“Dating?” That was Gertie. “What do you mean dating?”

“It’s another word for courting—”

“I know what it means!”

“You shouldn’t be “dating” anyone,” Agnes snapped. “You’re Pythia—”

“You should talk,” Rhea muttered.

“—although how you are, I have no idea! You’re the sorriest, most slapdash, most irresponsible—”

“She’s more Pythia than you’ll ever be!” Rhea said hotly, causing Agnes to round on her.

But she didn’t get a chance to deliver whatever scathing retort she’d come up with, because Gertie intervened.

“You could be more right than you know,” she said slowly, in an odd tone.

“Meaning what?” I asked.

And immediately regretted it.

“If you are involved with this war mage, and the enchantment that binds you is a love spell…”

Shit.

“…is he in it, too? Are you bound to both of them?”

I managed not to squirm. “Not… like you make it sound.”

“I would hope not—”

“That’s disgusting,” Agnes said, looking at me with revulsion.

“I’m not dating both at the same time!” I said hotly.

“But you are borrowing power from them both,” Gertie pointed out. “And that could be very bad.”

“I know. I’m working on it—”

“I don’t think you do know.” She regarded me soberly. “The Pythian power originally came from the gods. The gods were cannibals, leeching energy off each other, off demon lords, off anyone they could, to increase their strength. But sometimes, it did more than that. The power they consumed wasn’t mindless, and mixing it with their own changed them—”

“Changed them… how?”

“It depended on the source of the power. Zeus is said to have absorbed Phanes, a primordial god of reproduction, to give him the strength to sire the other Olympian gods. He also consumed his first wife Metis, who had prophesized that they would have a child together who would be stronger than Zeus himself. He had barely escaped being eaten by his own father, Chronos, for much the same reason, and later overthrew him. He therefore devoured her to prevent something similar from happening to him, and to steal her power.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Rhea said softly.

“What a surprise,” Agnes scoffed.

Gertie ignored them. “What you have done is to open a door to potentially changing yourself, or even worse, the Pythian power,” she told me. “Perhaps in small ways, perhaps in large ones. You cannot know what the end result will be, and thus you must close that door again—immediately.”

Sounded like a plan, I thought, shivering slightly. I wasn’t sure if that was the breeze off the water, or something else. Like the thought of my own power turning against me?