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I still hadn’t figured out if she was just making shit up so neither of us had to acknowledge how tightly Daphne had me wound. But if she was telling the truth, it made sense.

I trusted her.Hadtrusted her.

If it wasn’t my power, it was my training. If something happened, I knew that she could figure a way out of it.

So around her, sleep hit me like a train, knocking me out.

My brain felt fuzzy and the top of my head was starting to ache. Another night of this and I would be tempted to demand she sleep next to me just to get some rest for once.

I went searching for her, just to see what she had planned. Daphne had a very specific look she got when her brain sparked with an idea.

She would take a deep breath in, the skin around her eyebrows going slightly taut. Then her lips would puff out a little before pulling, barely noticeable, into a contained grin.

And that expression was clear as day after we were released from the lockdown.

I hadn’t seen her yet. Not unsurprising, given we’d both taken to spending time together like the plague.

But if whatever idea she had could fix this faster…then yeah, I’d torture myself in her presence to get it over with. If only to get rid of the nagging tingle on the back of my neck, one that beckoned incoming strife.

We couldn’t afford a war. We’d barely recovered from the last one. After Troy fell, the world went into such upheaval new gods started springing out of the fucking ground. The Roman pantheon.

Maybe it was happening in reverse this time. The lines were merging, so war would follow.

I’d prepare, but I wasn’t going to entertain that idea until it became a reality I couldn’t ignore.

So, first—Daphne.

I knew where she was almost instinctively. While a good part of my power started transferring to her in the last few years, I’d gotten a bit of hers too.

My knack for strategy had gotten sharper. I was able to remember things in larger chunks and for longer than I used to. I’d been trained to suppress my fear in stressful situations, but now it settled to an almost undetectable level.

I made my way to the training hall, stopping at a few points to talk to old company mates. When I got within a few feet of the doors to the furthest room, I heard Daphne’s curses.

My pace picked up on its own accord. It wasn’t until I was through the doors that I realized she wasn’t cursing out of pain, but rather frustration.

Her eyes were closed and she sat cross-legged on the floor, just out of dodge of the knives sailing past her head.

I waited for the metal arm—a gift from Lia Vulcan—to stop throwing knives before making any moves toward her.

Once it stopped, Daphne breathed in deep, a pulse of her power leaving her in a wave.

“Three at the head. Two on the chest. One stomach. One leg.” Daphne spoke to herself quietly, guessing the placement of the knives.

A product of deep meditation, sinking into her power. The only problem was, she was—

Daphne opened her eyes and yelled, “For the love of fucking ZEUS!”

She was wrong. Not terribly, but wrong. The knives hadn’t touched the stomach or leg of the target.

“You want to fuck Zeus?” I asked, leaning against one of the rising stairs with arms crossed over my chest.

Daphne’s wildfire gaze whipped to me. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Luke.”

Luke.

Her guard was down, yanked free of her grasp by frustration. “How long have you been at this?”

Daphne moved to stand. “A little over an hour,” she said while she walked over to turn off the arm.