Page 72 of This Divine Revelry

‘You always idolized her so much,’ my mother says quietly. ‘But I need you to know that even my sister abides by their rules. When heroes come calling she brews their potions and cleanses away their sins and in return they leave her alone. She’s found a different way, but even she knows when to concede to their demands rather than rail against them.’

That crack deepens right down to my foundations. It is truly inescapable, then. Even if you break down walls, more will spiral out beyond.

I think of all those heroes, clamouring for power of their own, so desperately they might bleed Dionysus dry for it.

And for the first time, I wonder what it might be like to hold my own.

‘Circe and Medea,’ I ask. ‘Are they the only women in our line with witchcraft in their veins?’

My mother looks at me, long and steady, and we are both asking one another the same thing: Do you?

At last, she says: ‘There’s a reason I told you those stories, Ariadne. I thought one day you might have need of them.’

Peculiar creature.

She’s been here before.

There’s something not quite right with that girl.

They knew. All this time – some sixth sense, some inkling that power crackled within me.

Labyrinths, my mind echoes.

Often, not all directions are blocked. Only those you might consider taking.

I don’t just want to stop Theseus. I want to stop them all.

And I don’t just want to save Phaedra. I want to save everyone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MY MOTHER WALKS ME BACK to my room – and I do not even have to ask her to. She knows as well as I do what danger might find me if I walk these halls alone. It’s not breaking xenia if a rogue dissenter gets to me. If one of those guards decides to avenge a fallen comrade. If my father pays the right person at the right time …

Dionysus is there, waiting for me, and he thanks my mother with a quick bow.

My gaze falls to a small table pushed up against the window – normally littered with an array of cosmetics, now swept clear to make room for a loaf of bread and a bowl of herb-flecked cream cheese.

‘You didn’t eat anything,’ he says simply. ‘So I grabbed this from the kitchens.’

I nod, momentarily taken aback. It is clear there is nothing I can do that will escape this man’s notice.

‘Will you help me with this?’ I ask, gesturing to the solid band of metal still encasing my waist.

Dionysus grins, elated. ‘Are you asking for my help to undress you, dear wife?’

I meet his eye. ‘Yes.’

He holds the look a beat longer, before gesturing for me to spin. I turn, and he draws a finger along its back.

The band snaps open along the seam he has created.

It was not uncomfortably tight, but I can breathe a little deeper than before.

Without it, my chiton is loose and I take up a scrap of bread and push it into the flame of the candle.

Dionysus settles opposite me, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. ‘My favourite thing about you might be that you still do that.’

‘It’s habit.’ Burning food in sacrifice to the gods is something I’ve never thought much about.