Page 145 of This Divine Revelry

I reach forward, grabbing on to him and letting the heat burn into the skin of his wrists. He hisses, and his own skin glows brighter, absorbing the power before it can hurt him.

‘It shouldn’t work this way,’ Dionysus mutters, his voice as strained as his every tendon.

‘It’s working this way because it’s your power. It wants to go back. Can’t you feel it?’

‘What? No, it feels like you. The crisp air of the early morning, the charged air of those storm-grey eyes. It has rhythm, grace, movement. It’s impulsive, brilliant and, trust me, intolerably stubborn in a way that is decidedly you.’

But when it arcs back that’s not what I feel at all. It is eccentricity and wild abandon. It’s him, so clearly him.

Is he lying? Or … is it somehow both? Somehow ours?

But it can’t be. We cannot crack immortality in half and share it.

I reach out, drawing on my powers of the mind. If I can pull us into a labyrinth, I might have the upper hand. I might be able to pour the immortality back into him before he can stop me.

‘Nice try, new girl.’ He grinds the words out from between gritted teeth, fending off my light with his own. The haziness of our glowing skin mixes, the edges of us entwining.

‘I don’t want to live forever without you.’ My voice breaks but I keep pushing that energy back.

‘Likewise.’

The energy collides and shoots right up, shattering the roof overhead. We cower as huge slabs of marble fall around us, the night sky opening above.

Fates, we’re destroying the palace of Olympus.

The power crashes back down hard and Dionysus gathers up the energy ricocheting about us and pushes it right back into my chest. I gasp as it floods me, warm and charged, chaotic and frenetic and him him him. His hands fall to my waist, drawing me close, and I ready the fire crackling through me once more.

I kiss him like it might seal the power back into his skin.

He kisses me like it might sear the magic into my flesh.

The kiss is clumsy, grasping, both of us breathing hard, our lips hasty and desperate. The magic swirls, in and around, pushing and pulling, flowing between us so readily it is difficult to believe it truly is not ours.

Could it be?

If the immortality recognized us both, could it not stretch and settle across us, bound to neither one of us but both.

Immortality is a hungry thing – it wants to consume … Sometimes all it takes is a slight boost, a jolt to take it from a spark to an inferno.

Perhaps all we need is a little more divinity, a hit of extra power, something that pushes it beyond what might sustain one person and into two. Zeus did not deplete his own immortality to feed it to Dionysus. He had time we do not – but doesn’t that prove it? That it’s possible to increase the divinity you hold?

There must be a way – and there is magic all around us. We are on Olympus. We are hanging in the very Heavens and I will tear this entire kingdom apart if it gives me the scrap of power that saves him.

Dionysus’s hands are in my hair now, clutching my face, and his lips are tender, drawing away, his voice warm, to say: ‘I love you. I’d give you everything. Please.’

‘I love you too much to take it,’ I gasp back. I want it but not like this. Not for me and not for him. With him. For us.

I glance up – see that arch of seven lights, the fifth larger than the rest. The tiara he tore from my head, cast up in the sky and declared our love.

Of course. It’s us. It’s always been us.

Divinity etched into the sky – didn’t Hermes say the gods were fighting over the Heavens? If there is power to snatch, surely it is hung there? An escape in the direction I have come to expect it.

My power flares, churning up and seizing. Those lights in the Heavens, shining specks that shimmer downwards in my grasp, spiralling, fanning out among the glowing arc of us. The stars settle on our skin, burning bright. And then they delve deeper, merging with the divinity we hold.

A spark to an inferno.

Hot and bright and almost unbearable.