CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
WE LIE IN THE WRECKAGE of the palace – or the wing of it, at least, the room that we have obliterated.
My head feels heavier – and I fumble for the diadem upon it. And there is the seventh jewel, the fifth star in, the largest – its guiding point.
We did not just pull immortality from the Heavens, we pulled excess. Enough to craft this too …
Footsteps sound and figures appear in the slowly clearing dust.
‘What happened?’ Hephaestus rushes in – recognizable from the play, that same walking stick in hand.
‘Dionysus?’ Zeus steps forward through the haze. ‘You brought her back?’
‘A little too well, I think,’ Dionysus says.
Hephaestus crosses over, scanning me, his gaze quick and discerning. ‘You did something. I knew the clay wasn’t right. And that’s no mortal.’
Dionysus blinks and leans his head back on a broken piece of marble. I shift slightly, having lain across one of his arms, my own head swimming with both the power and the exertion of it.
Hephaestus squints through the still falling dust. ‘You’re a descendant of Helios, are you not. God’s blood and immortality? That would make you a goddess.’
‘A goddess?’ I repeat, yelping and managing to cut myself on the rough edge of one of the stones. The blood that wells is gold. Shining ichor of the immortals. The very thing the heroes wished to bleed out of Dionysus.
‘Powers?’ Zeus demands. ‘A domain? Have any claimed you yet?’
‘I …’ I glance down at the rubble, the destruction. And then I lean my head back and face the gaping hole in the palace ceiling. The stars shining above and the gap where our constellation once lay. A way out. A way through. There is no use denying it. ‘Labyrinths, my lord.’
‘Ariadne, goddess of labyrinths,’ Zeus repeats. I’m still staring at the sky, but I can hear the confusion in his voice.
It still doesn’t sound all that great – but I’m not sure I care any more. I wouldn’t trade the power for anything else, not when it’s given me all this.
From beneath the dust, there is a sudden stirring. And a hand, pushing crumbled marble away.
The woman – not quite as I’d seen her, though it was difficult to tell, as faded as she was.
But there are elements of her too – parts that must have settled as her clay turned to flesh, like a memory pulled from the depths: a decade or so older than I am, burnished copper hair, a smattering of freckles.
‘Zeus?’ she asks – without reverence or fear but with a strange sort of familiarity.
Zeus turns to her – and I’m expecting a rebuke. A demand for more respect. Or at least the same confusion with which he regarded me. But though it takes him a second, he seems to see past whatever differences Hephaestus’s modelling have caused – and to the heart of her.
His voice is taut. ‘Semele.’
Dionysus startles, a noise caught in the back of his throat. He stares at the woman – and oh, there is so much of him in her.
He swallows hard. ‘Hello, Mother.’
As a council member, Dionysus is given a house in the centre of the Olympian court, part of a grand string of homes that ring the palace.
It is cold, and hauntingly large, but it would be a very good place to host a party.
I even paint a spiralling labyrinth on the floor of the enormous reception hall. A dance floor – for when the time comes. I am halfway through a dance – still getting used to these new limbs – when something hot sparks within and then … a sort of tingling down my spine.
Ariadne. A gentle whisper. If the rumours are true and you haven’t come to find me already, then …
The whisper fades, only to jolt back: I’ll tell your new husband about the time you snorted mead across the Myrmidon prince.
A prayer – an offering. Food into a fire and a thought of me.
Charis – oh Fates, she is alive. And at the very least well enough for gentle threats.
Dionysus gets a message down to the thiasus and they leave to host a revelry in Mycenae and pick her up on the way.
‘We’ll get through this and escape back to them as soon as we can,’ Dionysus says.
‘Father is concerned about more mortals realizing our immortality can be bled out of us and taken as their own, so he’s got Hermes spreading rumours that Father awarded you your immortality because I asked him nicely. ’
The only contact we’ve had with the thiasus was when Dionysus went to fetch Sterope, who he’s finally convinced to pull the chariot that will allow us to come and go as we please. But right now she’s lying across the floor and I’m resting my head on her stomach while idly stroking her soft fur.
I lift myself to face him – similarly sprawled out across the tiles, swirling wine about his cup, and it almost feels like we are in our tent again, down below, talking through the night.
‘Excuse me? How am I once again a way to bolster someone else’s story?’
‘Oh, I plan on rectifying it,’ he assures me.
‘Ariadne will be the first play we put on at the Dionysia. The second will be Semele because she’s getting the same treatment – though Father really has made her a goddess as part of his great vendetta to spite Hera.
He has no idea it’s only working in her favour – everyone forgets she’s goddess of mothers too. ’
I hum, pleased. I’m not quite confident enough in my ability to wreak chaos on unworthy kings to take on Zeus himself just yet – but maybe one day. Maybe with goddesses like Hera on side we might stand a chance.
‘And how is Semele?’ I ask. ‘You with her, I mean. I spend every day with her.’
He glances down, like it might be too much to admit. ‘I don’t think I knew how much I wanted it until I had it. I filled a whole labyrinth with snatched-away families. And you deliver one to me without even realizing it.’
‘I should have known she was your mother – she was hosting revelries on the banks of the Acheron. It all makes sense.’
‘And in here, apparently,’ he says – waving at a pile of discarded cups and the dregs of a feast.
‘We had Persephone over!’
‘While I was stuck in a council meeting,’ he grumbles.
‘Make better deals, then,’ I say smugly.
‘I still can’t believe you revealed yourselves to her so quickly. Hades is going to kill me – he was quite clear that we not tell her about your escapes!’
‘That you not tell her – I agreed nothing of the sort. Besides, she seemed just as intrigued by the fact it worked as he was. And she wants to improve the Underworld as much as Semele and I do. She said they’ve been trying to heal souls on the banks of the Acheron for years but the more humans who believe they need a coin to cross the river, the more that cements itself in the weave of the Underworld’s magic.
But they’d never considered trying to bring the souls through the Phlegethon before – though she thinks a bridge or tunnel might be better than my little swim. ’
He glowers. ‘I’m still angry about that.’
‘And I’m still angry you lied to me and tried to force me to take your immortality, but I don’t see what an eternity of grudges is going to get us.’
‘Good point, let’s just kiss and forget the whole thing.’
I eye him over my cup. ‘Seduce me, then.’
But just as that smirk slides on to his face, I jolt – that trill racing through my spine once more.
To all the gods, honey. To the mistress of the labyrinth, a libation.
Dionysus beams. ‘You just had your first offering, didn’t you?’
‘I … didn’t know this person.’
‘No,’ he says fondly. ‘But they’re all going to know you. I suppose it’s time you think about what you’re going to do with all that power.’
Well, that’s easy.
Bring joy. Liberate. Find a way out.