CHAPTER SIX
IHALF EXPECT THE ATHENIANS to clap me in irons the moment they remember I’m here.
Theseus launches into command, calling for sailors to row and hoist ropes and whatever it is that makes this boat move when praying to his father is out of the question.
The tributes huddle close – one crying boy buries his face into the shoulder of another.
A shaking girl clings to the edge of the boat, staring out without seeing.
Zosime glares at me, as she apparently so loves to do, but otherwise I am largely ignored.
And with nothing else to do, I sit against the edge of the boat, trying to stay out of the way and not further provoke anyone around me.
I always thought of the ocean as peaceful, but it is a deafening roar engulfing us, the crashing waves and churning currents below a little too apt – or they should be – for all the chaos I have enacted.
But I think a deathless, unnerving quiet might suit me better.
Every time I think about any of this – the deaths on my conscience, the sight of my brother’s corpse, that I am fleeing my home, that my father tried to have me killed, that my sister told him what I’d done even knowing what that would risk, that Theseus may or may not have been trying to plunge that blade through me and now I’m surrounded by enemies – a cold calm cracks over me, pushing the thoughts down, a stark and barren void in their place.
I am so very tired.
It takes a while for me to realize I’m bleeding, as the fear and haste racing in my veins subside and pain takes over. When I look at my shoulder, I’m glad I’m sitting so that I do not faint.
Flesh has been gouged out. The width of an arrow shaft but the bladed tip carved deep enough to see shredded muscle and sinew and, for a moment, I let my eyes flutter shut. Could I just let myself bleed?
But my fingers are already fumbling for the hem of my chiton. I rip a long strip of the purple fabric – unable to smother the howl as I do, as tensing pulls at the torn flesh.
‘That will soak right through,’ a voice barks. I look up at Zosime, still glowering, like upon my list of offences – Cretan, a princess, daughter of Minos, existing here on this ship – I have dared to add bleeding out upon it and making an awful mess.
‘Am I not supposed to try?’
‘The hem of your dress has trailed along the boards of this ship, through the dirt of Knossos’s streets and not to mention it’s brushed your filthy skin. Do the Cretans know of infection or is that knowledge only we Athenians have mastered?’
My eyes sting. I will not break – not now. ‘I do not have wine to boil. I do not have vinegar to cleanse. I don’t have thread to stitch. What I have is a strip of cloth.’
Zosime considers, gaze flicking across my face like she might find a challenge there. Her jaw locks for just a moment before she curses under her breath. ‘Our best option will hurt far more than the original injury. Are you prepared for that?’
I nod.
Then, before I can realize what she is doing, she grasps a metal pole and slashes it towards my head. No – my shoulder. The iron had held a blazing torch, its tip white-hot.
The smell of my own roasting flesh suffocates me. My head slams hard into the boards of the ship, a deafening crack, and the pain finally sews the darkness shut around me.
Agony rips the world back open again. I am in a bed, water swaying beneath me – and there is movement of someone else nearby.
My eyes shoot open.
I am in a very small wooden room – the figure beside me bent over a table strewn with maps.
‘Theseus,’ I say, and he jolts so sharply he nearly hits his head on the low beams above.
‘Ariadne.’ My name is a relieved sigh on his lips. ‘This never should have happened. Trust that it never will again.’
I pull myself up, shuffling back in the bed just to put a little more distance between us.
I’m not bleeding out on the planks of his ship, and if he wished to dispose of me he could have quite easily thrown me overboard by now.
Still, knowing he does not wish me dead does not mean I don’t wish we were having this conversation on a more equal footing.
‘Being shot is a small price to pay for our escape,’ I say.
‘It is not for you to pay any price,’ he says firmly. ‘It is my duty to ensure we return home safely. If anyone bleeds for this, it ought to be me.’
I meet his eyes, knowing it’s foolish and unable to resist the challenge anyway. ‘That’s not how you felt at the docks.’
He doesn’t so much as flinch, but his eyes cool – the gallantry fading away. ‘No,’ he admits. ‘It was not.’
‘You’d have done it, then?’
‘Yes,’ he says. His gaze doesn’t waver – the same sort of challenge as in the labyrinth. To craft the plan and to deny it. But I can see his reasoning – and I’m more relieved by his admission than anything else. At least he’s not lying to me.
‘And now?’
He blinks – that bravado faltering for a moment.
‘Ariadne, I meant what I said. I owe you my life a dozen times over. I was desperate – willing to pay whatever labours or punishments the gods demanded for such a betrayal. With several other lives in the balance, it felt worth the risk but … your father would have had you killed. I thought I knew what you risked to help us but I had no true idea. Brave isn’t a strong enough word for what you did.
So yes, you are safe here. I won’t allow any harm to befall you for as long as I am by your side. ’
My breath comes a little easier – but it is still not enough. ‘And how long am I to remain here? Or by your side? Does our agreement still stand or does freeing me from the brutality of my father pay your debts?’
He crouches by the bedside, brings himself to my level and reaches for my hand.
He runs a finger along the cut I made to open that door. My own brush his scarred knuckles.
A quiet voice, one that feels like a betrayal, whispers: Perhaps we were both in impossible situations.
‘I am not going to marry you because of a debt, Ariadne. I’m going to marry you because you are the sort of future queen Athens deserves.
You chose us.’ His other hand reaches for my cheek, a long slow caress.
‘You were raised in the shadow of the tyrant king, soft-hearted and unable to bear such slaughter. You fell for the prince of Athens before you even knew who he was and freed us from certain doom. That’s the story they will tell. ’
I press my lips together, swallowing my discontent. He’s right. Theseus is allowed to be the hero – anyone hearing of my involvement will see a manipulative, abhorrent girl who bent away from her father’s whims. Better an obedient daughter, even to such a tyrant, than a scheming bitch.
Better to be feckless than conniving.
‘Alright,’ I relent. ‘That’s the story.’
‘It’s a story they need to hear,’ he says.
‘Make no mistake, in my understanding you are the hero. I could not have escaped without you.’ He caresses from my cheek to my chin, tilting my face towards him.
His dark eyes burn – eyes that I could look into every day for the rest of my life.
His gaze darts across me in a similar manner, and he makes a pleased noise low in the back of his throat, delighted with whatever he has found in me.
‘You are as remarkable as Harmonia or Atalanta – precisely the sort of woman the heroes of old would have had by their side.’
He leans down and captures my lips with his, firm yet aching, like he has resisted for millennia.
My hand stills on his chiton, uncertain.
To push him away, or to pull him closer?
But something sparks in my chest, the same flickering resolve that urged me to do all that I did, and I wonder that, despite it all, I am safe.
Then, more urgently – that I could be safer still.
I let my fingers curl into the fabric, drawing him on to the bed with me.
And then it is not any reasonable part of me at all but the itch beneath – the one that dances and braves rooftops and decides that this, too, is something I want. Something worth the consequences. I breathe him in and all other voices quiet – only this touch, this exhilaration.
He draws back and smiles as we part. ‘You taste as sweet as this tale. And what better ending to this epic than to make you my queen?’