Page 123 of This Divine Revelry

That there are men who did not like that very much – who felt the parties threatened the sanctity of their control and chased them off with swords drawn. That at some point the thiasus had to learn to defend themselves and maybe the panther curled at Dionysus’s feet isn’t destined solely to draw his chariot.

The worst cases flit through my mind: we are run out of the city, we are shut down by Perseus’s guards and thrown in his prisons, we party with men who mean us harm, who wait until we are vulnerable and strike, who punish their own citizens for daring to join us.

I busy myself to distraction, until, at the end of a very long day, Dionysus and I end up sitting across from one another in a nook at the edge of the deck, wedged between crates, a sail draped for privacy. The tips of our sandals touch, and, though we’re facing each other, our gaze has been directed to the horizon, where the sun slowly descends beneath the waves.

But now he turns to me. ‘Are you alright with us doing this? Going after Perseus rather than Theseus?’

I put down the cup of wine I’d been nursing and rest back against the mast. ‘Theseus wants me to serve his tale. Perseus wants me dead. There’s enough room in my heart to hate them both.’

Perseus’s smirk. His continuous taunts. The way he’d seemed so certain of it all …

But it’s another face that crawls into view, and that one sparks rage even now, after all this time. My fingers curl, and I try to ignore the way my jaw clenches or the fury striking hot in my gut.

I would like to bring Perseus down, certainly. I can admit he is worse. Theseus sees women as tools and Perseus is the endpoint of that thought, where the labyrinth leads. If Perseus gets the renown he craves there will be thousands of smaller versions of him desperate for a limited pool of power – and they’ll push women down to feel some tiny semblance of it.

But Perseus is ideological and Theseus is personal. With the way he breathed his lies into my ear, pressed them into my skin – and then stood with a gleeful smirk, each comment pointed and sharp, each meant to bleed me dry. The constant attempts to manipulate and belittle me to prevent me being a threat to his tale. The way he took delight in breaking me just to toss me aside so he could do it to the next girl.

‘I don’t have to choose, do I?’ I ask. ‘Perseus first, then Theseus. Even if Helen is returned and Persephone bests him, I can’t watch as he sets his sights on someone else. I’m not sure he’ll ever stop unless he’s forced to.’

Dionysus nods. ‘At least we can return to Plan Donkey for Theseus. I worry if I try that for Perseus it would just give his followers a martyr. He’s a hydra – a dozen more Perseuses would step up to take his place.’

I clutch the wine tight. ‘I don’t think he’s as powerful as he would have us think.’

He is as we were last night – smoke and mirrors until he is believed.

‘Maybe, maybe not. Either way, we’re stronger.’ He leans forward to squeeze my calf. I watch the tendons of his hand flex and feel that tautness in my stomach, like there are knots inside me and he winds them ever tighter.

I force my gaze away – but meeting his eyes is just as distracting. And I find myself now checking they aren’t burning as brightly as they did this morning.

‘I’m fine, Ariadne,’ he says, like he knows what I am thinking. He leans back, regarding me, and gestures for me to go right ahead.

‘Do you ever think about your mother?’ I ask – because we don’t discuss her, ever. Yet this morning he found himself capable of the very thing that killed her and I’ve never seen him so terrified.

I expect a flippant comment, or a lie, something to move the conversation along from the serious. But Dionysus doesn’t look away, and he lets the question settle before admitting: ‘All the time.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘Everything in particular. What was she like? Did she know she was pregnant when she died? Would she like me? What would she have been like to grow up with? Would she have been there for me? Would she have made it easier?’ He shakes his head, then chuckles. ‘All I really have to go on is that she seduced the king of the gods and bragged about it to his own wife. That’s the sort of brazen recklessness I can only aspire to.’

‘I think she would have really liked the thiasus,’ I say.

‘Oh, I imagine she’d have been partying until daybreak.’ He tilts his head back, smiling. I admire the slender stretch of his neck and have to resist the urge to crawl across to bite at it.

We might need to drown horny Ariadne again.

‘I used to think that would be the one good thing about not seeing the next sunset.’ He tries for nonchalance but there’s a heaviness no tone can smother. ‘At least I’d get to meet her.’

‘Dionysus –’

‘I wouldn’t, it turns out. Immortal souls don’t go to the Underworld. We just vanish. So it’s this – eternal life or nothing.’ He nods to the sky, which has finally broken – colour shattering across the horizon and shining in the water’s reflection until the whole world feels alight and feverish. ‘It’s an eternity of sunsets, or one last time.’

I cannot conceive of that – but then I cannot truly grasp that mine are numbered either. Time is an unwieldy thing. I feel as though I have so much of it unspooling before me but also that the thread is too fine, that the shears might slice before I can even hear the snip.

I might understand this desperate clawing for immortality if it were that: to see the sky shatter, to dance, to kiss and sing and laugh. But it’s not for those locked in its quest – it’s power. Power power power.

How terribly, exhaustively boring.

‘I might not have grand notions of reshaping the world in my image,’ Dionysus says. ‘But I’m just not sure I’ll ever tire of looking up. You know me – I can never say no to just one more party.’