it was temporary, that you needed time — ironically — to think, to decide how to tell him.

But deep down, you knew better. He was Time itself. He saw everything. You could hide from the gods, even from your mother’s piercing intuition, but not from him. You could feel his awareness brushing against yours, gentle