Either man could speed up my breath with a look, could bring me to the brink with a touch, could tip me over within moments. Hell, Pritkin had to actually hold back his incubus nature, whispering spells to prolong our passion, or any contact would have been disappointingly short. And Mircea… well, whatever problems we’d had, they had never extended to the bedroom.

Yet I couldn’t finish.

I thrashed against him, almost in anguish now, my body twisting, trying to find relief. But nothing worked. Nothing even came close.

And the Pythian power, likewise, stayed just out of reach.

What was wrong with it? I thought desperately. Why didn’t it come? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t make it; it wasn’t my slave. It had its own mind, and for the first time, I wondered: was it afraid? Did it fear Zeus, too?

Because it had reason. It was godly energy, gifted to the priestesses at Delphi by Apollo himself. But he had played nice with the All Father, hadn’t he? Just as Ares had. Both of them afraid of the repercussions if they didn’t.

And the Pythian power was merely a part of Apollo.

Maybe it didn’t think it would be enough. Maybe it didn’t want to take the risk. Maybe it thought I had already lost, and that it needed to preserve itself for Rhea and the fight to come, because it was really starting to feel that way.

Pritkin was staring at me wildly, as if he didn’t know what to do, either. But unlike me, he wasn’t used to failure; he always had a solution to everything. And the fear that he might not be able to save me this time was tearing him apart.

I could feel his emotions as well, as I lowered myself down to kiss him. Not for any magically-related reason, but because I wanted to. Because I wanted to wipe that look off his face.

Our lips touched, soft and gentle, and then hard and frantic, his hand going around the back of my head and tangling in my hair, his mouth and tongue searching for some sort of comfort in the end.

But, instead, we found something else.

A small electrical shock went through us, jumping from him to me to Mircea, as soon as we touched. It was a tiny hit of power, hardly anything, especially compared to what we had been creating. But it gave me an idea.