Out of the Grave

By George Elmer

Think you know the story of Theseus and the Minotaur? Think again.

 

Ariadne has never been what anyone would call ordinary. A princess who trained as a priestess, she's always known her life would never be entirely her own.

 

Until a foreign prince comes and wants her to betray her kingdom.

 

The prince isn't alone, and his associate has plans not even the gods themselves can stand in the way of. Ariadne must choose between her kingdom and her freedom, before the family curse can claim another victim.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Elmer
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201502690

George Elmer

GEORGE ELMER is an author of dark gothic fantasy, writing for morally ambiguous people searching for worlds with a little magic and bloodshed. Children’s fairy-tale happy endings didn’t quench her insatiable desire for horror, so she set out to write stories without happily ever afters. She combines her various morbid interests to create intricate and plausible worlds. George’s ambition is to buy a château with the profits of her books and run writer’s retreats out of the grounds to help other writers to write their next best novels. Find her online home at GeorgeElmer.co.uk, or on Instagram (@georgethecreative).

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Out of the Grave

George Elmer

First published in 2021.

Copyright © 2021 George Elmer

Visit the author’s website at www.GeorgeElmer.co.uk

Cover photographs by Alice Alinari and Ross Sokolovski

Cover design and interior formatting by George Elmer

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Dramatis Personae

(roughly in order of appearance or mention)

Princess Ariadne Konosotis of Knossoss, the heroine

Asterion, the Minotaur and Ariadne's brother

King Minos Konosotis of Knossos, Ariadne’s father

Dionysos Eleutherios, the god of drunken debauchery, wine, and a few other things

Kastor Papaopoulos, the Prince Regent of Vasiliki, a right royal dick

Enyo Chiotis, head priestess of the Great Mother

Prince Anastasios Konosotis of Knossoss, Ariadne’s twin brother

King Zeus of Olympus, king of the Olympian gods and father of Dionysos, and his wife Hera, the stepmother of Dionysos and goddess of marriage and motherhood

Queen Pasiphaë of Knossos, Ariadne’s mother and sister of the witch Circe (yes, the witch who famously turned men into pet pigs)

Theseus, son of Aegeus and the god Poseidon, the prince of Athens

Circe Geroakis, Ariadne’s head attendant

Haides Cronides, Lord of the Underworld and god of dead people

The maenads, the rabid female followers of Dionysos

Zagreus Hadidis, son of Haides and Persephone, god of what is likely to be some combination of life and death

Xanthe Papadopoulos, another of Ariadne's attendants

1

Startled Cries

1,800 BCE, Knossos

The sun hadn’t quite set over the horizon as Ariadne Konosotis watched from the balcony as a contingent of guards shuffled the stumbling fourteen adolescents through the main courtyard, packed with curious onlookers.

If she wasn’t concentrating so hard on not wincing from the pull of the pins holding her considerable mass of dark hair up and off her neck, she would have sneered at the way the prudish Athenian sacrifices gaped in horror at the dress of her and her people.

Not that they knew they were sacrifices, but because of events her father wouldn’t quite disclose, the tiny settlement of Athens now sent seven underage boys and seven underage girls to them every seven years.

Ariadne wasn’t sure why it had to be so many sevens in the contract, or why it was her poor brother Asterion who her father had chosen to do the actual killing, but King Minos had claimed it was all in the name of the Great Mother.

And as one priestess of the Great Mother, Ariadne was leading this ceremony.

Or, she would be, if she wasn’t overhearing King Minos muttering to someone just out of her line of sight.

When men came to positions of power, Ariadne had learnt, they often thought themselves wiser than the council of the women they later chained to their sides. She’d inducted many such men into offices of power, and they often went mad from it, thinking they knew better.

Aridane hadn’t become a student of the head priestess by thinking she knew everything already. Unlike those men, unlike her father, Ariadne listened, learnt, and watched.

The words she said now, welcoming the Athenians into Knossos, she’d memorised. Her actions were nothing more than the practiced motions of years building up to this moment.

She listened, instead, to what her father said that was so important he’d say it during the biggest ceremony of the year.

It’s nothing as dire as that, Minos said to his companion. But she’s the heir to the throne. She’ll reach her majority in a few days, and they’ll depose me.

Ah, said his companion with a hint of humour. So it’s personal, then.

Minos huffed. Merely self-preservation. I want to remain king, and I want to do it in my own right. I’m merely a placeholder for a daughter who’d rather run away from her duties.

So you’re marrying her off, said the companion, to a prince regent as far away as Vasiliki. You know what the rumours are about Prince Kastor.

Ariadne could feel her eye twitch, but she didn’t let it detract from announcing to the guards to take their new guests to their quarters, so they might refresh themselves after such a long journey across the Aegean.

After all, she addressed the crowd below her, feeling both twenty and eighty all at once, we’re not savages. Regardless of what your king tells you, we will offer you guest rights during your stay here.

The guards took far more delight than they should have in hauling the Athenians away.

The Athenians just looked shocked a woman could do something more than produce heirs and spares for men. They remained gawping at her while the guards dragged them away by their ridiculous chitons and impractical draping dresses.

At least the men were quiet this year. Seven years ago, one Athenian had shouted at the observing men to cover the women’s breasts up, because their gods thought women were nothing more than trophies and shouldn’t be seen by anyone who wasn’t her husband and master.

He’d been the first the head priestess, Enyo Chiotis, had shoved down the stairs to the labyrinth of tunnels under the Great Temple.

This year, Ariadne was in charge. And this year, she would prove she could lead such important events.

It meant the Council would consider her a true heir to the throne.

Her twin, Anastasios, would have his test later, though his was more about redeeming himself after his drunken revel last week. Whichever one proved themselves before their twenty-first birthday would prove themselves the next ruler.

She just had to stay in the city and avoid this marriage her father wanted her to have. She couldn’t do anything if she was locked away in some farce.

When she turned from the balcony, Minos was there with the particular expression which meant he wanted to talk, and not even the gods themselves would stop him from saying it.

He reached for her arm. Dear daughter, he began, like he hadn’t already married off her elder sisters and removed them from the line of succession.

Ariadne adjusted her bodice and strolled right past him.

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Not that Dionysos was lurking at the back of the gathered crowd watching the woman on the balcony; it was just that this was the city best known for sacrificing humans every few years after a colossal fuck up between two kings on opposite sides of the sea.

And he just happened to be in the area at the time.

Unlike the city of Mycenae to the northwest, and Dionysos didn’t want to go back there in a hurry, it was a woman who stood at the forefront of the large balcony and welcomed her Athenian guests, and a woman who told the guards where to take her fourteen sacrifices. The men behind her, while looking just as important and rich, and most definitely more than twice her age, didn’t take control once during the flowery speech she gave.

She was magnificent, the woman who might as well have been a queen. Her dark red bodice and darker layered skirt hid her wiry frame well, but there was strength hidden there, and her eyes glittered violet with it in the evening sun. He also had a sneaking suspicion his stepmother would envy her intricate hairstyle, piled high in a precise manner as it was on top of her head with a few chestnut ringlets tumbling down in a fashion which was very much deliberate.

Her long, spidery fingers twitched with some absent thought, but she directed the crowd with practiced ease.

He’d