Page 128 of This Divine Revelry

Evidently not all his gifts have found their way back.

‘What have you done?’ Dionysus demands.

‘What do you think? Have you not heard the tale of Dionysus? He slaughters those who do not believe in him. He turns their minds and has them kill their own children. And now, apparently, he abandons his own people to save himself.’

Olympus above, he meant this all along – to separate us from the thiasus so he might issue a final blow to Dionysus’s legend. Even if Dionysus could quell this battle, would he have any power left? Or would he save them all just to have Perseus bleed him at the end?

‘Why not kill you first?’ Dionysus demands – even as the guards draw their swords. There is not an ounce of doubt or hesitation. ‘Call your soldiers off, now.’

The air cracks with the echo of his threat but Perseus just raises the shield higher.

‘No curse of yours could get past this,’ he snaps. ‘You’re wasting time. Go wear yourself out, little godling. Face me when you’re done.’

‘You’ll face me now,’ Dionysus snarls, slamming his thyrsus into the floor so that the whole building shudders. The stick doesn’t glow this time – but he does. The barest shimmer across his skin before it races up, coalescing in his eyes, which blaze so much brighter than mine ever did. Shining with the sort of divinity that burns.

I feel the heat peeling off him and look sharply away before his burning gaze can strip me of my mortality.

And in that sharp, sudden turn, I catch Perseus as he shifts, his hand fumbling for the bag at his side, a long tendril spilling from its opening. Green and dark – a snake, limp and dead.

A sword. The sandals. The helm of darkness. A shield.

And a bag. A knapsack that might safely contain the head of the gorgon …

I throw myself at Dionysus, clasping his arms, spinning him so that he no longer looks at Perseus – no longer fixes him with that eradicating power – but turns it at me. Radiance swirls in his eyes and he’s right: it is agony.

‘No,’ he gasps, desperately blinking to clear the power forming there.

A god’s immortal form. Concentrated, weaponized … decidedly fatal.

The pain – the heat – shoots through my mind like a lance, right to the back of my skull and then down, seeping into every fibre of my being – alight, searing and excruciating. The smell of my own charred flesh catches in my throat, and I can’t move, cannot even release him because each nerve, tissue and strand of me is screaming.

‘Ariadne.’ Dionysus clutches me desperately.

My vision darkens at the edges, the rest clouded by smoke. I just catch sight of Perseus’s own men hardening to stone.

And I’m envious of that cold quick end, because this is so very painful, it is agony, and I would do anything for it to stop.

‘Don’t look at him … Medusa’s head …’ I mutter, my voice a rasp as my vocal cords smoulder too. Is this it? Devoured piece by piece with this brief glimpse, where his full being would have consumed me whole? A slow, painful death instead of an instant inferno?

‘No, no.’ Dionysus’s voice cracks.

I do not look away from Dionysus, not for an instant, but I’m still grasping him and so I watch as my fingers begin to blacken.

As the tips crumble.

‘Please don’t leave me,’ he begs.

I’m not leaving him. This is no escape – this is the final entombment, the walls caving in, burying me, except …

Except a quiet whisper. Not a full way out, just the next step. A way to halt the pain.

A way to leave something behind other than ash.

It is not forcing Dionysus to watch as I die the same way his mother did. It is not adding to the agony of all this.

I want parting words, something he might cling to, but all I can manage is his name. It is the shape I need my last, ragged breath to take.

His eyes well with tears, cooling the fires back to their usual, hopeful green, fresh and bright and never in need of any godly power. He is radiant without any of it.