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“No!” Ariadne shrieked, jerking in his arms as Dionysus held her, unwilling to let her go.

The ophiotaurus’s bellow turned into a low and keen cry before it was silent.

With the creature slain, Theseus turned to them, blood spattered across his front, while the two men who accompanied him fished inside the ophiotaurus for its intestines.

“Fuck you!” Ariadne spat, tears tracking down her face.

Dionysus held her against him, his arms crossed over her chest.

“Now this I never expected,” Theseus said. “Bonding with a monster other than Dionysus.”

“You’re the monster!” she seethed.

Theseus placed a hand over his heart. “Oh, how you wound me, Ariadne, and after I have taken such care of your sister.”

“Don’t let him provoke you, Ari.”

“Is it Ari now?” Theseus asked, his eyes shifting to Dionysus. “Did you call her that before or after you fucked?”

Dionysus glared. He did not know if the demigod was only assuming, but his fixation on Ariadne was evident. This was more than jealousy. It was obsession.

Theseus’s men finished with the ophiotaurus, and they each approached and flanked him with handfuls of intestines.

“It is too bad,Ari, that you cannot see my potential even as I hold it in my hands.”

“You aren’t holding anything,” she said.

Dionysus chuckled, but Theseus glared, and his lip curled into a snarl, then he held up his bloodied knife.

“Oh, look. You were wrong.”

Theseus appeared in front of them and drove his knife toward Ariadne. Dionysus blocked the blow with his arm, though the blade lodged in his flesh. At the same time, he summoned his thyrsus and shoved it into the demigod’s stomach. Theseus’s eyes widened. Dionysus wrenched free from Theseus, who stumbled back, holding his hand to his stomach where he bled.

“If you hurt her, I will kill you,” said Dionysus.

“Get in line,” Theseus replied, and when he smiled, his teeth were bloody.

It seemed that Theseus was slow to heal. What a grave weakness. He was clearly very much aware of that fact too, because he decided against attacking again, and instead, he and his two men vanished, taking the ophiotaurus’s intestines with him.

When they were alone, Dionysus released Ariadne, who raced to the creature, lowering to her knees. A horrible cry tore from her throat as she extended a shaking hand to pet the creature, and the only thing Dionysus knew to do was hold her too.

“I hate him,” Ariadne said on a shuddering breath.

“I know.”

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, but the sudden flare of Hermes’s magic straightened his spine. He knew it because it had haunted his dreams a time or two—and as it surrounded them, they were pulled from the cave and deposited on the hard and pristine floor of Hades’s office at Nevernight.

“I never thought I would see the day you knelt at my feet,” said Hades.

Dionysus ignored Hades’s comment while he stood and helped Ariadne up. She wiped at her face with her hands, trying to recover from the horror they’d experienced in the cave.

When he did look at the god, Hades’s expression was a strange mix of confused frustration.

“Perhaps you should try kneeling too,” Dionysus said. “You’ll have to get used to the pose. Theseus has slain the ophiotaurus.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

HADES