Page 32 of This Divine Revelry

He is tall, his features blunt and framed by waves of pitch-dark hair. His clothes are fine – the weave narrow and tight, the sort of time-consuming work no one on a small island like this is wasting on clothes. A merchant, perhaps? An envoy? Someone with a boat, certainly.

‘What’s this?’ he asks, peering close as a smile twitches on to his face. ‘You are gods-touched.’

‘I’m a priestess,’ I say, trying to pull away. ‘Unhand me.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ he says, eyes darting over me like he might read my divine heritage in the lines drawn across my brow. Can he? My heart suddenly freezes – because what good are my carefully spun lies if a seer, or a priest or whatever this man is can see the echoes of divinity in my skin? His smile twists to a sneer. ‘A gods-touched girl stepping in the wake of the pretender god. Your father must be ashamed. Wouldn’t want to get caught here, a demi-thing like you. The Olympians don’t take kindly to their offspring worshipping false idols – and no woman of good standing should be seen at a thing like this.’

I stomp on his foot, ripping my hand from his grip. He doesn’t even flinch.

‘I’m a woman of no standing and I think I’ll do as I like.’

He chortles and it’s so utterly condescending. ‘I’m in no mood to incur the wrath of a shockingly paternal deity so you would do well, foolish girl, to listen to those who know better than you. Leave now. You do not wish to be caught in what is to come this evening.’

He steps back, vanishing into the sea of people.

Bastard. So that is what Myrto meant – men who do not take kindly to women joining in revelries.

What better way to spite them all than to have as good a time as possible?

The party has spilt on to the beach and so that is where I head. I don’t realize how much wine I’ve drunk until I run up to Opora on the dance floor, and my limbs feel fluid and a little sloppy, like I flow as much as each note skimming across the waves. Beside me a small group is dancing in a sort of frenzy. Some sway in gentle circles, some in a dizzying ruckus, like even though a beat pulses none care to find it.

But I let it take me over, let it fill my limbs and then I’m moving like I’m breathing for the first time in a long, long while.

‘Look at you!’ Opora squeals. Then she drops her voice. ‘Is Silen watching us? They’re over there. With the vines encircling their horns?’

I glance over and spot a satyr who matches such a description. Their dark hair tangled with leaves, red-brown horns jutting above and their chiton draped low enough to reveal sharp collarbones and muscular shoulders.

‘Yes,’ I say, beginning to grin. ‘Is there any particular reason you’d want to know that, Opora?’

She swats at me. ‘Shh!’ As though anyone might hear us over this racket.

‘Do you want to make them jealous?’

‘I don’t know if that will help,’ she says, flushing and determinedly looking anywhere but at Silen. ‘I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings. They just … like to flirt, I suppose. Anyway, what about you? Any loves in your past?’

‘My best friend, for a while. It just turned out it wasn’t quite the sort of love either of us was looking for. And … there was a boy after her.’ I’m not sure if it’s the wine or the music or this unbearable need to stop lying to these lovely people. ‘I didn’t love him, but if by love you mean someone who transforms the trajectory of your life, then, well, he certainly fits that description.’

She must see my hatred – must feel it, actually, with the way my hands tense in hers.

But I force a smile – convincing myself I might be content to pluck grapes and dance in the moonlight as though there were not a yawning chasm inside me, demanding vengeance to fill it.

For now, I fill that void with more wine until the rage mutes. Somehow, I end up in the centre of a huge circle of maenads and satyrs, looping arms and dancing around me as I perform. I weave in and out, but always closer and closer to the centre, like I really am tracing the steps of the dance floor my mother once envisioned for me. I skip, laughing, to the edge of the circle and tap in Calybe, who delightedly switches with me, and I move out, gasping for breath.

I come face to face with Dionysus.

‘New girl, I didn’t know you had it in you.’

‘Olympus above, what are you wearing?’

‘Do you like it?’ he says, as though I were not very clearly aghast. He twirls, slowly, opening his arms to show off the leopard skin draped across his shoulders. He tosses the staff he holds into the air and catches it, the pine cone topping it nearly falling right off. The only slightly reasonable thing is the ivy wreath, which he’s twisted his curls around to hold in place.

He really does have very nice hair.

I shake my head, focusing back on the ridiculous ensemble. ‘I had no idea you were the god of hastily assembled crafts.’

‘This wasn’t hastily assembled,’ he says, scowling. ‘It took me an embarrassingly long time, actually.’

‘And that cloak feels highly offensive to Sterope.’