CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #3
‘You grow up! Obey the rules – Theseus will find a way to hurt you anyway. And if you ever slip up they’ll say you deserved it. He’ll do as he likes and he doesn’t care who gets in the way – you think marriage vows will make you the exception?’
Phaedra purses her lips, straightening up. ‘I’m going to be Queen of Athens. I’m going to be far away from here. How he treats me is incidental.’
My mother takes a slight step towards her. ‘Phaedra, dear, perhaps you should consider this.’
Phaedra whirls on her. ‘Consider what? Have you told her about Daedalus and Icarus?’ She looks back at me. ‘Father was so furious about you freeing the prisoners from the supposedly inescapable labyrinth, he locked them both inside.’
‘What?’ Father doesn’t even know Daedalus let us go! But he punished him anyway. And his son.
Phaedra’s lips press thin. ‘Shall I stay here until Father suspects me and locks me up too?’
‘I doubt he’ll do that,’ I say curtly. ‘You proved your loyalty, didn’t you?’
Her jaw twitches. ‘Don’t rebel and then be surprised when the consequences apply to you too, Ariadne. You’re not that special. I’m marrying Theseus. I’m going to Athens. And I can’t wait to never see this place again.’
She storms from the room before anyone can dare deny her the last word.
‘Ariadne.’ My mother sweeps me into another hug before I realize what she’s doing.
My gaze still lingers on the door Phaedra stepped through.
‘When did you find out I wasn’t dead?’ I ask.
My mother doesn’t answer, just squeezes me tight.
‘Mother,’ I push. ‘Please.’
‘Hours ago,’ she admits. ‘When your boat docked. Supposedly your father heard rumours of marriage to a god the day before last, but he didn’t share it with us.’
So Phaedra thought I was dead. She thought she’d reported my betrayal, led an army to the docks, one of those soldiers had shot me and I’d died from the wound … and that was her response to finding out none of it is true?
‘She’s been beside herself, Ariadne,’ Mother says, clearly knowing exactly why I asked. ‘She’s lashing out because she feels guilty. Because grief is complicated and –’
‘And because she’s stubborn, selfish and can’t bear to admit she was wrong?’
I don’t add and because she’s a bitch because I doubt my mother will agree.
Phaedra is accomplished, brilliant and determined, and she’s also a nasty, entitled little rat.
I see the system and seek to defy it; she sees it as a game to be won.
Instead of deeming those expectations and restrictions unfair, she plays along until they get her what she wants.
In fact, I think knowing exactly why she is like this is the only sympathy I can find for her. It’s the only thing that keeps me loving her because, gods, she’s awful, but I understand why.
Mother gives me one final squeeze. Then draws back so she can look at me, her hands coming to my cheeks – her thumbs brushing beneath the red Mycenaean suns on my cheeks.
‘These are well done,’ she says.
The sun of Knossos. The sun of Helios, turned into our city’s symbol.
‘Thank you,’ I say, my voice quiet – unable to stand the weight of it. She cannot speak at dinner, yet it is her power that first gave my father any basis to rule.
Whatever magic thrums quietly through my veins must live in hers too – somehow.
‘Why did you marry him?’ I ask. ‘Why do you listen to him?’
She startles, her gaze flicking around just as mine did – but when she’s sure no one else is here, she still doesn’t answer. Eventually, she says, ‘He wasn’t always like this.’
I hear what she doesn’t say: And now there is no way out.
I nod, eyes closing against the reality I don’t want to face – that womanhood is its own sort of labyrinth, and my mother and my sister are both just trying to find a way forward within it.
‘You always idolized her so much,’ my mother says quietly.
‘But I need you to know that even my sister abides by their rules. When heroes come calling she brews their potions and cleanses away their sins and in return they leave her alone. She’s found a different way, but even she knows when to concede to their demands rather than rail against them. ’
That crack deepens right down to my foundations. It is truly inescapable, then. Even if you break down walls, more will spiral out beyond.
I think of all those heroes, clamouring for power of their own, so desperately they might bleed Dionysus dry for it.
And for the first time, I wonder what it might be like to hold my own.
‘Circe and Medea,’ I ask. ‘Are they the only women in our line with witchcraft in their veins?’
My mother looks at me, long and steady, and we are both asking one another the same thing: Do you?
At last, she says: ‘There’s a reason I told you those stories, Ariadne. I thought one day you might have need of them.’
Peculiar creature.
She’s been here before.
There’s something not quite right with that girl.
They knew. All this time – some sixth sense, some inkling that power crackled within me.
Labyrinths, my mind echoes.
Often, not all directions are blocked. Only those you might consider taking.
I don’t just want to stop Theseus. I want to stop them all.
And I don’t just want to save Phaedra. I want to save everyone.