Page 102 of This Divine Revelry

Dionysus finds me the moment I have been deemed medically fit for guests, drawing back the sheets separating this corner and pushing through. He has lines of his own under his eyes – but he grasps my uninjured hand and suddenly seems alight, not only awake but urgently so.

‘Are you alright? I’m so sorry – this is entirely my fault. I never should have underestimated Perseus and it’s the same thing again, isn’t it, that marrying me put you in danger and I ought to have considered it and –’

‘Dionysus, I’m fine,’ I reassure him. He’s speaking so quickly it takes me a moment to find a break. ‘What happened on Crete?’

By which I mean: Where were you when I needed you?

‘I couldn’t get the door of the labyrinth open,’ he says – but even though there’s no panic here, his words are still so fast they run into one another. ‘The blood didn’t work so I thought I’d try the hatch instead, managed to prise it open and they shot out of it – I’ve never seen anything like it. Two figures with enormous wings, soaring towards the sky. Then the smaller one – Icarus – started to fall so I ran, trying to get help – trying to save him as he crashed into the water but it was too late. We couldn’t find him. When I got back, you were already gone. So I went to – Minos arrested some of the thiasus for partying in the streets and I worried he’d got you too so we went back but he – My father swatted the child out of the sky, he must have done, must have sensed I’d freed him and – Your message with the bread was ingenious. I stole Hermes’s shoes right off his feet … You should speak to the Cretans, they think you returned from the dead, a goddess made anew.’

‘Wait,’ I plead, because that’s … so much and his speech is both quick and slow, churning along and staggering to a halt all at once. ‘Did you say Icarus fell from the sky?’

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

I think of the feathers from Hermes’s shoes, falling right through the grate.

Up … They’d gone up …

And Icarus fell. Icarus died.

‘We searched for so long. We couldn’t even recover a body. I think … I think Father turned against us. It must be why Perseus took you, because our father favours him.’

I blink – not only thrown by the changing topics but the speed with which he relays them.

Tell me if I start rambling, or if you notice any sudden changes in my mood or times I stop mid-sentence …

I squeeze his hand tighter, like I could pull him back from whatever chaos he might be lost in.

The walls jolt up around me, solid and unwavering. And that power I felt before is nothing to this – a wave that crashes down on me, a shock of air straight to the lungs, radiance humming in my veins. A swollen river bursting its banks. And I jerk back, remembering the debilitating exhaustion that left me powerless against Perseus.

With Theseus, I did not alter reality. He still held me down, still pressed that blade into my throat – but it was clear, somewhere.

Those walls that crumbled about my mother and sister were not real.

And now this.

It is just as Dionysus said: There’s no truer labyrinth than the mind.

Is this what my power is capable of? Rendering whatever is going on here – a complicated, winding thing, I am sure – into a simple labyrinth to be traversed?

‘Dionysus, I –’ But I don’t know how to begin, to tell him I think you might be unwell. What if I’m wrong? What if he stops trusting me when he’s only just begun letting me in? It’s so much to accuse someone of and … what if it’s not even helpful? He asked me to tell him, right? So I should. But … perhaps I can sound him out a bit more, to be certain when I broach it.

‘You said your father has turned on us?’

Dionysus nods, and begins pacing the small confines. ‘Hera must have finally got to him. Aside from Icarus, there was a storm the night you were taken and he’s set Keres following me which means a tragic death is incoming. When we couldn’t find you and I could hear them screaming, I thought …’

He looks obliterated, like he has hastily assembled the pieces of himself but they don’t quite fit.

He leans his head against mine, and inhales deeply. For a moment, he seems steady – enough that I wonder if I imagined it all. ‘Perseus took you to get to me.’

‘Partly,’ I admit. ‘He doesn’t like me much either. Called me all sorts of names. Foolish girl, demi-thing –’

‘Quatri-thing, no? Or perhaps demi-demigod?’

Ignoring him, I continue: ‘He seems worried more women might lead by my example.’

‘They might. As I say – the opinion of you among those in Crete? You returned from death, or the certainty of it. The gods rewarded your bravery in freeing those prisoners with a second chance. And you returned to use your newfound power to liberate them all. How are your powers? Because those people seem to believe in you.’

I scoff – because I’m not a goddess. But … but I do have divine blood. So what are the rules? Where does belief cross into power, because that surge just now when I took his hand felt every bit as invigorating as it did draining a few days earlier.