Page 49 of This Divine Revelry

‘Please, my love,’ I say. ‘I cannot wait another second to marry you.’

I see the hurt still, but I have my own, aching within. And, beyond it, I have the flames of the thing that pain has created. I am alone here – because of him. Marrying Dionysus – because of him. Can still feel the way he slipped inside me, first with his false promises and then with his skin, the way he made my body feel not quite my own but a thing that fell for the lies he told, and how I cannot trust anything, not completely any more – because of him.

And, oh gods, I will see him undone.

Dionysus must see, if not the flames, then the smoke. He must see the way it consumes me because he brushes my hair back, his fingers ghosting across the diadem he crafted.

He smirks – and I see his rage too. At the gods who decided he was not worthy of their time. At the mortals who would doubt him. At a world that has always been poised to take everything from him.

Make them burn with it. Make them choke before we can.

His hand slides to the small of my back, drawing me in. ‘I can’t carry the love I hold for you quietly. It’s too loud, too monumental. I would shout it from mountainsides. I would carry it across the ocean. I would hang it from the Heavens. My love for you, Ariadne, demands to be witnessed.’

His lips crash into mine, and my fingers tense back into his chiton, pulling him close. The flames within lick at my skin like they would break through. Like they want to taste him too …

It’s sweet, the revenge carried on his lips.

It crackles – at least … at least I think it’s the revenge. The collaboration. The hurt pushing us on. Because when his fingers thread through my hair, gasping me closer, I feel a tug in my core, like it is still not close enough. And when his teeth graze my lower lip, I want him to bite down, like it might stop us from being parted.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, breathes it against my lips as he reaches up – and suddenly strands of my hair fall against my face, the diadem holding them back lifted.

I startle, looking at it caught within his hands; the amethysts glow, brighter and brighter until my eyes shut against them.

When I risk looking, the world is framed by my squinting lashes, and those lights spiral up into the sky, just like I twirled down the aisle to this marriage.

They settle in the stars.

A new constellation, mine and his.

Our love, demanding witness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

IT’S PARTYING AS RESISTANCE. That’s what Myrto said once. But this? This is partying as rage, as rebellion, as Furies screeching in the night.

First there are the rituals. The lifting of the veil – and the hasty sourcing of one, Calybe and Opora arguing over which of them was supposed to have brought it until Sterope runs through with one clenched in her jaws. The pouring of libations – to Hera, out of obligation, and then to Dionysus too, though there is no point wasting good wine when he is here to taste it himself, so we loop our arms through one another, raising a cup to our lips. It’s a dark vintage, rich and oaky. When I kiss him again, it’s all I can taste.

Now there is the frenzy.

Music plays, drinks are poured, feet stamp and surely Olympus cannot ignore such a ruckus. Surely they wish they had not refused us.

If Hermes’s enjoyment is anything to go by, if they don’t regret it, they will soon. If he can remember it.

It is nearly impossible to keep track of it all. Somewhere, there is a feast. Somewhere else, games that involve chance and risk and lead inevitably to discarded caution and colliding lips. Elsewhere, maenads run barefoot through the forest, weapons drawn on the hunt.

Everywhere it is salt and sweat and passion.

It is all very Dionysian.

He’s done it. Branded himself successfully, and it is chaotic, gleeful hedonism. It is nothing real that lingers beyond, certainly no heart and no feeling and no love. Unrestraint, where I feel weighted by the ties binding me.

But I dance anyway, like if I keep twirling around the dance floor my worries might fly from me the way my hairpins tumble, might fan out like my skirts and might be kicked aside like my sandals, eventually, when the leather smarts.

Dionysus’s hands graze across me: my waist, my hip, the back of my neck as he pulls my lips to meet his. His touch is everywhere, as I promised, but it is hesitant too, even though I’m reaching for him as well, even though I’m not altogether sure I want him to stop. I have to remind myself it’s a performance every time he holds me or gazes at me and certainly every time his lips brush my own.

It is almost a relief when the pipes give way to that dance we created, one that is also a sort of game with its constant switching of partners. I see Silen turn to Opora and then my hands are taken up by Hermes.

‘This is awfully brave of you,’ he says.