CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IRUSH PAST EVERYONE AND down into the innards of the ship, hurling myself so quickly I trip on the final stair, catch myself on a hanging sheet and clip my shoulder on the doorframe.
‘We’re nearly at Crete,’ I say, as I burst through.
Dionysus is sitting upon one of the crates, a cup of wine untouched on the table, his head resting on his hand. But he moves now, nodding and forcing a smile. ‘Alright, I’ll take Sterope to Silen and gather my belongings.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, just preparing myself for several days of being madly in love with you.’
I shut the door firmly behind me.
‘I’ve allowed you not to talk about this,’ I say. ‘But you don’t get to lash out at me because of it.’
He regards me with tired eyes – and I doubt it was our early morning. ‘I’m jealous. I don’t even know how to look at you right now and I know – I know that’s not fair and it’s entirely my problem but I’m so fucking envious of the power you just displayed that I …’
He reaches for the cup before him and my hand shoots out, stilling his.
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Talk to me.’
‘The wine would make that easier.’
‘I don’t care for easier. I know it’s difficult. Do it anyway.’
‘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.
‘Just make sure she’s not a goddess in disguise first, then,’ he says, the corner of his lips twitching. ‘I’m relieved if you do have power over labyrinths that it has taken root in a metaphorical sense. Imagine if it simply meant you always knew which way to turn.’
I stumble over my dress.
‘What?’ he asks, then, slowly, he gapes, delighted. ‘No, tell me you don’t!’
Running through Knossos, though I’d never walked its streets alone.
Leading Theseus to that cave as though certain it would be there.
Trekking through that dense mass of trees to the small ring of huts, like I knew exactly where they were and what awaited me.
A lifetime in a sprawling palace, never once losing my way.
‘Prepare to dock!’ voices call from above.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘So, we request hospitality under my father’s roof.
We tell him what Theseus did to me. We can perhaps offer to discuss alternative arrangements with other kingdoms, any that Phaedra likes, with your divinity as leverage.
With any luck, by the time Theseus arrives, Father will already have the navy armed and ready to send his boat away. ’
The ship heaves as a rope is pulled.
Alright, we’re doing this, then.
Dionysus holds his arm out and I slide mine into it – though we have to detangle ourselves to manage the ladder, which is so difficult in the length of this chiton that Dionysus clasps my forearms from above and hauls me up.
‘Thanks,’ I say, brushing my dress down.
‘Here,’ he says, straightening some flyaway strands of my hair.
And it’s that – that even with my home looming before me, I still can’t look away from him – that makes my heart squeeze.
Did it do that with Theseus? This feels different, less infatuation than quiet pining.
Is there hope? That I won’t ruin love out of spite for the last who promised it to me?
A plank slams into the deck. I look up, ready to face my city.
Instead, at its other end is the broad-shouldered prince of my nightmares.
‘Ariadne!’ Theseus calls. His voice is warm – excited even.
He brings a hand to his chest, right over his shrivelled heart, and his gaze slides from me to Dionysus, whose arm wraps tight around my waist. A slow smile slides on to his face.
‘You’re alive … Zeus above, I thought I’d never see you again! ’