Page 127

Ahhhh.Yes.That.

Poseidon was trying to heal himself, but he suddenly found it a lot harder than a moment ago.I was fighting him now, too, with everything I had, but not the way the others were.I fought for this, life-giving, life-affirming,life, flooding into veins starved for it, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

And I got help.I didn’t know why I hadn’t felt him before, perhaps too busy fighting to pay attention.Or freaking out, or dying, or starving, because Ihadbeen starving, I was always starving, it was hard to notice after a lifetime of it, but I could tell now, when I suddenly wasn’t anymore.Like I could tell who had been helping us, providing power we didn’t have, but he did, from the spill-over from the fight in the warehouse.

Pritkin’s incubus had absorbed some of the energy of that fight through the bond and held onto it.And then hitched a ride in spirit form with his other half into something far worse than hell because he loved me, too, he’d said as much once.And he couldn’t not come, no matter what he claimed.

He’d been the reason for the weird triple vision on the road, testing out the bond; he’d been the one helping us earlier, flooding that same bond with enough power to allow us to mimic gods, at least for long enough not to die—

And suddenly, it all made sense.Incubi could take traits from others if they consumed part of their souls, and the spell the three of us were under was asoul bond.All he’d needed to make a couple of extra demigods had been my mother’s legacy in my blood and power, and thanks to the fight, he’d had some of that.And now we both did.

He combined his abilities with mine with no words needed, and began feeding alongside me.And as it turned out, a prince of the incubi and a daughter of Artemis together could pull power from the dying bastard on the ground faster and harder than he could reclaim it.Yes, I thought, overwhelmed at the energy flooding into me, yes, this, just this, forever this!

And even more crazily, I wasn’t going mad with it.

You kept me sane, I thought at him in wonder, and felt it resonate through the bond.I felt Mircea and Pritkin realize who was with us, and their shock, surprise, and strange joy.And then an invitation, a hand outstretched, a brother willing to reconcile, finally understanding that this was what he had been born for—but would it be accepted?

So much hate, so much fear, so many recriminations and accusations, and stupid, stupid quarreling that had limited both of them—

Was it enough?

No, the incubus snarled.But it’s a start.

And the next moment, there he was, a fourth fully back and integrated into our bond, only not a fourth anymore, I realized.Athird.And I was breaking away from the now nonexistent puddle, was grabbing Bodil, was healing her with Mircea’s ability before she could bleed out, and it was easy.

Everything wasso easy.

Like that, I thought, shoving a burning golden whip into Poseidon’s side.Like this, I thought, pulling it out and drinking my fill, bathing in it, all that power, all that light.The fountain was going berserk behind us, but not like before.Like it was out of control and just spurting water everywhere, which mixed with the golden haze and the light from the glass mural overhead, while the dome was lit up by spell fire from outside so brilliantly that it rained down prisms like a multicolored disco ball.

But Poseidon was a beast, and he wasn’t going down without a fight.And healing Pritkin, who took a trident through the heart a moment later, and Mircea, who was staked by somebody who had realized what he was a moment after that, and Æsubrand, who wouldn’t stop believing he could fight a god no matter how many times said god pounded him into the freaking marble, was taking a toll.A big one, I thought, as the room spun dizzily around me.

Slow down!Pritkin snarled in my head, and he was right.We were hemorrhaging power almost as fast as we took it in.But the operative word was almost, I thought viciously, and plunged my whip in again and again, up to the hilt, using up most of the slower gush of power healing myself from the beating I was taking from the dying god, but didn’t care because everything I took from him, he didn’t get back.

Until suddenly, there was nothing left to take.

The death of an elder god, it turned out, was anticlimactic.One second he was there, an almost human-sized body shrunken in power but still deadly enough to kill one of his own servants who had gotten too close, cleaving the man in two with a final burst that I think had been aimed at Pritkin.And the next he was gone, just sparkles on the air like the ones the faded ghosts gave off in the wastelands, mere glowing specs on the night.

Then even they were extinguished and we were sitting there, staring at each other, bloody and battered and exhausted, with Pritkin’s hair all standing on end, Bodil nursing the stump of her missing arm, and Mircea looking cool and calm except that his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t hold his sword anymore.

“Here,” Alphonse said, taking it gently from him, because Alphonse was somehow still alive, too—how were we all still alive?

“I don’t know,” Pritkin said hoarsely, having heard my disbelief through the bond.“God as my witness, I don’t know.”

“Fuck gods,” Mircea said viciously, and yeah.

Yeah.

Chapter Thirty-Six

It wasn’t over yet.

That was the only thought running through my head as we carried Zara down the nearest hallway, and I attempted to heal her on the fly.To my shame, I’d forgotten about her for a moment, but she had been badly wounded, with a stubborn spell I didn’t know burning a hole through her belly.Only a ward by the other witches, which they’d had to cut her open to insert well below the skin, had kept it from eating her alive.

I finally managed to pull it out, snapping and lunging like a vicious purple snake, and shook it off my shielded hand into the hallway, where it promptly ate its way through a wall.I sealed up the wound afterwards, but she didn’t get back on her feet, having lost too much blood.And there was no time to find something to use as a stretcher.

There was no time for anything.

“Here,” Mircea said, and took her from the flagging coven, cradling the nearly unconscious woman to his chest like a baby.