Arsen was still partly turned away, to where a barrage of spells from the new arrivals were lighting up the night. They painted the strands of his hair pink and gold, and splashed his face with color. They were so pale, these Svarestri, so cold. But suddenly, he was warm, with the spell light gilding his skin, and causing color to bloom in his lips and cheeks.

He swallowed, clearly unsure whether to believe me or not. I followed the motion of his Adam’s apple with my eyes, and then let them drop lower, to the finely sculpted chest and arms that I’d barely noticed before. His shirt had ripped at some point, showing off much of his torso, and it was definitely worth seeing.

I wondered how I’d been so blind.

He was well made, beautifully in fact. And when I made another of those helpless little sounds, pulling his attention back to me, I gasped in surprise. Because that face… was a work of art.

“What are you doing?” he said suspiciously, despite the fact that I wasn’t doing anything. I couldn’t do anything but look, so I did, admiring the perfect features, the silver eyelashes over sharp, pewter colored eyes, the slightly flared nostrils as he took my scent, the faint, almost invisible flush of real color in his cheeks now, as his heart rate sped up.

I wasn’t in his head anymore; everything that had happened had knocked me out, some time ago. But I didn’t need to be to see his eyes narrow, and a pulse begin to beat in his neck. His tongue flickered out, as if to lick his lips, only to immediately withdraw. He shook his head as if to clear it, and I almost laughed. Because no, that wasn’t so easy, was it? Not with a powerful incubus pulling him toward me.

But I still didn’t know what Pritkin’s incubus thought it was doing. Having more energy would be nice, as I was frankly exhausted, but it wouldn’t change anything. My power still wouldn’t work here.

But what about the gods’?

The idea came out of nowhere, to the point that I wasn’t sure whether it was my own, or someone else’s. But it stopped me in my tracks, because the gods had ruled in Faerie, hadn’t they? All those centuries ago? So, their power must have worked here.

And while the Pythian power had been tethered to Earth, probably to make sure that we couldn’t get too out of line, the gods had been free to go where they liked. And I was a demigoddess. I didn’t look like one; didn’t feel like one; most of the time, didn’t act like one. But my mother’s blood ran through my veins, nonetheless.

And Arsen had gotten here somehow.