CHAPTER FIVE
THE ATHENIANS SCAVENGE CLOAKS FROM the heaps the celebrating courtiers have left. Theseus snatches one up and drapes it around me without letting go of my hand. His palm is so broad it completely encloses my own and I shiver at the touch of his fingers brushing my shoulders.
What’s happening?
I’m fleeing my home. I am engaged. And until we get off this island, my father will try to kill me if he finds us.
I cannot afford to be distracted now.
We walk calmly across the courtyard, cloaks drawn high. If we run, it might arouse suspicion. If we are relaxed – perhaps a little stumbling – we might become just another group of drunken partygoers lost in the palace grounds.
It works until it doesn’t – until there is no hiding Theseus’s height and breadth and a guard looks twice.
No – not just a guard – it’s the one who had stood outside their prison. The one who had waved me through.
Theseus drops my hand and it is all so quick.
The guard – his sharp bark of alarm, the hurried reach for his sword – and Theseus’s swift, assured wrench of the man’s head. A resounding crack.
He’s done that before.
One of the Athenians yelps and my heart lurches – that these people would be led to the slaughter but cannot witness it themselves. I’m doing this – protecting them. But I force myself to watch as the body falls.
Two people are dead now because of my actions.
It is not my first time witnessing death – far from it.
In the last few months Father has become creative with the showmanship of his executions.
But now, even though there is no blood and gore, this quick clean break cuts surprisingly deep – leaves me standing, still and staring, noting that this is my fault.
In my efforts to stop my father, it appears I am becoming more like him than ever.
Theseus twines his fingers through mine again – snatching at me just like he grasped the sword at the guard’s side – and tries to draw us on.
‘The body will alert others,’ I say – and a few Athenians glance at me. One girl, disgusted. A boy, disdainful. Their prince can kill a man, but gods forbid a princess be practical about it. ‘We need to hide it.’
‘So what if more guards come? I can handle them,’ Theseus says, clenching the sword tight.
You came in here disguised, I want to say, and now you would rather be brash than secretive?
‘If there is fighting, let it be at the boats. Here they can come from all directions,’ I say instead – because pointing out that one man cannot stand against dozens seems like it would only encourage him.
I scurry to a door further up. A recently stocked storage room laden with amphorae of wheat, barley and fava beans from this year’s harvest. ‘Put him in here.’
Theseus considers, before he nods, snapping his fingers, and two of the boys hurry to oblige him. Zosime mutters something beneath her breath that sounds suspiciously like why are we listening to the Cretan whore?
But Theseus allows his gaze to run languidly down me – like we are not fleeing certain death, like we are not at risk – and I tense as though with anticipation. ‘You truly are something, Princess Ariadne.’
My heart answers with a skittering beat.
Olympus above, they are already going to tell the story of how love blinded me. I do not have to make it real.
We continue on, running through the halls until we are nearly out of the palace, and then, rounding a corner, consumed by the scroll in his hands, is Daedalus.
Theseus raises his blade.
‘No!’ I scold – which has Daedalus finally looking up. His eyes dart around between us, before finally landing on me.
He hesitates a moment and then sighs. ‘They lock the servants’ gate every evening. But I understand there are, ah, certain medicinal benefits to sneaking out – you may wish to look there. Goodnight.’
Then he turns and hurries back the way he came.
Theseus steps forward, blade still clutched. ‘He could alert someone.’
I grab his arm and pull him back. ‘He won’t.’
Theseus moves again and I snap, ‘We don’t have time!’ and push him towards our exit.
He doesn’t put the blade down, but he steps towards the door. ‘If you’re sure, princess.’
And then we are out of the palace and into its surrounding complex, pausing only as a guard walks along a path ahead and Theseus pushes me to the wall, his body close, and as my eyes meet his he lets a slow smile unfurl.
Five. That’s how many breaths pass as the guard walks, as Theseus holds me there, his chest falling with mine, his fathomless eyes holding me captive every bit as much as his hand pushing my hip to the wall.
Then he lets me go, and we rush on.
I guide us towards the shrine for Asclepius, the god of medicine, and find the key Daedalus alluded to. The servants’ gate unlocks with a slight screech, and then we are out into the city.
‘This way,’ I say with a confidence I don’t altogether feel.
When Father has allowed us out of the palace it has normally been with such a suffocating retinue of guards I couldn’t see much.
But I’ve spent plenty of time perched in the palace’s hidden corners – legs swinging from the eaves or nestled in the shade of turrets – and somehow all that time watching the city is enough to drag us through Knossos’s winding streets.
The night is cold and worryingly clear, every shining star a watching eye to our deceit. And in the dark every house looms tall and close.
But finally masts rise beyond distant rooftops, then spill into focus. We run, a veritable pack moving through the night. The docks are eerie in the dark, where the rough-hewn stone edges of the harbour drop suddenly into ocean, the slightest movement, the barest whisper of the waves.
‘This one,’ Theseus says, tugging me towards a vessel, the only one with sailors rushing about, untying ropes, preparing for our escape.
‘Stop them!’
The voice is the creaking bolts, the slammed-shut door and every bit the tearing horns and snarling teeth he forced my brother to become. I look up at the dark sails looming above me, black so pitch they melt into the sky above, and jolt as a plank slams down beside me.
‘Go,’ Theseus says to the other Athenians, already drawing his sword.
I turn, expecting my father and a handful of hastily assembled guards.
Instead, I find half the Cretan army, my father at their helm.
And my sister standing beside him.
There is no conversation, just charging men with swords, and I flinch back to find myself against one.
Theseus’s hand curls into the cloak he had so carefully draped around me.
‘We have your daughter hostage!’ he calls, shifting the blade from my spine to the dip of my waist. My dress is sliced, the fabric snagging on my hip, and my skin prickles at the touch of the icy ocean air.
The blade is colder still.
‘Another step and she dies.’
Fool. Well, no – admittedly a decent idea if we were dealing with anyone other than my father, and if there were anything else on the line but his ego, for which he would happily throw his wife to the mercy of the gods, lock away his son and spill his daughter’s blood.
One of the guards barks something and the charging men halt.
My father’s eyes cut to me – lingering on the sword at my gut and the hand clutching my cloak.
The threat so clear anyone would think I had been attacked – that maybe an Athenian snuck into the palace and drew my blood with force.
That I never betrayed him, never opened that door of my own volition and have been a hostage this entire time.
That I am innocent.
But Father has never had a problem slaughtering people who are.
‘My orders have not changed,’ he snarls, and he doesn’t even finish before I hurl myself to the ground, leaving that cloak clasped in Theseus’s hand.
Just as his sword jolts, and I’m not sure it was ever a bluff.
Maybe. I cannot say for certain that he had been reaching to thrust it forward, but gods, I would in his situation and that’s a worse thing to realize – that it would make sense for him to kill me.
You cannot make empty threats to a man like my father.
You cannot keep your enemy’s daughter alive when backed into a corner.
You cannot marry her in the hope of bartering for peace when the tyrant king makes clear he’d rather she were dead than allow you even a moment of it.
But you also cannot kill someone owed your hospitality without incurring the wrath of the gods. If that boat is Theseus’s, my best chance is to make myself a guest of it.
I push against the rough wooden boardwalk and scramble up the plank. Theseus races behind me, as an arrow snips the ocean below.
I shriek as another whistles through the air, a breath from my face, and only years’ worth of light footwork grant me balance.
Archers? Soldiers?
We left when the party still raged. And even if Daedalus alerted the guards, how could Father assemble an army to get here just as we did? No, you’d have to know it was going to happen ahead of time. You’d have to piece things together.
My gaze falls to Phaedra – her jaw set.
My sister betrayed us.
There’s only one reason she would even be here right now – and it is treachery. Or, rather, loyalty to the man who ordered so much bloodshed.
Pain sears across my shoulder. I scream, stumble – nearly fall into the ocean but Theseus’s hands clasp about my waist, holding me firmly in place.
He leaps to overtake me, clinging to the edge of the boat and reaching for my hand once more. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘Do not die while I owe you a life debt.’
I don’t even think; I clasp his forearm as he clutches at mine, then his other hand grasps my waist once more – right where the fabric is cut, his skin against my own – and he lifts, hauling me on to the deck.
He kicks the plank away just as the first guards reach it.
‘Father!’ Theseus calls. ‘A little help?’
The boat beneath me surges. I’m flung back, wheezing as I collide with the edge of the ship. The wind snaps, and I clamber up enough to see Knossos shrinking – that wave hurling us quicker than I can comprehend.
Father.
I look to Theseus, standing at the edge of the boat, silhouetted by the angry lights of my home.
‘You’re …’
‘A son of Poseidon,’ he says, cocky grin falling into place. ‘Turns out, he’s still rather resentful of the King of Crete.’