CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #3
She takes the small reed almost hesitantly, and her gaze flits to the playing musicians with the closest thing to want that I’ve seen on her face in a long time. She pushes the reed into her pocket and faces ahead once more, like what she sees is not the party but her own sprawling future.
‘No dowry,’ she says.
‘For Theseus,’ I correct. ‘Not for other suitors. There are other kings, Phaedra. If you want an escape and a crown, there are other ways of getting it.’
In the corner of my eye, I see Theseus make his way over to Dionysus. He speaks to him, that tilted-smirk dashed across his face, and every word seems pointed.
I wonder what animal Dionysus will tease him with this time.
‘It’s not my decision,’ Phaedra says, watching Father seethe to his advisors. ‘You know that. It doesn’t really matter what I want; I’m not the one you need to convince in any of this.’
‘No. But you’re the one I care about. So I’d really love you not to hate me for it.’
‘I don’t hate you,’ she says – as though surprised at the suggestion.
‘I’m glad you got out. I’m glad it worked and you escaped and you were safe.
It’s just … so tremendously lucky. No odds were in your favour.
I’m so angry at you for risking it – for threatening us all like that and …
And I think, selfishly, I’m scared you took up all the luck the world had to offer in surviving it. ’
She slips the aulos back out and turns it over, again and again.
‘What do you want?’ I ask. ‘What is it you’d hoped marrying Theseus would bring you?’
The aulos stills. ‘I don’t know. I can’t even conceive of it …
Happiness, peace? I want to be somewhere I can think.
I want to live like every second isn’t spent inching along a precipice.
’ She groans, and looks around the room.
‘I should go – an unwed maiden shouldn’t be seen at a thing like this, even if it did spring up around her. ’
‘Alright,’ I say quickly. ‘But can we talk more about this tomorrow?’
‘I … Maybe,’ she says – and slips away, flitting between revellers and out the door. In her hands, she palms her aulos, and I wonder if she might be using the cover of the party to play it.
There is sudden movement, startled shrieks, a crowd stepping back and …
Theseus, staggering, raising his hand to his cheek – and Dionysus, his fist curled, his knuckles red.
I’m not sure what I’m seeing at first, the sight so incongruous with the usual manifestations of his ire – donkey’s ears and braying laughs.
Blood. And golden ichor … the fist and the way Theseus is stumbling back …
The music halts and there’s no time for either of them to move before guards are hauling them apart.
I can almost feel it, a wrenching crack in the air as the sacred rules of hospitality binding us break.
Without it, those whispers that haunted my childhood rush in, mingling with the shocked attendees.
And my father is on his feet, masking his own delight with fury.
‘You see what comes of these revels?’ he snarls. ‘We have all seen for ourselves the degeneracy that haunts our streets in the wake of this man’s worship.’ He jabs a finger at Dionysus. ‘He may be a god, but he is a forsaken one in Crete.’
Dionysus looks not at him but at me, regret drawn across his every feature. He flexes his hand like he can’t believe what just happened.
‘You are no longer a guest in this house,’ my father says – and there it is, the lack of xenia. The lack of protection. ‘I want you gone at first light.’ Now his gaze cuts to me too. ‘As far as I am concerned, my daughter died on that island.’
I didn’t think he still had the power to hurt me – physically, yes, but not like this. It feels like as much of a blow as Theseus just took.
I rush from the room – following Theseus who vanishes around the corner, likely off to milk some sympathy from Zosime and have her rebuild his tender ego.
‘Ariadne!’
Dionysus’s voice isn’t loud, but it carries down the hall, an echoing plea.
When I turn, he’s rushing up to me, looking just as baffled by everything that has occurred as I am, and he doesn’t get to do that – to claim he himself is surprised when he’s just ruined everything we had been working towards.
‘What?’ I demand.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have –’
‘No, you shouldn’t have!’ I cry, louder than before even though he’s in front of me now. ‘How are we supposed to stop this if we’re being asked to leave the palace?’
‘I’ll fix this,’ he promises, reaching for my hand, but I pull it from his grasp. ‘I’ll … We can send Hermes or I’ll disguise myself or –’
‘We were so close!’ I protest. ‘What could possibly have been so upsetting that you opted for violence?’
Dionysus swallows and his eyes flick down the hall, to where Theseus has disappeared. The rage consumes them once more. ‘He said the only reason you were with me right now was because he left you. That he could take you back the moment he pleased.’
‘Well, I’m so sorry for the blow to your ego,’ I snarl, throwing my hands up, but he catches them, holding them tight.
His eyes meet mine and he seems to be weighing something up before eventually declaring: ‘He told me what he’d do to you.
Explicitly. He threw in a few choice terms and commended your performance last time and then he …
he said he’d thought the only thing you were good for was bolstering tales but evidently you had some secondary talents too.
That maybe he’d share such talents with the court of Athens once you fled with him. ’
My heart pounds – my own fury spiking, and … I can feel Dionysus’s split knuckles, the blood still marking them …
‘You could have cursed him again,’ I say, but it’s half-hearted, and he clearly knows it too.
There’s no hesitation to his gaze when he says: ‘I could have. It seemed too good for him – and frankly I was too angry to conceive of the options.’
I squeeze his hands without even thinking. He takes a ragged breath, like he had not allowed himself to until my forgiveness was a potential outcome.
‘At a certain point I didn’t even care what he was saying,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to rip your name from his tongue.’
I’ve pulled him closer, my fingers threading through his and drawing him near – and I don’t even realize I’ve done it until he says that, and my gaze flits to his own tongue, his lips so very close.
He doesn’t release me, doesn’t pull back.
He’s just breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling like he would take in every breath of me.
His words replay in my mind – and from the way he is looking at me, like I am the only bright thing in this darkness, I suspect he too is realizing what this means with each desperate gasp.
‘Ariadne, I –’
‘Would you have done that for anyone else?’ I interrupt.
His gaze flits across my face, like he’s searching for the answer. He meets my eyes, like if there were a solution, it would be in them. ‘I’d be furious, I’m sure,’ he admits. ‘But only you could make me quite so livid.’
It occurs to me, suddenly and surely, that loving Dionysus would not hurt me.
He would not hurt me. I don’t know where I stand on anything else, what I’m ready for or how I can possibly cope with everything and its fallout, but I know that he would stand by my side through it all.
That’s it, isn’t it? Everything else once loud and screaming, now fading into the background. Because he would be there. He’s here, now. Those green eyes, piercing mine, his hands tight in my grip. He’s here.
‘Please tell me it’s still working,’ I say, half choked with it all. ‘Because I’d really like to kiss you right now.’
‘It’s always worked, Ariadne,’ he answers, in the breath before we collide.
His lips are soft and insistent, his hands encircling my waist so that my hips are flush against his.
The wall hits my back as we stumble with our ferocity.
Heat flares everywhere, quick and demanding and my fingers push into that mess of curls, tugging him more fervently towards me, as though each breath, each stumbling break is a moment better spent against one another.
His breath fills my lungs and it’s like I never quite knew how to breathe.
The gentle hum of the party spikes loud – the doors opening, falling heavily shut. Footsteps coming our way.
We jolt apart as though caught in some transgression – then look sharply back at each other.
‘We’ve already set this aflame,’ he says, panting.
I nod, not sure what exactly he has planned, only that the wicked gleam in his eyes is at once alarming and … thrilling. Yes. Whatever it is, yes. ‘Burn it down,’ I agree.
Cauterize the wound.
His form shimmers, changing. He grows a couple of inches, his shoulders broaden and that thoroughly insufferable smirk settles on the face of Theseus. Theseus. But the chaos in his eyes is Dionysus through and through.
He closes the distance between us once more, and no matter the face it feels like him, and the thrill races through my every inch.
He kisses me and around us there are gasps, shrieks, as the palace of Knossos bears witness to what it has repeatedly denied: me and Theseus, locked in one another’s embrace.