Page 86 of Invoking Ruin

“I don’t know,” he answers.

I flinch. Indecision isn’t the worst thing, really. He could have easily wanted me to suffer. It’s a victory.

A hollow one.

Fuck this, fuck regrets, I shouldn’t have asked. At least he bothered to free me from the dungeon. I can go find a good view for the end of the world. I push past him, but he grabs my arm.

“You should have let them kill me. You should have kept the knife from Nyx at all costs.”

“That was never an option.” I pull my arm free, glaring at him. What will it take for him to understand that I cannot be without him?

“You’d have been a hero. They’d have forgiven everything,” he presses, getting closer into my space until I take a step backward, and then another.

“You think I care about being anyone’s hero? You’d have been dead.”

“Now I’m going to die anyway, Atê. We all are.” The cool marble of the wall chills my back. He’s caged me in, arms on either side of my head, blocking my escape.

“I still don’t regret it.”

He scans my face, dipping from my eyes to my lips and up again, as though there are secrets to be found there.

“Why?” he asks. “We had sex once, and then, you’ve followed all this time… Why?”

If he doesn’t understand, I’ll never be able to explain it to him. I’d tried in the chariot, and he hadn’t believed me. Why would he believe me now? I want to bite his face off. I want to tear open his chest and bury myself so deeply inside him we’re never apart.

“Because the world without you in it is as dark as the Void, Dionysus. It simply isn’t worth living in.”

Dionysus nods, something inside him settling down. Before I can ask what it is, his mouth crashes down to mine.

I gasp in air, the entire world freezing, standing still in this darkened cell in the bowels of Olympus. My mind frazzles, unable to keep up, but Dionysus never hesitates, his tongue darting past my open lips, coaxing a moan from me.

Then, my arms are around him, winding over his shoulders of their own accord as I kiss him back.

Dionysus hasn’t kissed me since that night thousands of years ago in the olive grove. Not as himself, not as a god. I cling to him as his lips give and take from mine, as he captures me. Claims me as his.

The sweetness of wine floods my mouth, and I arch my back, eager to feel the heat of him bleed into my skin.

I could drown in him. In this gift, this intimacy.

For so long, I’d been telling myself I didn’t need his affection, his love. As he kisses the very breath from my lungs, I realize what a liar I was.

How could I possibly live without this, knowing it’s here, and in reach?

How could I possibly live knowing what Dionysus is capable of giving me?

Slowly, reluctantly, he breaks away, placing more kisses over my lips, my nose.

“I wanted you to be wrong about me,” he says after a moment, his forehead touching mine. My insides flutter and swoosh, like they’re filled with a flock of swallows. “I wanted to want to be here. For my family. But I’m not like them, and they don’t need me. The walls are too close here, the air too stale.”

The world is cracking all around us, ready to fall down around our ears, but I don’t care. I’ve never cared. All the matters is Dionysus, the murmured confession, the way he takes my mouth again.

“I should have gone around the world with you when you asked,” he says. “We could have run forever.”

How badly I want to believe that we could have. He’s saying everything I ever wanted to hear. For a moment, I even picture it: an eternity of running away from my problems.

It’s a nice dream, one I’ve had for as long as I can remember, but it’s only a dream. We could have run from Nemesis, Nyx, and their respective allies for a long time. At some point, though, we’d have ended up right here, at the exact same outcome.

All we could have done is delay, and it’s too late for that now.

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