Page 146 of This Divine Revelry

‘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.

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.