CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
WE STAGGER AS THE TENT forms around us, like we have truly dropped dozens of feet to stand within its low-slung walls. It all swims back into view as the labyrinth fades, the bright colours and the chatter from outside filtering through, but nothing matters as much as Dionysus’s hand in mine.
And a harshness within.
We draw back, a shining purple jewel clutched between us – the lights he conjured, solidified. I slide it into a pouch at my belt.
Dionysus stumbles a little, dizzy, and plants his hands on my shoulders to steady himself. ‘Potentially too much showmanship?’
‘No such thing.’ I cover one of those hands with my own. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Tired. But … clear? For the first time in days.’ He looks around the tent, like he is seeing it all for the first time – then back to me. ‘You incandescent woman.’
‘Me?’ I half laugh. ‘You just broke free of your own labyrinth.’
‘I wielded the tools you gave me,’ he says. ‘Do you think you can do that again? Take us there? If it … if it happens once more?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. I remain light-headed, but I’m not drained, not exhausted …
It worked, their belief.
Dionysus deflates a little, and I rush to add: ‘But I’ll be by your side, with or without powers. And those things that aided us? Well, it’s as I said – there was nothing we faced there that talking couldn’t equally achieve.’
He groans. ‘Fine, I’ll get the pine-cone staff of sharing out. Silen will be delighted.’
I smile. ‘They’re not the only one.’
His grip on my shoulders tightens and he leans forward, so that his forehead rests against mine. ‘It’s a lot,’ he admits. ‘Unravelling my grief like that and then having to reckon with the fact that losing you still terrifies me.’
His arms slide about my neck, drawing me closer, and my gaze drops to his lips.
‘You’re not going to lose me – I thought I made that quite clear.’
His eyes glint. ‘You can’t promise that.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ I meet his challenging gaze with a curt look of my own. ‘You’ll just have to make the most of me while you have me, then.’
In all our many, varied snatchings for reasons we ought not to do this, we never once considered that he is a god and I a mortal. Not really – not in any way that stopped us – and now it is a towering fact, solid and unwavering. Yet one Dionysus crashes through as his lips touch mine.
He kisses me with the avid need of a god who knows a mortal life flares quick and brief, like I am a flame he is trying to hold.
He gasps into my mouth, breathes me in like he will never stop thinking about me for the eternity ahead of him, and like the barest touch of mine could sustain him for all those aeons.
I sigh into his lips, and step closer, so that his chest presses against mine, our hips digging against one another, and his leg slides between mine, like every inch of us ought to be entwined.
I can feel my pulse throbbing beneath my skin and there is an aching, carnivorous thing inside me that is not satisfied by the press of his lips or the warmth of his skin as I slide the shoulders of his chiton down or the delicious friction of his thigh caught between mine.
More. I want so much more. My desire is hot and heady and I feel almost drunk on it – on him – his wine-dark kiss broken with a groan, and then his lips trail the column of my throat.
‘Is this too quick?’ I ask as my nails curl into the soft skin at his back in some desperate need for something to cling to.
‘Not normally something I’m accused of,’ he says – and I feel the smile of his lips against my skin. Then he pulls away, serious. ‘But if you want to slow down – or stop – we can.’
No. I – Yes? Maybe?
I do not want to stop. But with a moment to breathe, that ever-present fear trickles into my mind, cooling the flaring heat. That I am wrong, not to be trusted, that nothing I do is right and I’ll only end up hurting myself but –
But it is smothered by the fervour of my happiness. A feeling that coils deeper and deeper into me. And it is this yearning and this pleasure and this intense, blazing joy that sparks when I see Dionysus, or touch Dionysus or, gods, even when I think of Dionysus.
And it’s a joy that says: Yes.
That says I am not wrong this time.
But Dionysus frowns before I can voice any of this. ‘Fuck,’ he mutters, stepping out of my embrace.
‘What?’ I ask quickly – did I do something to him in that labyrinth? Hurt him somehow?
But he smiles, albeit ruefully. ‘Your belief in me. I can feel it but it’s not … sticking.’
I cross my arms like it might shield the flush dancing across my chest. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I normally get a little boost to my abilities when I’m with you –’
‘What? Since when?’
He waves me away like that is not a very important thing to know!
‘But now it’s like my power is draining straight out.
I can’t hold on to it.’ He presses his fingers into his temples.
‘Which would be fine if I had time to rest and recover but I don’t want to risk that when it’s clear Perseus is making moves now. ’
I press past my need to question him some more on my supposed involvement. ‘So you need a revelry?’
‘I’m honestly not sure that would be enough. A revelry where I had power to impress the attendees, sure, but without anything it’s the same challenge it ever was: needing belief for power and power for belief.’
I think of what Medea said – about how we are stronger together. And of my mother and sister, standing by my side with eyes blazing, enabling me to distract Theseus even for just a moment.
‘The only way to stop this constant need to replenish your abilities is to get power even Perseus couldn’t refute,’ I say, and I begin to pace, just as I did the steps of the labyrinth – walking the idea to its conclusion.
‘You need power because the Olympians don’t fully recognize you as one of theirs.
So we get them to. We make you irrefutable. ’
He scowls – and I remember his disappointment at our wedding, when only Hermes came. Am I just setting him up for more of the same?
But before I can backtrack, he nods. ‘I think they’d come. We’ve achieved too much these last few weeks to ignore. Roll in Perseus and Medea and we’ve assembled enough famous names to mark ourselves of note. And there’s nowhere they visit more than Delos anyway. It’s all in our favour.’
‘So we invite them to a revelry?’
‘No,’ he says, and a smile is growing. ‘That might get a handful of them but not all. I’m working on something new – and I think that might intrigue them. But that doesn’t change the fact I’ll have no power to dazzle them all with.’
Strangely, it’s my father who comes to mind: bodies on the walls and a beast beneath the floorboards and all those displays of power. An illusion he was clinging to.
I smile – the end of the labyrinth. The way out.
‘No one said what they were believing in had to be true.’
The thiasus are quickly drawn into the action – most helping Dionysus lure the Olympians here with a spectacle and a smaller group helping me ensure they are awed by his power when they do come.
Our plans don’t sound entirely dissimilar.
‘The gods? Here?’ Medea says, curiosity warring with fear.
‘I promise you’ll be safe,’ Hermes says – though mostly because he himself has a dozen highly inappropriate questions for her that I can practically see him biting back. ‘And in thanks for your help I’ll happily escort you to wherever you’d like to go.’
At this her eyes light. ‘Colchis.’
‘You’d go back?’ I ask.
Her answering glare is a challenge. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
Because by all accounts you murdered your brother on the way out.
But I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing that’s polite to enquire about and, at any rate, I need her potions, so I hold my tongue.
And with her magic, some practicality from Myrto and some worrying excitability from Calybe and Opora – I am beginning to believe this might truly be possible.
That evening, I choose the purple chiton I wore for our wedding, threaded with silver and drawn tight with metallic bands.
I won’t deny it was selected with the thought of Dionysus’s lips still brushing my own, or the way his rings press cold against my skin when he grasps me, or the way he smiled against my throat or the thought of him back in Crete, hovering above me, his thumb drawing across my lips as he asked me if this was what I wanted. Yes. I want all of him.
I smear kohl around my eyes then, after a moment’s hesitation, add the red suns of Crete to my cheeks, then to my forehead and chin too. I do not have to leave all of my home behind.
I rub scented balms behind my ears and along my wrists – pine and myrrh, and so unapologetically him that anticipation curls tight and hot in my stomach.
‘You are radiant,’ he says from the entryway, the soft gold light of the soon-to-set sun framing him. ‘We never should have married for some ruse or mutual agreement. I should have been on my knees, begging. I should have fought, and laboured and bled just for the chance to look at you.’
It’s unfair – that I have spent a whole hour dressing and decorating myself, and he looks so striking with no preparation. If anything, the messily swept-aside strands of his hair and the slightly dishevelled drape of his chiton are more enticing, like they beg me to ruin them further.
‘You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,’ I tell him, perhaps a little too earnestly because his cheeks colour.
‘Those compliments again,’ he says, voice tight. ‘I told you I won’t know what to do with them.’
I do not look away. ‘And I told you that you know exactly what to do with them.’
His smile is a languid stretch, like he is warming up to something greater. ‘And I will. But first I’m afraid we will have to manage my family. If they come, of course.’
‘They’ll come,’ I assure him – because it is the answer he needs.