Page 62 of This Divine Revelry

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, glancing away. ‘I don’t want to take this away from you. Finding you have power and –’

‘Dionysus, I’m not annoyed that you’re jealous.’ I draw the other seat up next to him, sitting so close our knees brush. I tell myself it’s the narrow confines of the ship.

I know it’s not, but once they touch, I can’t bring myself to shuffle back.

I swear he leans in a little more.

‘I’ve spent the last three years terrified of getting ill again,’ he says. ‘And you’re just … you’re just immune to it. I wouldn’t wish otherwise, wouldn’t want even Perseus to face what I did, but … was I just weak?’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Gods, no, not at all. And I’m not strong either. That has nothing to do with this. And alright, maybe I can escape madness if a god curses me with it, but we have no proof other things couldn’t drive me to it. Some days on that island I couldn’t even get out of bed. Sometimes I thought it might be better to just lie there and stop fighting. This power is a defence. I just got lucky and you got unlucky – that’s all there is to it.’

He takes my hand. I don’t question it – like if we clutch each other it will soften the things we are saying.

‘Every time I think maybe it’s over, maybe I can move on, something comes along and sets me right back to the first day, when the hallucinations started to fade and I realized the full extent of what had happened.’

‘What did happen?’ I ask. He looks sharply up at me and I squeeze his hand. ‘I don’t want to pry. But I just want you to know you can tell me.’

‘It was … chaotic. Confusing. I felt like my heart was going to combust for two years.’ His eyes flutter shut, like he’s still there. ‘I felt like someone was chasing me. Sometimes something was, though it wasn’t real. I heard things – the Fates laughing and Keres threatening me and sometimes just piercing, relentless shrieking. Sometimes my own mother appeared, her shade flitting through the trees, telling me the cost of my immortality, my very existence, was her life. I could smell the smoke as she burned all over again … I spent two years running, Ariadne. Just running every single day, fleeing from the thing living in my head.’

I take that hand I’m holding and draw it to my chest, hoping he can feel the steady beat there. Like it might convince him of my earnestness. ‘I can’t promise you that you won’t fall ill again. But if you run, I run with you.’ I think of his words earlier and the insistence of his hand in mine.

‘Ariadne.’ He says my name like it’s a plea. So much wretched desperation.

‘I mean it. I might not be able to stop the hallucinations but I can be the one beside you telling you that you aren’t alone.’

He doesn’t try to protest again, simply clutches that hand tight and nods. But I know he doesn’t believe it, just swallows it down and looks at me with false relief. ‘Thank you. I suppose we should ready ourselves for your torment first. Time to meet the in-laws.’

I can’t get the gold belt off, and though Dionysus offers to magic up a solution, I decide it’s probably quite the statement to my family – Father always did love treasure and gold – so I slide a new chiton up under it and divest myself of the old one. Calybe gives me one of her shell bracelets for luck and I hope it is from Naxos – the place where Theseus left me to my doom and where instead I found salvation.

It’s a shame the purple I wore for our wedding was sweat-slicked and in need of a good wash. That would have been an excellent statement too. Instead I’m in green – a deep and rich shade that renders my dark hair stark against my pale skin. I only realize as Dionysus comes up beside me before the bronze mirror to line kohl around his viridian eyes that the colour is a near-identical match.

‘Do you want some?’ he asks.

I nod, but instead of passing me the pot he leans forward with the brush. I close my eyes, feeling the press of it against my lids. His careful hand, the way he leans so close his breath warms my skin.

‘I’m done,’ he says.

When I open my eyes, he’s still just as close. Staring at me like he’s struck.

‘I can never work out what colour your eyes are.’

‘They’re grey,’ I say simply.

‘They are mirrors. In Naxos they were green with foliage or blue with the colliding ocean, at night they are dark with the Heavens above and at daybreak they shine with the golden light of the sun – which is only ever a strike of fury away.’

I am frozen, my lips parting with surprise and … perhaps something else. This close, I can count his every freckle. Can make out the creases in the groove of his lips.

Friends who kiss? Couldn’t we be that?

‘But I suppose “grey” works,’ he says, and steps back.

I swallow hard.

‘Please stay close in Crete,’ he says. ‘I can’t bear a repeat of the wedding. Don’t let us be parted in enemy territory.’

‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to convince Phaedra of anything with you there.’

I highly doubt I’ll be able to persuade her regardless. My hopes lie more with my father’s outrage.