And when he got here, he was going to kill us all.

Unless…

“What are you doing?” Rhea said, when I staggered to my feet, my filthy, wet skirts wrapping around my legs and threatening to trip me.

I didn’t give her an answer, because I didn’t have time, and because she wouldn’t have liked it anyway. I didn’t like it, either, but if I was going down, I was going down fighting. And I had one last trick up my sleeve.

Or, rather, Pritkin did.

“Take Gertie out of here,” I rasped. “Take her now.”

“You will do no such—” Gertie began.

And then they were gone.

It wouldn’t take Gertie long to overpower Rhea and return, but I didn’t need long. This would work or it wouldn’t, and if it didn’t, it was going to be a short fight. Very short, I thought, and lifted an arm.

There was no time to panic, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to do anyway, because I was all out of adrenaline. My bones felt like liquid, my vision was still blurry, and all I could taste was bile. But I could still feel, and what I felt was a flood of power surging across the water toward me, unlike anything I’d ever known. There were no more questions about what I was facing. I didn’t understand it, but that wasn’t just a king of the fey striding this way, pushing boats aside with the force of his passing.

That was a god.

It didn’t look like one because it wasn’t corporeal at the moment. Aeslinn was, but the being surrounding him was pure energy, like the gods of old, who could take human form when they wished, but didn’t have to. They could appear as geese, or showers of golden rain, or oversized bulls—or like what was encircling Aeslinn in a sparkling cloud.

The halo of the old stories was real, only it was body sized and didn’t indicate holiness, or anything like it. It indicated power, splashing around beyond the confines of Aeslinn’s body, because the gods fought using themselves. The same energy that made them up was also their greatest weapon, and right now, it was everywhere.

I stared at it, while a little part of my brain reminded me that I was nobody; I was a runaway, a street kid, a secretary who read Tarot in a bar. Zeus had said it himself; I was so frail, so small, so human.

But a human with a lover who was more than he seemed.

Which was why I didn’t crumble under all that power. Or fall back to my knees, or cry out in terror, or whatever else the gods expected from us mere mortals. I embraced it instead, called it closer, and took it—

For myself.