Page 131 of This Divine Revelry

‘I’m not …’

The silence swells in the Underworld – that expanse above us feels eternal, even though I know that beyond that sky and the layers of earth is the very world I left behind. A way out, just not always in the direction you’d expect …

Only this time it’s truly futile. There, but just out of reach.

The ground presses beneath me, solid and irrefutable. To the sky, I confess: ‘I think even if I’d thought it through, I still would have made the same choice. Dionysus, every time.’

Hours pass. And then days. We have nothing else to do but sit and talk and reminisce and try to comfort each other through our grief. I do understand what Opora meant – I’m glad she’s here too, even with all that it means.

But with each cresting sun, she fades more and more – and when I look at my hands I see they’re starting to pale too.

‘Do you think they’re coping?’ Opora asks.

Do you think they even made it? But I don’t ask – of course they did; if not, we’d have already been reunited with them all.

And if Dionysus fell, surely they all would have.

‘No,’ I admit. ‘But I think with time they might. I think we might too.’

I am not altogether convinced of that. Even if I weren’t a shade of the Underworld, I’d be doomed to walk the Fields of Asphodel lingering in my regret.

‘Oh … oh gods …’ She startles, holding her palm out. A gold coin materializes within it, shined and polished yet so scratched I cannot work out the city state or the – Oh. The scratches are letters – a word. Philia. Love.

A last letter to the Underworld.

More time passes – and I have no idea how to even track it. Days? Weeks? It hardly matters down here. But we dwindle further and my own coin doesn’t come.

Can they even perform burial rites for a statue? If they managed to grab my stone corpse before they fled at all. Perseus is probably using me as a cloak stand.

He’s not here, after all. So Dionysus didn’t manage to kill him. Did he only have time to run with the others, leaving my body behind?

But I don’t quite believe that.

Burial rites are how you make peace with loss. They are how you grieve. How you begin to move on.

Dionysus, I suspect, has no interest in doing any of that.

The coin lands in my palm long after I’ve ceased tracking the days. I turn it over, looking for a message, but it’s so aged and scuffed that I can’t even identify whether it’s bronze or gold.

Opora is so hazy at times I can scarcely see her. She’s staunchly refused to move on without me, even though I’ve begged her to. Whatever divinity laces my blood has slowed the process for me, so even though I’m still fading I’m nowhere near as hollowed.

‘Finally,’ she says, holding her hand out, and together we race towards the bank of the river.

‘Ariadne!’

I turn, searching for the caller – and a child bursts out of the crowd. He is so faded it takes me a moment to recognize him.

‘Icarus.’

My brother’s best friend. Daedalus’s son.

Dionysus said he escaped the labyrinth with Daedalus. That he flew – and fell.

‘Oh, you poor thing,’ I say, clutching his shoulder and pulling him from the throngs of people. He is his own tragedy – I know that. But it feels like Glaucus before me. And that instinctive need to protect my siblings surges.

He is a child and he has been here, fading and alone – which means Daedalus didn’t follow him to the Underworld. He must have survived.

‘Ariadne,’ Opora says softly. The reluctance is clear – as is the resignation. She knows exactly what I am about to suggest and knows she cannot fight it.