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“Bollocks!”

And okay, I was getting pissed.“I hide when I need to and fight when I need to,” I told him shortly.“But my first instinct isn’t always to run anymore.It didn’t always help, and I’m getting tired of it—”

“That’s what I’m afraid of!”the green eyes flashed.“Like I’m afraid that you’re dealing with your trauma by trying to prove to yourself that you’re strong, you’re invincible, no one can hurt you—”

“Bullshit.”

“—when plenty of people can and will, given half a chance.You’re a demigod, Cassie, but that doesn’t make you invulnerable!”

“Don’t you think I know that?”I stared at him.I rarely felt anythingbutvulnerable!

“What I think is that you’re trying to prove something to yourself, and in the process—”

“So youdon’ttrust me?”

“It’s everyone else I don’t trust!”He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation.And then scowled at it when it returned dripping in mud.He flung the mass at the wall and took me by the shoulders.“Listen to me.I know I can’t understand what you went through that night and never will, and that you haven’t had time to recover, that the world never gives you time—”

“I don’t need any more time.”

“I think you do,” it was flat.“But we don’t have it.The gods may not know you’re back yet, but they’ll figure it out; Zeus will figure it out.And when he does, he’ll come for you.We have to do what we’re going to do quickly, and that means quietly, subtly, sliding under everyone’s gaze without attracting attention, not throwing a rave for the brain-dead bastards the gods left behind!Do youunderstand?”

“Of course I do!I told Bodil the same thing shortly after we got here!”

“Then what the devil happened tonight?”

I took a second because something told me I needed to get this answer right.But the truth, which was that Hail Mary had been all I could think of at the time, probably wouldn’t go down well.And neither would the rest of the truth, which was that I hadn’t expected three of them.

Or the rest of the rest, which was that I’d wanted a fight.

That last thought surprised me, as I hadn’t expected it.But the more I thought about it, the more it resonated.I’d been exhausted, terrified, and half-dead when I arrived back in this world, washing up on Earth’s shores like a beached fish, only to find that my home was almost unrecognizable.And ever since, my fury had been growing, tamped down by circumstance and unacknowledged, but there anyway.

Fury at that idiot Aeslynn, whose pride and cruelty had led to the demise of his world and the wreckage of mine.Outrage that I had to hide from the gods’ castoffs, the mindless creatures they’d left to ravage an already dying world.And disgust and seething resentment at the Black Circle, who had helped to ruin everything that other people had created, the vultures who built nothing themselves, worked for nothing, helped no one in their whole useless lives, but had come out like maggots to feed on the corpse of a world they’d helped to kill!

And then I’d seen Caleb.

He wasn’t just Pritkin’s friend; he was mine.And as loyal as the day was long and as selfless as all war mages were supposed to be, but rarely were.He had no wife, no kids that I knew of, no anything but a lifetime of service, and what had it gotten him?

What had he thought when his world fell apart?When he and the rest of his brothers went into battle, knowing before they left that they were doomed to lose?What had kept him going over five long decades when everyone he knew died around him, and the maggots grew fat and bold and inherited what was left of the Earth?

And what had theydoneto him, that one good man?

Yes, I’d been horrified, but I’d been furious, too, to the point that it had burned in my veins like acid.The whole time we were traversing that nightmare of a town, when I’d been forced to grovel in front of that posing “holy man,” when I’d spotted Caleb, pummeled into near unrecognizability and locked in a cage like an animal, when I’d had to witness the real animals drinking and partying around him, laughing at what they’d done, it had been building.

The fury of a goddess, of my mother, who wanted to watch them allburn.

“Cassie?”

“According to Zara, the gods don’t regularly hunt in that area,” I heard myself say.“The Black Circle settled there because it’s supposed to be deserted, and they stay mostly underground.Plus, the locals use some minor level magic for wards and things, and it covers for them.”

“Then why signal to creatures you didn’t think would be there?”

Because I’d hoped they would, I didn’t say.“Everyone’s terrified of them, so if they thought there was a chance one might see that signal and happen by—”

“You thought they would scatter?”

“Something like that,” I said evenly.“There were a lot of mages around, and we couldn’t take them all, and as you said, we needed a distraction…”

“A distraction!”Pritkin said, shaking his head in disbelief, and then his eyes narrowed.