Page 26 of Aïdes the Unseen
Watching.
Wanting.
She hadn’t seen me yet. Not fully. But I felt her—how her joy twisted every time her eyes skimmed the edges of the firelight. Looking. Expecting something more than wine. More than the revel. Looking for me.
I tried to stay away. I told myself I would only watch. That was a lie, and I thought I knew it before I even crossed into the grove.
Because even masked, even veiled in glamour and smoke—I found her.
She stood at the center of the spiral now, surrounded by godlings and dryads and laughing mortals. They threw grain and petals into the sky, wove flowers into hair already slick with sweat. The drums were thunder. The pipes were a storm.
When she turned, her gaze locked with mine. Sheknew. Immediately. Despite the mask. Despite the crowd. Despite everything.
I stilled. But she didn’t. She walked toward me like nothing else existed. Like the other gods didn’t gawk and satyrs didn’t whisper and Dionysus didn’t raise one amused, drunken eyebrow.
She just walked.
Then stopped, close enough to smell like crushed thyme and smoke, and said, “I was wondering when you’d come.”
I swallowed hard. “I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did.” Her voice was softer now, edged in something older than the harvest. Something that knew the feel of endings and chose them anyway. “Why do you hide?”
“Because this isn’t my world.”
Her mouth curled. “Yet you’re here. Again.”
The circle of dancers grew looser now, more chaotic. Heat pressed in from every side, human and divine bodies blurring in wine and flame. Laughter like birdsong. Skin like gold.
A pulse of something hedonistic, thick and ancient. The kind of joy that forgot itself. She turned and looked at the madness around us.
“They won’t remember half of this come morning,” she said. “They’ll wake with mouths like ash and bruises they don’t remember getting. But tonight?” She looked back at me. “Tonight ismine.” Then, softly, like she whispered to something fragile: “Don’t leave without me this time.”
My heart stilled.
“Kore—”
“Take me with you,” she said. Not begging.Asking.Choosing. “Please.”
I wanted to say no. For her. For the world. For the aching, golden weight of what she meant to so many. But she waslooking at me with open hands, not chained wrists. No fear. No illusion.
Just firelight and ash and hope.
And I—I had always loved beautiful things most in the moment before they fell. So I nodded.
Just once.
Enough.
Around us, the gods laughed.
Dionysus caught my eye and raised his cup in unspoken toast, a slow grin blooming like bruised fruit. Heknew. Of course, he knew. The lush enjoyed the drunken revelry whether it was sex or brawling. Better if it were both.
Hermes stilled beside a nymph mid-laugh, watching me with narrowed eyes and a tilt of his head. His tongue paused, just for a second, just enough tonotice. No one moved to stop us. Not yet. She took my hand. Again.
But this time, it wasn’t the gentle touch of a girl unsure of the line she was crossing. This was aclaiming.
I let her.
