Page 54 of This Divine Revelry

‘Right.’ I nod. ‘I’ll be all over you.’

He flashes a grin. ‘Careful, dear wife – give yourself free rein and you may never wish to stop.’

I glower. ‘Are we going to talk about the other aspect of all this? What Hera did to you.’

‘What, in taking you from me?’

‘No, in the years she cursed you.’

Dionysus swallows. ‘Not much to discuss there, I’m afraid.’

‘Really? It sounds horrific. Traumatizing. You can –’

‘Oh yes, all of those things. If I don’t increase my following, my powers will dwindle and Hera will be free to so afflict me again. And if she doesn’t, I’m sure my own mind will take over. At some point. Me getting bad again is something of an inevitability, so let’s have as much fun and wreak as much havoc as we can in the interim, hm?’

‘Dionysus,’ I say carefully. ‘We can –’

He’s already swinging his legs off the bed. ‘I shouldn’t have married you. I got so swept up in the plots of mortal men I hadn’t considered the far superior threat of Olympus. I promised to protect you and it is clear there are things I can’t protect you from.’

I scoff. ‘I think we made it perfectly clear I can protect myself.’

‘And the next threat? Being close to me is dangerous, that’s always been perfectly clear and here I was ignoring it for …’

‘For?’

He takes a step back before turning to look at me. ‘We’ll prevent Theseus from marrying your sister and I’ll leverage the Minotaur myth against the threat of Perseus. Then we can divorce. Go our separate ways and never think of one another again.’

My fists curl in the sheets. ‘What happened to whatever you do, we’re not leaving your side? Or am I only allowed to join the thiasus when I’m the girl you flirt with rather than the girl you’re clearly growing to care for?’

Dionysus blinks, and that fluttering is enough to make his eyes cold. ‘The things I’m attached to don’t just break, Ariadne, they shatter. They are obliterated. And the last person I ever grew to care for was dead by the time Hera’s haze lifted. So as you so succinctly once put it: I will not bury you with me.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

IRUN TO THE DECK as soon as I have a chance, unable to stand being in those close confines a moment longer. As I race through the maze of sheets in the living quarters below, my name follows, and then I am swarmed by my friends, checking I’m alright and stressing how worried Dionysus was, like that might be something I care to hear.

I do not doubt that he was concerned. That his guilt choked him. That he also feared losing me for my own sake. That my specificity is the very feeling he is running from.

It makes little sense. Dionysus would be destroyed if the gods harmed anyone in the thiasus. He feels responsible for them all. So why is my friendship so specifically abhorrent to him? I hardly want more than that. There might be some attraction here, but I imagine there’s attraction between him and half the maenads and satyrs following him around. On my own behalf, I could probably throw a stone and hit someone horny Ariadne would deem suitable. Dionysus is hardly special in that.

We are nothing special in that.

The simple explanation is that his reaction is not rational at all but driven by the stress of last night, his own fear of Hera’s power and the similarity of my affliction to his own tortured past, but recognizing all that does not make it any easier to bear.

He is an infuriatingly unreasonable person.

I glance down at the ocean below, fins cresting periodically above. Dolphins. Of course.

Myrto comes to join me at the edge of the boat.

‘Are you alright?’ I ask. So much focus on me and the chaos of my life and nowhere near enough on the people making it bearable.

She nods. Then shakes her head. ‘Yes. No. I … moving us all on takes a lot of effort. A lot of organizing. It’s very fun but it’s exhausting. Which is normally fine, but it can make the compulsions worse. Which is equally exhausting.’

Myrto always has dark shadows beneath her eyes. She’s always up, moving, alert and running to the next job. But they do seem more pronounced.

‘You can use our room if you want somewhere quiet to rest. It’s absurd Dionysus has his own quarters anyway when everyone else shares.’

‘Oh, we’re all invited to set up our own tents if we want. Everyone just prefers sharing – did I not mention that?’