Page 95 of This Divine Revelry

‘Where is … power?’

‘You think … Medusa … can’t kill you too?’

Medusa?

Oh. Perseus.

Perseus, of course.

I pass out right there, collapse forward, my face bashing into the wood while Perseus continues snarling his threats.

I jolt awake with a sudden need to vomit, stumbling to my knees and spitting bile across the floorboards. My head pounds but the world is no longer spiralling. It’s … swaying.

If I wake up on a boat one more time, I’m going to scream.

My thoughts feel choppy, like they aren’t connecting to one another properly.

Perseus kidnapped me, he must be –

He wanted to know where Dionysus was, which means he’s not here, so where is –

Whatever power I wielded saved me, and overwhelmed me, I can’t –

The world comes to me in fragments too – my hands bound behind me, the flicker of a lantern, the itch of the scab at my throat and the distant murmur of a crew moving through the ship.

I lie back down, the weight of my own head too much. It all hurts.

It hurts so much that I surrender once more to the darkness.

I wake somewhere between the holding cell and the room Perseus interrogated me in – know only that I’m being roughly dragged by men holding my arms, thrown into that latter room, and seconds later Perseus’s boots are in my eyeline.

I haul myself to my knees – which is difficult with my hands bound – and manage to clamber on to the stool beside me. The world feels calmer, the pain in my head less of a thumping ache than a slight pulse.

I glance around for something I might use as a weapon but there’s nothing – another tiny windowless room lit by a single lantern.

‘Let’s try this again, shall we?’ Perseus moves opposite me but doesn’t sit down, just plants a hand on the table and leans across to me. ‘You know who I am. I assume you know what I want.’

To make a space for yourself among the Olympians by taking Dionysus’s.

His features are darker in this dim room – the hollows of his eyes practically gaunt, his face half shadow.

‘I don’t know where Dionysus is,’ I say – and every word is a scratch in my throat.

I am never using magic again.

‘I think that’s been well established. So let’s move on to what you do know.’

‘I’m not telling you anything.’ I scoff. ‘Another self-entitled man with a hero complex? I left two of those in Crete, why would I bow down to another?’

He steps round the table to be a little closer, then perches upon it, towering above me, and with my hands bound I feel vulnerable enough for a chill to creep across me.

‘Oh no, Ariadne. I’m not like Minos. The barbarous king who fears the fleeting nature of his own power so entirely he resorts to grotesque displays of violence to feel it within his grasp. Or Theseus, the man who genuinely believes he is a hero and that everyone else is just a tool to his own greatness. They’re fighting for scraps. I have everything a man could want. A crown. Married to the most beautiful woman in the world. More women lined up at my door, men who bow before me and a legend that rings across oceans. I’m not fighting for anything. I’m claiming it.’

‘Claiming immortality?’

‘Not just immortality.’ His tongue is a lash, the words harsh and sudden. ‘Godhood. Some men expect the power of our forebears to just trickle down. They think that if they prove themselves good little boys, our father above will reach down to pat their heads and hand over their rewards. I have nothing to prove, no approval to earn – I know who I am. And I am going to take what I am owed.’

I arch a brow. ‘Didn’t you need three different gods to lend you artefacts just to kill one woman?’