Page 19 of This Divine Revelry

No one cares all that much about me after that. We drink, music plays on – I itch to dance but, wary of making more of a spectacle of myself, I can only tap my fingers against the boards of the boat.

But as the night wears on and wine turns conversation absurd, I find my head nodding and my body swaying.

Theseus laughs. ‘Do you play?’

I still have Phaedra’s aulos – tucked in my pocket to sound an alert it never needed to.

‘Oh gods, no, I can’t carry a tune. I can dance, though.’

‘Oh?’ he asks, then a small smile unfurls. ‘Do show me.’

I bite my lip – wondering if this is a test too. ‘My father says dances are for serving girls, not royalty.’

He shakes his head softly. ‘Your father has never said anything worth noting.’

My pulse skitters again – warmth uncurling in my gut. It takes me a moment to recognize it as happiness. ‘I suppose the ocean does not care who skims upon its waves,’ I say, relenting.

‘It might,’ Theseus answers quietly. ‘If it saw you moving in the moonlight.’

He reaches out a hand to haul me to my feet.

Theseus spins me around the boat. Oh, it’s such sweet relief to dance – and to music? That was a luxury rarely won in my father’s house, where music was played quietly and my steps landed to a beat in my own head, or else the sound of scurrying maids and chirping birds.

And my brother’s echoing steps.

Theseus lifts me until my feet hover above his own. My chest presses against his, all those hard planes of him, and I feel a sudden keen ache for him, one that burns as he smiles at me. Gods, I do not merely want him, I want him viciously. I want to sink my teeth into the flesh of his neck, want to rake my nails down his back and curl my fingers into his hair.

He grins down at me. ‘Oh, we’ll certainly have to host celebrations in Athens. The world needs to see you dance.’ He speaks into my ear, and then, as though he feels similarly, he catches my lobe beneath his teeth.

Then the sky cracks open.

It is a sudden torrent – the sort that marks the close of summer – and a sheet so thick that at first I think a wave has soared over the planks of the ship. Suddenly there are shouts, drunken men stumbling.

Theseus calls on his father but nothing helps, not as the boat shudders beneath us.

‘We need to make for land,’ a man yells. Lightning strikes a mast above. A beam breaks, the sail flapping in the wind, and out of some sort of instinct I snatch at it, catching the rope which hauls me into the air, my shoulder screaming in protest, and quick hands at my ankles pull me back.

‘I swear, Ariadne,’ Zosime growls as she yanks me down. ‘Why do you court trouble?’

Together we rush for the edge of the boat and I am too focused on tying the rope down to answer. My hands are clumsy at the knots, the rope unlike the fine thread I have been taught to weave. Zosime is not much better and suddenly Theseus is reaching around me, his hands over mine.

Zosime runs to stamp out a fallen lantern whose flames lick towards another rope, even despite the deluge.

I turn, finding Theseus drenched before me.

‘Hold the rope tight,’ he directs, so I spin back so that he is arched over me. I hold it still as he ties it. The boat trembles beneath us, tipping nearly fully on the sudden waves, and we stagger from rope to rope, clinging on and securing them, and clearly someone has directed us to land because all at once the ship shudders into the banks.

Lightning strikes the mast once more.

‘Shelter inland!’ Theseus calls. ‘Stay clear of the trees!’

He sweeps me into his arms before I can step on to the gangplank and I clutch his broad shoulders as he hurtles down and on to the beach. The hard muscles of his chest rise and fall against me as he runs. He lowers me down, draping his himation over me as we scurry. I spy rocks clustered at the shore and pull him towards them, certain some sort of sanctuary must lie within. They are so slippery we have to hold one another still as we climb – the jagged edges lethal in the dark.

But we can see a wide lip where the cliff forms a natural shelter, and then, as though the gods truly are guiding us, an opening at its mouth.

We fall into the cave hastily, Theseus practically pulling me across the threshold like he cannot risk me lingering in the rain another moment.

I’m disoriented – the suddenness of the disaster. The revelry turned to ruin. There’s only Theseus, his arms around me through it all. And around me now as he draws me closer, his lips crashing against mine.