Page 50 of This Divine Revelry

‘Dancing with you? Are you truly so dreadful?’

He snorts. ‘With ill-configured sandals, yes. But I meant marrying Dionysus. There are many who would see him dead, and now here you are, offering your head beside his.’

Gods, must we do this now? I feel too dizzy – the spinning and the wine – and I don’t want to doubt this. ‘I understand you whisked him away from harm throughout his childhood.’

Hermes nods. ‘Father’s orders. Hera already had it in for him. Now she’s one of a long list, or so I hear. Quite clever of him, tying himself to your legacy. But easy to break a thing like that. You stop being the hero who rescued the maiden if she dies on your watch. If another man steals her in turn. If she’s executed to restore a slighted king’s honour. You’ve made yourself the trophy of the tale, and those can be snatched. Or smelted, if you’d rather they never had the chance to be won.’

My father would have me assassinated anyway. Theseus too, if I spoke up against him.

I have hardly altered my fate all that much. Perhaps added Perseus to the list of those who might kill me in their war against Dionysus, but once two kings want you dead, what’s a third?

Still, I feel a sudden chill cut through the warm night air. And in it, a whisper.

No one can consider that inconsequential. They might see me as a symbol, but symbols are threats all the same.

‘I’ll grant you that, Lord Hermes.’ I nod. The time comes to turn and switch partners but I clutch his hands tighter, like I would prove a point. ‘But I am not an object to be fought over, or a medal to award a victor. I’m the daughter of a tyrant. The fires of the sun burn in my veins. And I am as capable of wreaking havoc as any so-called hero. Let them come for me. Dionysus will protect me, and if he cannot, we will learn just what sort of monsters my family can create.’

Hermes revolves in a final, wide-arced loop. When he faces me once more, he’s smiling. ‘I can see why Dionysus married you.’

At midnight, we are dancing still.

Until, suddenly, the music stops and the crowd parts.

And there’s the girl I once expected to see on this island, stepping from the forest like she has been there all along. She wears a short tunic, dark and fraying around the hem. Her hair is swept up into an equally fraying knot, silver in the moonlight and glowing too – though that’s to be expected when she took the moon from Selene as surely as her brother Apollo took the sun from my grandfather.

‘Artemis,’ Dionysus greets, sweeping into a low bow. ‘You honour us with your presence.’

Artemis offers him a quick, dismissive glance before turning her attention back to me.

‘I cannot exactly congratulate you on an institution like marriage,’ she says, her voice lower than I’d expected. She looks scarcely out of adolescence, but her cadence is level and assured even as she winces at the thought of marriage. Apparently eternal maidenhood was one of the first things she demanded of her father, Zeus. ‘But I certainly wish you happiness. May I speak to you somewhere private, Ariadne?’

A god wishes to speak to me alone? Yes, I just spoke to Hermes, but that was in the middle of a dance floor. And Artemis … Well, as much as I had hoped for salvation, I’d also worried about her vengeance – fearful I’d wronged her by sleeping with Theseus on her island.

But Naxos isn’t her island and she is our guest, so xenia would prevent anything untoward.

I nod and lead her to Dionysus’s tent.

‘Can I get you anything, my lady? A drink or –’

‘No, that’s quite alright,’ she says quickly. ‘I only wish for your company.’

Great. Perfect. Not only am I alone with a goddess, she’s sober and I’ve been sampling enough of our vintages tonight I could probably rival Dionysus for their overview. I clutch the edge of the table like it might steady everything.

‘Marriage is a risk, don’t you think?’ she says idly, taking in the splendour of the tent.

‘It certainly does not feel that way with Dionysus.’

She snorts. ‘Right. Marriage is my stepmother’s domain and entering into it is reckless – Dionysus puts himself at her mercy. He puts you there too.’

The beat has started up once more outside, though in here it is a quiet echoing whisper. It makes the whole revelry feel very far away, though it is only a handful of steps.

Artemis turns her attention from the trinkets of Dionysus’s tent to me. ‘You heard what happened to Megara, did you not?’

Heracles and those labours that are making the gods consider him for their ranks – but they’re a punishment, things he must achieve as penance for the murder of his wife, Megara, and their children. Hera struck Heracles with a curse that drove him from his very mind, turned reality into unreality and unreality into threat.

Is Artemis here to warn me? Just as Hermes tried to do?

‘Dionysus isn’t a demigod to be so afflicted. He’s a god.’