Page 10 of This Divine Revelry

Ahead, there is a shriek.

I snatch a torch from a sconce and race inwards.

The walls tower over me as a path branches, spiralling in or spiralling out, and I choose one without thinking. The ceiling is so far above as to be imperceptible while on either side the walls press in, narrow and tight. I hit against rough stone as the path snakes inwards beneath the palace.

Ahead there is shouting, dull pounding and then I round the corner and there …

The Athenians crowd around the broken body of my brother – flesh red and ragged and torn. A man’s body, bruised and limp – but it’s the bull’s head that marks the true scale of desolation: scarred black nose, one horn cracked, the other blunted, the eyes open and staring to the ceiling above. The blood is fresh … but those scars are old.

Like he has run into the wall in frustration. Like he has torn at himself in madness. Like his rage had nowhere else to go for eighteen long years but on to himself.

Now his eyes are fixed, unseeing, on the storeroom above – on the place where I danced.

No … no, he can’t be dead. I did this to save him.

I look up to find the Athenians watching me.

The boy from yesterday seems to notice me last – his gaze as locked on my brother as my own was. When he sees me, it’s with a quick, relieved exhale. ‘Our priestess, I take it.’

‘Theseus,’ Zosime says – Theseus? – and she reaches for him as he steps forward, like she means to pull him back. He hardly seems to notice.

The torchlight hits him, rendering his every detail clear: tiredness etched in his limbs, torn edges of his cloak – and surprise sparking in his eyes as he sees me clearly in turn.

Theseus? Oh gods …

There is a brief moment of uncertainty but as he takes that final step, he is the confident and assured man I remember. ‘Princess Ariadne. How very brave and stupid indeed.’

‘Theseus,’ I breathe – partly because I am desperate for it, shock stilling my lungs, and partly because the idea seems so absurd. ‘The prince of Athens.’

Slowly – as though we have all the time in the world, as though my brother’s corpse weren’t lying there and guards might not come to finish the job at any moment – he smiles. ‘This isn’t the way I’d anticipated making your acquaintance.’ He takes my hand, that slight, intimate smile dashing across his lips. ‘But it’s a pleasure nonetheless.’

‘I …’ The prince of Athens. The very man I myself once proposed I marry.

A man who will certainly not slip away into obscurity.

My thumb skims over roughened skin – and I glance at his hand in mine. His knuckles are bruised and bloody, the skin cracked.

I flinch back. ‘You killed him. Why? Did he wake?’

‘I don’t think it ever slept,’ he says gently. ‘Whatever herbs you used were ineffective; the beast charged right at us.’

Zosime starts. ‘That’s not –’

She cuts herself off at a look from Theseus – no, at a look from her prince.

She swallows and turns back to me. ‘Theseus saved us all. He vanquished the beast with his bare hands.’

Theseus is watching me carefully – and I suddenly realize my sympathy might put me in danger. The Athenians might not take kindly to a girl who sides with the beast …

‘If there had been another way,’ he says instead – as though he means to soothe me, ‘I would have taken it.’

I can’t think of this right now – and I certainly can’t bear the apologies of the people my father meant to die down here.

‘We need to go,’ I interrupt, turning desperately and racing back down the path. I relax only when their footsteps echo after me. ‘I have boats prepared.’

‘We have boats,’ Theseus says. ‘The Cretan forces who sailed to collect us were swiftly replaced with my own men.’

Ah. Yes. He had never expected his death in that labyrinth, had always anticipated a way out …