CHAPTER THIRTY
MY FATHER ORDERED US GONE by daybreak – but he is the only member of my family who does not wake for it. So, moments after the sun crests, I am creeping through the door of my mother’s chambers and I expect another weeping hug but instead she is a storm, raging through her quarters.
‘You are not banished,’ she declares. ‘Absolutely not. I’ll make him see reason – his daughter married to a god is more than any man could ever hope for. He’s just blinded by humiliation. I’ll fix this.’
I check the room – instincts I just can’t shake. A servant could be lurking in any corner, a guard in any doorway, my father’s ears everywhere. ‘We have a plan,’ I start – but I stop when she shakes her head, her eyes fluttering shut.
‘Of course you do,’ she says softly. And then she sighs, crossing to me, and I realize, for the first time, that we are the same height now.
Her eyes level with mine. ‘Yesterday, when you took your father’s rage to save me from it …
I don’t think I ever quite realized how much you’ve done that in your life.
For Phaedra too. And Glaucus. I don’t know when I slipped, when I put so much weight on to you, but I’m so immeasurably sorry. ’
I cover her hand with my own. ‘You don’t have anything to apologize for.’
‘Yes, I do. I tried to shield you from it all, to give you the childhood you deserved. But I don’t know that I ever did.
’ She pushes my hair back from my face – hair that is so similar to hers, the thick coils, the unruly strands.
‘I’m so proud of you and the woman you’ve become.
But I’m sorry you had to become her so early. ’
My eyes sting – and I don’t know why, not really.
It feels so fundamental a part of who I am that it is almost painful to know it is something my mother regrets, but it is also each look after your sister and every you need to be an example and each unspoken edict too.
And it never felt like too much but suddenly it feels so heavy a burden.
One I’ve been slowly suffocating beneath.
Her apology lifts it, just a little. Enough to breathe.
‘Thank you,’ I say – and I wonder what it would truly be like to sit here and let my mother handle it. But that’s not who I am – and not who she made me to be either. Though maybe it doesn’t have to solely be my burden any more. ‘Will you help?’
‘Of course,’ she says without hesitation. ‘What do you need me to do?’
I am ready, waiting for Theseus in the courtyard he must pass through to reach the heart of the palace. I jump when I see him, hit with a sudden spike of fear and Zosime’s echoing words: He means to kidnap you if he must. To force you to open the labyrinth.
No specific plans that he’d shared – but that hasn’t stopped us creating a scheme of our own, drafting it and depositing it in his room for my father’s men to find. Or at least, it will be there if I can distract Theseus long enough for Hermes to plant it.
‘Ariadne!’
A great start.
‘What’s going on?’ He hurries over, his tone measured, like I am an equal, a confidante, a woman he definitely isn’t planning on kidnapping. One he definitely wouldn’t kill if it served his greater purpose. ‘There’s talk among the servants that you and I were seen together last night.’
‘I heard the same,’ I say, climbing to my feet and wringing my hands. ‘But they’re just rumours –’
‘You need to tell them that we’d never do that.’
I blink, wide innocent eyes. ‘But I thought you wanted to run off with me.’
‘I did – I do, but we have to do it carefully. You need to tell them it’s false, that –’
‘You think they’ll believe a lying little slut anyway?’ I ask, the same cold slice he’d levelled me with on the docks.
He is taken aback, but I can practically see him redouble his efforts. ‘Ariadne, you know I didn’t mean that. I just had to get you to stop. We couldn’t talk then – couldn’t agree to this. Perhaps you could ask Dionysus to declare the rumours false –’
‘And then we can make them true?’
‘We can get them to lower their guard long enough to free Daedalus,’ he snaps. ‘Use your head. We need to be practical, to strategize. Emotional volatility isn’t going to help anyone, so if you can’t calm down, can you at least trust me? You know I only want what’s best –’
‘Like you did when you left me for dead?’
‘This again?’ he huffs. ‘I explained that! You know I didn’t want to.’
‘But you planned it. Right from the start.’
He swallows. ‘Perhaps. But only for the good of my people.’
‘And did the good of your people force you to sleep with me first?’
‘I slept with you, Ariadne –’ he sneers it, a vein throbbing in his forehead – ‘because you offered. You have no one to blame but yourself.’
‘You manipulated me,’ I snap. ‘You told me you loved me, that you cared for me, that I’d be safe –’
‘I do love you! And I appreciated your help –’
‘My help? What was your plan to get out of the labyrinth?’
He puffs his chest out. ‘I conquered the beast with my own two hands.’
‘Because I drugged him! You think I don’t know he was still asleep when you killed him?’
‘Be quiet,’ he hisses, stepping forward. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I volunteered as a tribute. I walked into the labyrinth and I slayed the beast. You gave me string and opened the door. Tell me, which of those is heroic? Which of those will be made legendary? You helped.’
Door hinges whisper a groan – far, too far. I need them closer.
‘And you’re happy for me to help, right?
Happy for me to plan and sing your praises and do your deeds for you just as long as you can claim the credit.
Just as long as my name doesn’t eclipse yours.
You lie until it gets you what you want and then you tell other men how stupid I was to believe you.
Athens deserves a better king than you. It deserves someone with integrity – someone who doesn’t push their own father to suicide for the throne. You are nothing.’
His face reddens, his fists curled, but his anger twists into a sneer so that he might volley it all right back.
‘And you’re a lost, needy little whore who opened her legs for the first man who told her she was worth anything.
You’re pathetic. You threw yourself at me and you’re just furious I didn’t want you.
’ He leans closer, his words hissing through his teeth.
‘Go ahead and tell me I’m nothing. I’m the stuff of legends.
I’m the King of Athens. And beyond all of that – I’ll always be the man who fucked you and walked away. ’
I hear the clack of a foot on a tile, a startled gasp. Finally.
Theseus doesn’t hear – too busy fisting a hand through my hair and pushing me up against the wall. He brings his face so close I can feel the spit as he snarls, ‘And my only regret is not slitting your throat before I left so I didn’t have to hear you whine about it.’
‘Unhand her,’ my father’s voice booms. He and my mother stand at the other side of the courtyard, her clutched to his side, doing a very good job of acting startled and like she hadn’t led my father here for exactly this.
Deucalion and my father’s usual retinue of guards surround him and, even though Theseus is scurrying back, he motions them towards us.
‘It is time to finish our negotiations, King Theseus.’ His gaze flits to me, narrowing.
‘And it appears my banishment has been ignored, so perhaps another punishment is in order. Take her too.’
I worry we are being taken to the throne room – and what if Dionysus hasn’t rescued Icarus and Daedalus yet? What if my father catches them leaving the labyrinth?
But we’re dragged to a smaller room alongside – where Phaedra awaits.
‘Oh,’ she says, eyeing us all – and the hands holding me tight. ‘Sorry, I’ll come back –’
‘No,’ my father declares. ‘You ought to witness this. To know what you have escaped with this man.’ He looks to me. ‘And what will happen to you should you choose a similar path to your sister.’
Phaedra sinks into herself, pressing back against the wall like she might disappear into it all the same. The guards release Theseus and me, but they take up positions by the door, ready to seize us again if ordered.
Father seems to take up half the space, turning to us like he is leading armies into a charge. His lip curls as he regards Theseus.
‘We have been negotiating on the basis that your only disrespect was abducting my daughter. But now you admit that you also defiled her and left her for dead,’ my father says.
Phaedra flinches.
‘I …’ Theseus begins, and I can see every lie hurtling to the tip of his tongue. I watch as they fade away. ‘Not as such, but yes.’
‘I demand recompense,’ Father says. ‘You have slighted both my honour and this kingdom. You will make amends. Grain. Coin. And, of course, the tribute.’
Theseus stills. ‘Tribute?’
‘I’ll be generous.’ My father flashes his teeth. ‘The world recognizes your bravery, Theseus. But they will recognize my outrage too – you took a maiden from Crete. We’ll have one from Athens. And let’s make it yearly this time.’
‘But …’ Theseus is sputtering. ‘You no longer have a monster to feed them to.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I can find some other spectacle.’
I edge back, instinctively trying to cover Phaedra – to protect her from this horror.
Why, why do I only seem to make things worse?
Theseus bristles, his hand hovering near the hilt of his sword, but in a split second he changes tack and smiles.
‘Counter – you made clear what this daughter of yours is worth, and clearly it is not as much as that. You’ll have your grain and coin, and I’ll throw in far more than you gave to the god who took her.
In return, I’ll add the Athenian fleets to our marriage negotiations.
Not just an agreement to lay down arms, but to pick them up together. ’
My father remains tense, but he tilts his head to the side, considering. ‘Your navy wasn’t all that much eighteen years ago.’