Page 53 of This Divine Revelry

‘To Crete. I … I didn’t know how long it would take to find a remedy to Hera’s curse and I knew you were worried about your sister so I thought that ought to be the priority. Stop that wedding and then negotiate with my stepmother.’

He … he was going to help Phaedra? My stomach flutters, and as I breathe I feel myself relax a little – not only because the plan is still on track but also it was clearly left with the right man.

‘Thank you. Gods, thank you.’

Perhaps it is not all on me – if I fail, he might take up the cause.

‘You don’t need to thank me. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.’ In sitting down, he’d released one of my hands, but he still holds the other and now he squeezes it. ‘So …’

‘So …’

Dionysus looks around the room, pointedly avoiding my gaze. ‘Hera’s cursed me with madness before,’ he admits. ‘Well, it was definitely her sometimes. Other times I believe it was my own mind turning against me without her prompting. All very difficult to unpack which nightmares live in your own head and which are placed there, especially when exuberance and chaos are sort of your thing. But when it was her, it would take months – years – for the horrors she inflicted to fade. And I’m a god – mortals? Even demigods? I’m not sure it ever would, naturally. Heracles had to get a potion from Medea to –’

‘Medea?’

‘Yes, the witch from Colchis – she brewed him a potion to clear his madness. Or, rather, to lift Hera’s curse.’

‘Medea is my cousin,’ I say, and we regard each other.

‘Helios,’ Dionysus says, as my own mind takes me there too. ‘You’re not a full demigod but you have immortal blood in your veins. Maybe immortal powers too.’

‘Powers?’ The thought is ludicrous. If I had any sort of power, surely it would have manifested long before now. This is hardly my first time of need, after all. But I think of every story my mother ever told me. Medea specializes in potions, which I’ve never exactly tried brewing myself. She became a priestess of Hecate, the goddess of magic, whereas I’ve never had any sort of training.

Would I have been capable of it if I had?

Witch, my mind whispers.

And then: The only sort of woman powerful men fear.

‘What happened?’ Dionysus asks. ‘From your side?’

‘I was in a labyrinth.’

‘It wasn’t interspersed with reality?’

‘No, I don’t think so. And I knew it wasn’t real.’

‘You knew?’

‘Yes. I remembered Hera cursing me. I assumed she’d locked me in the labyrinth of my own mind. I knew I just had to find the way out.’

Dionysus shuffles back on the bed so that he can lean against the wall, drawing his legs up with him to prop his chin on a knee.

‘That’s not how it was for me. So maybe it’s different. But … yes, I think you had some sort of resistance. Maybe some sort of power.’

‘Power over what?’

‘A kind of immunity to the curses of gods? Or something more specific – mind-altering curses, perhaps? Or illusory magic? Do the details matter? Is it not enough to know Hera can’t hurt you like that again?’

No, it is not enough. It’s reassuring, I suppose, to know Hera might not be such a problem going forward. But I have a number of enemies.

So if I have power, how could I use it again?

‘Hera was gone when we found you,’ Dionysus says. ‘It was just you, staring at something we couldn’t see. Hermes found Artemis hunting in Lesbos. She claimed she knew nothing about it – nearly stuck an arrow through him for even suggesting it. But she knows our stepmother as well as the rest of us. Hera was her first suspect.’

‘She said at a wedding her dominion superseded xenia. I don’t think she’d have been able to get to me on another night.’

‘Let us hope you’re right.’ Dionysus nods. ‘At any rate, Hermes has determined to stay with us for a while. He claims he’s invested in the drama but really he’s just concerned. He … he always was, when it was me. When I was a child, he was the one tasked with hiding me. He saw it as his own failure whenever she found me anyway. Ludicrous, of course, but if he’s feeling a degree of responsibility I certainly won’t shoot down the protection of another god. But it does mean this ruse of ours …’