Page 120 of This Divine Revelry

‘Ariadne, could you please get back into bed and hold me until a more reasonable hour?’

Then the noise solidifies – those cries – and his name carries through. He is up and dressed in seconds.

We fling ourselves from the tent to watch the horizon burn.

Flames flicker over distant hills – enough light to see the smoke churning up into the dark clouds above.

But it is not that I stare at. As he emerges into the cold night air, what was half hidden in the tent becomes distinctly apparent. Dionysus shimmers – the air around him flickering, the copper strands of his hair half alight, a golden glow that clings to his every inch. And that warmth burning however many miles away flares beside me.

‘Dionysus,’ I say, reaching for him, but his skin is so hot I flinch.

He turns, startled, and his always bright eyes are downright luminous.

‘You’re glowing.’

‘What?’ He blinks, confused. Then he looks down at his own hands, shining like the moon above. ‘No. No, no –’ His terror bleeds his voice cold, drains the colour from his face, and he stumbles back over his own feet, clutches at the tent as he trips and the fabric smoulders.

‘Hermes!’ he screams – while everyone else is yelling for him, pointing at the horizon; the only word that isn’t Dionysus is Naxos, again and again and again.

Our home is burning.

Dionysus hurries back, ducking into the tent. I move to follow but someone clutches at my wrist. Zosime.

‘He is a god, Ariadne,’ she says. ‘You know what happens when they ignite.’

She is the only one not looking at the flames churning from Naxos because it means nothing to her. It is only the place she sailed away from when they left me.

I pull my arm back, but she holds tight – tight enough that I remember.

My mother asked to see his true immortal form. It burned her to cinders.

And I hesitate, just long enough for Hermes to appear and chase after Dionysus. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, issuing a mock salute and still, evidently, far too drunk. ‘Time to give my baby brother the talk about all the perfectly natural changes one can expect of a godly body.’

And so, with nothing else to do, I watch the flames curl over the horizon, Perseus’s words ringing in my head: I’m going to destroy those symbols one by one.

Dionysus emerges again when the sun really does rise and the smoke still wafts across the horizon. By that point I’ve worried my belt so thoroughly the rope has frayed into individual strands.

But he doesn’t look weak – not as I’d expect if Perseus really did burn down his sanctuary.

So did he fall for the false location I provided?

‘Are you alright?’ I ask.

‘Am I alright is the better question,’ Hermes says, a step behind him and rubbing his temples. ‘I kindly gave your husband the one vial of nectar I managed to snag from Apollo, so now I am fighting this hangover the mortal way. I need grease. Salt. A dagger to the head.’

‘Myrto is almost certainly on it,’ I say, reaching for Dionysus. He hesitates, but exhales the moment my fingers slide between his – a perfectly acceptable temperature.

‘It must have worked,’ he says – but he sounds devastated rather than pleased, looking at the smoke still churning into the clouds. ‘Manifesting a godly form while my own sacred island burned? The Olympians must truly believe in me.’

My stomach twists – because what if Perseus had struck a day earlier? What if Dionysus had been weaker, or still sick, or simply drained from some complicated spell – and then Naxos was wrenched from within him? Would he even have survived it?

‘Come on,’ Hermes says, pressing a spot between his eyes. ‘Let’s get this big nightmarish discussion out of the way so I can bash my skull against a rock in peace.’

We head down to the quiet of the shore – and maybe I’m deluding myself, but I can smell the smoke across the waves, even as it falters.

‘I told Perseus where your sanctuary was,’ I blurt. ‘Well, I pointed near. It was the only way I could get food to sacrifice to you.’

Dionysus pulls me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist, and firmly, his eyes locked on mine, he says: ‘Ariadne, if you’re ever kidnapped again, please tell them every single secret I hold dear if it gets you so much as a pine cone.’