Page 28 of This Divine Revelry

Myrto gives an amused snort and eventually just shrugs. ‘Alright, I’ll grant you that one’s just a character flaw.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

MYRTO TELLS ME TO FIND her once I’ve washed, so she can help apply the healing salve to my shoulder. But I feel so wrung out that once I’ve washed in the huge baths set up in the tents at the edge of the camp I sneak in without saying a word to anyone.

Come on, Ariadne, what’s wrong with you?

I was abandoned on this island, dreaming of anyone coming along who might take me away from here, and I’ve managed to find a group of people who have welcomed me with open arms. They’ve fed me, given me refuge and told me they’ll take me wherever I want to go. Or I could join them, which would mean no scrounging for survival on a distant shore. I have a choice – not just a desperate escape. It’s all the sort of miracle I didn’t even dare wish for.

But perhaps not one I deserve.

Logical Ariadne tells me I did nothing wrong. That Theseus was right, and if Asterion had lived my father would have used him to kill, and kill again. But I can’t hear her in the hollow void within myself, a gaping chasm insisting I reckon with the guilt and loneliness. I think of the paint-etched halls of Knossos, Charis’s gleeful cackle, Phaedra’s plucked barbitos strings, my mother’s parcelled-out words and Glaucus’s quick stomping as he hurtled through the halls.

It’s a lot to lose. Even more to throw away.

Outside, music begins to play. I tap the beat on my thigh, picturing dainty spins and low sweeping glides. Instead, I bury my face into the pillow and try to shut out the world I was once so desperate to find.

I’m not even sure the sun had set when I fell asleep – exhausted, wrung out and overwhelmed – and it’s not yet risen when I jolt awake. I’m surrounded by low, heavy breathing but the air feels still and silent as only the very early hours of the morning can. With sudden restlessness I kick the blankets aside and stumble out of the mound of tents.

‘New girl!’

I nearly throw myself back into the canopy.

Dionysus is sitting cross-legged on a nearby rock, tossing scraps of food into the air as Sterope leaps up to snatch them. The camp is lit by a few dim torches, and her tawny fur glows in the light.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Well, I wanted food and Sterope gave me that look she gives sometimes, like I would be starving her if I didn’t share my bread and cheese, which, I explained, isn’t very good for panthers. By that point I realized we’d reached a negotiation rather than a refusal so I was honour-bound to provide the snack I’d supposedly agreed to. I am a god of my word, after all.’

He throws another shred of food – the cooked meat from dinner, I think. With his other hand, he tosses a lump of cheese and catches it in his mouth as Sterope’s jaws snap shut around her own.

‘What you are is a drunkard and a fool.’

He splays his arms and beams to the night sky. ‘So you have heard of me!’

I take a breath – but of course that silence is just an opening for him, because he climbs to his feet atop that rock and leaps down in one quick bound. There’s a peculiarity to the way he moves, a sort of graceful restlessness so that even as he jumps it looks equal parts floundering and elegant.

‘But never mind all that. Why are you awake, new girl?’

‘I have a name.’

‘Do you?’ He quirks a brow. ‘Funny, it doesn’t quite seem to fit.’

He looks at me pointedly, though his eyes sparkle with amusement. Like even this, seeing through my lies and declaring the puzzle of me, is little more than a way to pass the time. ‘I’d take it up with my parents but I haven’t seen them in a while.’

He chuckles and by now he has drawn level with me. ‘So what was it that woke you? Frustrating dreams of a certain devastatingly attractive god?’

‘Hmm, do let me know if Apollo calls by.’

He winces. ‘Areatha, do spare some thought for my fragile heart.’

‘I’m more concerned for your liver, my lord.’

He’s certainly been drinking – there’s a double-handled kratos propped against that rock, the wine within catching in the moonlight. But he doesn’t strike me as unduly intoxicated, just a slight … glaze. A headiness. One that has his every action a little bolder than before.

‘My lord would be Father dearest,’ Dionysus says, casting a quick look to the Heavens like Zeus might take this moment to appear. ‘You can call me handsome, gorgeous, the man of your frustrating, tormenting dreams …’

‘Does this work? I can’t imagine this working.’