CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THE GATE LEADS INTO SOME sort of tunnel – obsidian and endless. Suddenly we are standing, walking, racing through.
The hands clutching me are the only certainty I have that I am not alone.
I am not sure how it is for them – the cacophony of it all. Loud nothingness: like a relentless gale or an echo you can’t quite catch, yet deafening all the same.
I follow every twist, every turn. You might be lost in here forever. Or perhaps it would take some other shape, anything to confuse and disorientate you, to have you looking back to ensure you have not misstepped, or are not in here alone.
But it is easier to listen to those instincts drawing me on when there is nothing to see, nothing to follow, only my own feet and each step forward.
When we burst free – into the world, into life – I miss the darkness.
I think we are in a boat again and Dionysus is speaking, sending word ahead that there is another body to make, and maybe Hermes is briefly there too; I think the river becomes a lake and that there are trees and I think, at some point, there is a chariot racing through the air.
All I know with any sense of certainty is, at one point, there is clay – but not clay at all.
The moment my soul is pushed in, it shifts to flesh and bone, to each layered vein and each woven stretch of skin.
And that searing, agonizing burning that tore through me when I took my last breath rises as I take my first.
For a moment, I fear it’s followed me. That there is no outrunning this and I will smoulder in this body as I did my last, as my soul did in the Phlegethon, that the centre of my labyrinth is only pain, my destiny only to burn.
But those other flames surge within: the fires of the sun, and the other feelings burning, fuelling, those that Medea would not quench to stoke those of my revenge. The passion Dionysus commanded I hold on to and it is this:
Grit and determination, a fierce refusal to ever stop fighting.
My aching heart, yearning to pulse again – to feel and never stop feeling, the hurt and the joy and everything in between.
Pain – an arrow through flesh, the delirium of thirst, the ache of hunger, hands closing around my neck, my back slamming against floor or wall or mast, burning alive and hardening to stone – and pushing past it all, ready to go again.
It is a tapping beat, my drawing limbs, letting the music fill me like I am a part of the sound. Life. A limitless unravelling of it all. Immortality incarnate is to be at one with it all. To be and to never cease.
And it is mine.
I open my eyes to see Dionysus stagger and fall to the floor.
I fling myself from the table towards him but my limbs are clumsy, movement unfamiliar in this new body, despite its precise matching of my old.
Someone has made the decision to dress this form in a ridiculously long chiton before perching that grape tiara over its brow, and now I am stumbling over hems and keeping my head still while Dionysus groans.
His back arches. Then drops hard on to the floor, and he writhes, groaning in pain.
‘Dionysus!’
‘It’s so cold,’ he gasps. ‘I didn’t … didn’t expect that.’
I want to hold him still but I fear that would only hurt him more if he were to suddenly jerk and smash his head into the floor – the shining gold floor, metallic and gleaming and evidently godly. Olympus.
‘Help!’ I shout. But there is no one else in the room with us, only the remnants of clay and another shape, yet to wake.
‘What’s happening?’ I demand. ‘How can I help?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What? Why?’ My panic is breathy, barely audible, but Dionysus is shaking his head. Slowly, he stops shuddering. He’s panting heavily and he lifts himself up only to lower his head again, wincing, before summoning strength.
He throws himself forward, on to his knees, and clambers up.
I rise too, a little hesitantly.
The room feels heavy, the air tight and dense. Dionysus looks at me warily.
‘What did you do?’ I demand.
He swallows hard. ‘I might have lied about my bargain with my father.’
‘Dionysus,’ I growl. ‘What did you do?’
‘Why wait for would-be heroes to bleed me of my immortality when I could give it to the person I actually care for.’
My fists curl, nails pressing firm into my newly spun skin. ‘That whole spiel about wanting this and you gave it all up yourself! Tell me you didn’t!’
‘Fates, Ariadne.’ He throws his hands up. ‘Less anger, please. Those burning eyes are probably going to start hurting when the last of my immortality fades.’
‘Take it back!’ I push at him like I might force the fires in my veins back into his, and he grasps my wrists, holding my arms still.
‘Not how it works,’ he says. ‘And too late, I’m afraid. My blood was mixed in the clay before I even set off for the Underworld. I spent days shedding just enough to make it count. Just enough to let me live – mortal – without it.’
He hadn’t used his powers down there. Nothing. He hadn’t even made the jewel, just drawn it from a pouch.
‘Why?’ And I don’t know if I want to scream or cry but my voice breaks all the same.
Dionysus, like always, forces a smile. But I can see worry flickering in his eyes.
‘I lied. Father agreed I could resurrect you. And Hera found me this clay and even asked Hephaestus to help mould you as they supposedly did Pandora, once. But the immortality? All mine, I’m afraid.
’ His voice drops. ‘I told you, I can’t lose you again. ’
‘You’re going to lose me when you die,’ I hiss, pushing his hands away – though the fact that it is not altogether easy implies this is not over, not yet.
He just said, didn’t he? When the last of his immortality fades?
So it hasn’t yet. ‘You’ve just reversed our positions.
Worsened them, really, given the years of effort to build a following.
I didn’t invent wine, you did. Theatre? All yours.
And that’s power, isn’t it, Dionysus? You can give me your blood but you can’t give me that. ’
‘They believed in you long before immortality took root; now they have even more to idolize. You’ll be better than I ever was.’
‘Not without you!’
I feel the radiance racing through me with every heartbeat. And now I push it out, just as I would the walls of a labyrinth. I let myself glow.
‘Don’t fight me on this, Ariadne. You deserve this – everything we’ve fought for.’
‘I deserve this life. With you, not in your stead.’
I burn brighter – and I see the doubt shimmer on his face before it solidifies.
And then he is glowing too – the remnants of his godhood that he can’t give away, the power he retains even as the immortality fades.
I try to push the power outwards, the heat – and the energy sparks with recognition. The very god it came from. It wants to go back. It is him through and through – reckless energy, volatile and powerful, underscored with the headiness of wine and something downright gleeful.
‘You lied to me because you knew I’d never agree to this!’ I shout, as the energy arcs out of my hands and collides with his chest.
He snatches it up and hurls it back at me. I feel it crest, a surging wave that crashes over me and pulls me under. I surface, sputtering, ready to push it again.
‘You’d have done the same. You did the same when you chose my life over yours.’
He’s not wrong – I’d have done exactly this. Saved him before he could attempt otherwise. I wouldn’t have thought twice. Whatever it took to keep him safe.
But he wouldn’t have let me. And I won’t let him.
I reach forward, grabbing on to him and letting the heat burn into the skin of his wrists. He hisses, and his own skin glows brighter, absorbing the power before it can hurt him.
‘It shouldn’t work this way,’ Dionysus mutters, his voice as strained as his every tendon.
‘It’s working this way because it’s your power. It wants to go back. Can’t you feel it?’
‘What? No, it feels like you. The crisp air of the early morning, the charged air of those storm-grey eyes. It has rhythm, grace, movement. It’s impulsive, brilliant and, trust me, intolerably stubborn in a way that is decidedly you.’
But when it arcs back that’s not what I feel at all. It is eccentricity and wild abandon. It’s him, so clearly him.
Is he lying? Or … is it somehow both? Somehow ours?
But it can’t be. We cannot crack immortality in half and share it.
I reach out, drawing on my powers of the mind. If I can pull us into a labyrinth, I might have the upper hand. I might be able to pour the immortality back into him before he can stop me.
‘Nice try, new girl.’ He grinds the words out from between gritted teeth, fending off my light with his own. The haziness of our glowing skin mixes, the edges of us entwining.
‘I don’t want to live forever without you.’ My voice breaks but I keep pushing that energy back.
‘Likewise.’
The energy collides and shoots right up, shattering the roof overhead. We cower as huge slabs of marble fall around us, the night sky opening above.
Fates, we’re destroying the palace of Olympus.
The power crashes back down hard and Dionysus gathers up the energy ricocheting about us and pushes it right back into my chest. I gasp as it floods me, warm and charged, chaotic and frenetic and him him him.
His hands fall to my waist, drawing me close, and I ready the fire crackling through me once more.
I kiss him like it might seal the power back into his skin.
He kisses me like it might sear the magic into my flesh.
The kiss is clumsy, grasping, both of us breathing hard, our lips hasty and desperate. The magic swirls, in and around, pushing and pulling, flowing between us so readily it is difficult to believe it truly is not ours.
Could it be?
If the immortality recognized us both, could it not stretch and settle across us, bound to neither one of us but both.
Immortality is a hungry thing – it wants to consume … Sometimes all it takes is a slight boost, a jolt to take it from a spark to an inferno.
Perhaps all we need is a little more divinity, a hit of extra power, something that pushes it beyond what might sustain one person and into two.
Zeus did not deplete his own immortality to feed it to Dionysus.
He had time we do not – but doesn’t that prove it?
That it’s possible to increase the divinity you hold?
There must be a way – and there is magic all around us. We are on Olympus. We are hanging in the very Heavens and I will tear this entire kingdom apart if it gives me the scrap of power that saves him.
Dionysus’s hands are in my hair now, clutching my face, and his lips are tender, drawing away, his voice warm, to say: ‘I love you. I’d give you everything. Please.’
‘I love you too much to take it,’ I gasp back. I want it but not like this. Not for me and not for him. With him. For us.
I glance up – see that arch of seven lights, the fifth larger than the rest. The tiara he tore from my head, cast up in the sky and declared our love.
Of course. It’s us. It’s always been us.
Divinity etched into the sky – didn’t Hermes say the gods were fighting over the Heavens? If there is power to snatch, surely it is hung there? An escape in the direction I have come to expect it.
My power flares, churning up and seizing. Those lights in the Heavens, shining specks that shimmer downwards in my grasp, spiralling, fanning out among the glowing arc of us. The stars settle on our skin, burning bright. And then they delve deeper, merging with the divinity we hold.
A spark to an inferno.
Hot and bright and almost unbearable.
‘I can’t.’ He winces, the glow of immortality not emanating from him but surrounding him – consuming and hungry. ‘Fates, this …’
Is agony. I am burning all over again. The immortality within is not enough for this surge of godly power, and I can feel the mortality beneath sizzling.
Fine. Burn away. But I want this – I want to live. I want to take up space and stand, immutable against it all. And I want love for eternity too – him, us. Forever.
I can feel the lights within – and that seventh pulses somewhere within my chest. I can see it shining within Dionysus too – no longer seven lights but fourteen, or rather, seven mirrored. He and I.
And it is the divinity he is born with and the shreds of it trickled through my blood and it is the belief in us – each other’s and the world’s – and it is the sun in the sky and every scrap of bread pushed into the flames and each of those seven lights.
And it is everyone who has gazed upon them and thought of us.
And altogether it equates to more than one body can hold.
The surge shatters, bursts, and we are thrown to the ground. My skin flames – but it doesn’t hurt, not this time. It is like being set in a forge, solidifying myself. Each limb, each pulse, each heaving, desperate breath.
I feel it when the immortality sinks into my bones.
It is like a sudden cooling. Like every inch of me has come into definition, as though until that point I was still an insubstantial soul haunting the world.
Dionysus and I cling together as the lights and dust settle, his body over mine, my arms covering his head. The glow fades, warming back into his flesh – not divided but multiplied – and he gasps, divinity flickering within rather than without – right where it belongs.
His lips find mine again, without the light pouring from us.
But still, we spark.
Still the fires burn within.