Dionysus Bakcheios's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Dionysus stood in the empty pavilion with a blank wax tablet in one hand and a cup of wine in the other. The council had given him three weeks to plan a festival for Aether, the mortal hero the gods now called the greatest on Earth. Three weeks to honor a man he had never spent an evening with. He drank the cup down and stared at the tablet. The wax stayed smooth. His panther paced the marble between the columns, grape vines trailing from her collar. She stopped at the steps and looked back at him, the way she did when he was late feeding her. He had named her after his mother. He told people it was a joke. It wasn't. "I have thrown a thousand parties," he said to her. "I cannot picture this one." His usual festivals started with a barrel and ended with someone in a river. After the third drowning he had stopped counting. That was fine for satyrs. It was not fine for the boy the sky obeyed. He needed a shape for the night, and he had nothing. No theme. No first course. No reason. He was still staring at the tablet when his half-sister climbed the pavilion steps. Sophia. The mortal one. The Alderwyne girl, sharp as a blade and twice as expensive. She wore a camel coat that probably cost a village. She was also Aether's twin, which was the only reason he had sent for her. "You look stuck," she said. "I am stuck." She set her bag down on the golden pithos beside the door like it was furniture. "Show me what you have." He turned the tablet toward her. She looked at the blank wax for a long moment. "Honestly, that tracks," she said. "You're planning for the wrong person." "He is the guest of honor." "He's the excuse. Conner doesn't need another room clapping for him. He has that in New York on a Tuesday." She pulled off her earrings and set them on the pithos too. "Throw a festival about what he did. Not about him. The sky obeyed a mortal. That's the story. Every god in Olympia has a reason to show up to see what that means." He felt the shape land in his chest before he had words for it. Not a birthday. A reckoning dressed as a feast. Wine that loosened tongues. A procession under an open sky. Every Olympian in one room, forced to look at what Aether was. He picked up his staff from where it leaned against a column, the pine cone heavy at its tip. He tapped the tablet once. "Guest list," he said. "All twelve. Hera at the head." Sophia's mouth tightened. "That's a room that could go wrong." "That's the festival." He began to write.