Page 147 of A Touch of Chaos

Dionysus said nothing, and Erigone narrowed her eyes as she blew out the flame. Ribbons of smoke danced around her, smelling of spice and resin.

“Do you recall how I would prophecize for you, Dionysus?”

He shifted on his feet, uncomfortable. “Must we revisit the past?” he asked.

“I am not asking to revisit,” she said. “I am asking if you remember.”

He stared, frustration making his teeth clench. “I remember,” he said.

“On your knees,” she said. “Between my thighs.”

“That was a long time ago, Erigone,” he said. “We are both beyond that.”

“Perhaps you are,” she said. “But I still want you on your knees.”

He stared at her for a few slow seconds and then spoke. “You are my oracle.”

“And like anything that has belonged to you, I have been abandoned,” she said. “Does this woman know? The one who has you so chivalrously holding my gaze and shifting with discomfort in my presence, that your loyalty is as flimsy as a spider’s web in the wind?”

“Give me the prophecy, Erigone,” Dionysus said.

“You are a pathetic god,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “The only reason you still have followers is because everyone likes to drink and fuck.”

His fists tightened; his anger felt molten in his veins, and for a few brief seconds, he wanted to kill her. Those were the claws of his madness digging deep.

Erigone gave him a shrewd smile, and for a moment, he thought that perhaps that was what she wanted too,but then she threw her head back and spread her arms wide. The smoke from the incense became a straight column rising into the darkness. She said things, but they were not words he could understand and were more like a song, spoken in a low and lyrical cadence.

It was unnerving but mesmerizing to witness, and there was a part of him that wanted to crawl inside her, to see what she was seeing for himself, but that was the magic of Erigone. She was a seductress as much as she was an oracle, and she gave prophecy like she fucked, with reckless abandon.

Dionysus’s nails sank into his palms. It was that sweet sting that kept him grounded, that ensured he did not descend into the strange madness of her fortune-telling, and when she emerged from her trance, she looked upon him in dazed disappointment.

He did not move, too afraid to break the spell.

“You have neglected a sacred duty. You have left the dead unburied,” she said.

Before the oracle was finished with her foretelling, Dionysus knew what he had to do—bury the ophiotaurus, which he had left to rot on the island of Thrinacia after Theseus murdered him.

Fuck.

“Correct this offense,” Erigone continued. “And all will be revealed.”

He should have listened to Ariadne the moment she’d begged to return to the island and complete the task, but at the time, her request had seemed rash given the danger.

“You know what you must do,” the oracle said.

“I do,” he said.

They were silent for a few moments, and then Erigone spoke again.

“Death marks your path, Dionysus. Be careful where you tread.”

With the echo of her words on his heels, he left the small room.

He could have teleported then, but instead, he returned to the crowd and waded through their revelry, knowing he would need their worship to carry him through the coming days. Even as their energy washed over him, he could not shake the keen awareness that they were all coming to the end of their days. Soon, this warmth that surrounded him would no longer come from their bodies but from their ashes.

Dionysus needed a way to reach the island of Thrinacia since he could not teleport directly, given it was Poseidon’s territory. The only reason he had managed to escape before was because Hermes had located him and Ariadne and teleport them home—which was how he found himself in the Underworld, begrudgingly knocking on Hermes’s door.

“Come in!” the god said in a muffled, singsong voice.

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