Chapter 10: The Gods Descend

The bathwater had gone tepid. Ivy didn’t care. She knelt beside the enormous porcelain tub—big enough for three, which was exactly how many bodies were submerged in it—and worked a soft sponge across Diana’s shoulders in slow, deliberate strokes. The water was cloudy with lavender oil and the faint purple residue of the venom-laced lubricant that had dried on Diana’s skin. Steam rose in lazy spirals, carrying the scent of crushed herbs and something greener, something that smelled like Ivy herself. Harley sat at the opposite end, Diana’s feet in her lap. Her fingers pressed into the arches with surprising tenderness, thumbs circling the balls of Diana’s feet, working out tension that had been there for decades. “Your toes are crooked,” Harley announced. Diana’s head rested against the porcelain rim, her dark hair fanned out in the water like spilled ink. Her eyes were closed. The dead Lasso still circled her throat—she hadn’t let them remove it—and her newly mortal body seemed smaller in the bath, softer, the divine luminescence replaced by ordinary flesh. “They were broken,” Diana murmured. “During the Battle of Metropolis. Doomsday threw me through a building. The bones healed before I hit the ground, but they never set quite right.” Harley’s fingers stilled. “You fought Doomsday?” “I fought many things.” “Yeah, but Doomsday. The thing that killed Superman.” Harley’s blue eyes widened. “And you’re worried about being mortal now? Princess, you went toe-to-toe with the thing that murdered the most powerful guy on the planet, and you’re crying about your toes being crooked?” Diana’s lips twitched. That almost-smile again. “It’s different now. Before, I knew I would heal. I knew I would wake up. I knew—” Her voice caught. “I knew she was watching.” Ivy’s sponge moved to Diana’s collarbone, tracing the hollow of her throat. “Hera wasn’t watching. Not really. If she were watching, she would have seen that you were happy. That you finally let yourself want something.” “She saw.” Diana’s voice was flat. “She saw and found me wanting.” “Then she’s a cunt.” Harley barked a laugh. “Red! You can’t just call the Queen of the Gods a cunt.”

“I just did.” Ivy’s sponge dipped lower, tracing the curve of Diana’s breast beneath the water. “And I meant it. Any mother who abandons her child for the crime of being loved is a cunt. Divine or otherwise.” Diana’s hand rose from the water. Her fingers found Ivy’s wrist, stilling the sponge. Her dark eyes opened, meeting Ivy’s green ones. “Thank you.” “For what?” “For being angry on my behalf. I haven’t been able to feel angry yet. Just ... hollow.” Her grip tightened. “But your anger helps. It feels like warmth. Like something I can borrow until I find my own.” Harley shifted in the water, moving closer. Her body pressed against Diana’s side, pale skin against olive, her hand still wrapped around Diana’s foot. “You’ll find it. You’re Wonder Woman. Even without the magic lasso and the god-blessings and the—” She gestured vaguely. “You’re still you. You still chased me through a penthouse. You still let me chain you up. You still took Red’s three monster cocks like a champ—” Harley. “What? It’s true. She’s a champ. The champiest champ who ever champed.” Despite everything, Diana laughed. It was a small sound, fragile and surprised, as if her body had forgotten how to make it. But it was real. It was hers. Ivy and Harley exchanged a glance over Diana’s head. Something passed between them—not words, not quite, but a knowing. They had both been broken before. They had both been abandoned. They knew what it was to feel hollow and cold and utterly lost. They also knew what it was to crawl back. — The voice came without warning. Booming. Not loud so much as vast —a sound that seemed to originate from inside the walls, inside the water, inside their own ribcages. It resonated through the penthouse like thunder rolling across mountains, and it was laughing. “THE SOUR OLD BAT SHOULD HAVE FLED LONG AGO!” The water in the tub rippled. The bottles of oil on the vanity rattled. Harley shot upright, water sloshing over the porcelain rim, her hand instinctively reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Ivy’s vines erupted from her wrists, thorns emerging along their length. She rose from the bath in a single fluid motion, water streaming down her green skin, positioning herself between Diana and the bedroom door.

Diana didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Her newly mortal body had locked up, every instinct screaming danger but her muscles refusing to respond the way they once had. The Lasso lay dark and dead against her throat. Then he appeared. He didn’t walk through the door. He didn’t materialize in a flash of light. He simply was there, seated cross-legged on the marble floor of the bathroom, as if he’d been there all along and they’d only just noticed him. He was enormous. Twice the height of any of them, his shoulders broad as an oxcart, his chest a barrel of flesh and muscle barely contained by a classical Greek toga that had seen better days. The fabric was stained with wine and crushed grapes, its golden trim tarnished to bronze. His face was red-cheeked and radiant, framed by a wild mane of matted dark hair that tumbled past his shoulders. His beard was even wilder—a thicket of curls woven through with living vines and clusters of fat purple grapes that glistened as if freshly plucked. His eyes were the color of deep merlot, and they sparkled with a mischief that made Harley’s own manic grin look positively restrained. “I’ve been waiting centuries for someone to say that about Hera.” His voice filled the room like wine filling a cup. “Centuries! All that bowing and scraping and ‘yes, Your Majesty, no, Your Majesty, please don’t turn me into a shrub, Your Majesty.’” He leaned forward, his massive hands slapping his knees. “And you just called her a cunt. Brilliant.” Ivy’s vines didn’t retract. “Who are you?” “Oh, come now.” He spread his arms wide, and the smell of fermented grapes and wild honey filled the bathroom. “You’ve been worshiping me for years without even knowing it. Both of you.” His merlot eyes shifted to Harley. “Especially you.” Harley’s mouth fell open. “Me?” “The madness. The ecstasy. The complete and utter surrender to the moment.” He grinned, and his teeth were stained purple. “You’ve been a priestess of mine since the day you first let go of sanity and found freedom on the other side. You just didn’t know whose name to cry out while you were doing it.” He rose to his feet—a movement that should have been impossible given his size, but he managed it with the grace of a dancer. His toga shifted, revealing a chest matted with dark hair and a belly that was soft but solid, like a barrel of aged wine. “I am Dionysus.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “God of wine. God of ecstasy. God of ritual madness and divine abandon. And I have come to tell you—” He pointed a thick finger at Diana, still frozen in the bath. “—that Hera is, and always has been, a colossal cunt.”