“It was formed from your power, yes, but the idea was mine.” That last was said more sharply, and with less charm than his voice had held so far. He sounded more like Pritkin suddenly, who had never uttered a charming word in his life. Charm to him was another form of lying, of manipulation, of all the things about his heritage that he hated. He avoided it like the plague even with me, although I’d long since learned to hear the concern behind the blunt remarks.

But hearing it from this thing—

Was infuriating.

“You have a temper almost as quick as his, although you’ve learned to hide it,” the creature said. “You’ve learned to hide a great many things.”

“Get out.” My voice was harsh, so much so that it didn’t even sound like mine. But he wasn’t having it.

“You don’t like hearing your true voice, do you?” he asked, his head tilting. “Or seeing your true face—”

“I see it all the time.”

“No. You see the pretty, harmless, clumsy little mask, the human veil that covers the truth within. You think I don’t know? That I don’t see? I have always seen. How could I do otherwise, when we are the same?”

“We are nothing alike!”

“We are exactly alike. Why do you think I was able to help you a third time?”

I was going to ask what he was talking about. To point out that there had been no third time, assuming that there had been a first or a second. But then, he showed me.

And this time, it wasn’t a projection.

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

There was a flash of vivid blue eyes in a sun bronzed face, a crack like thunder, and a blaze of white light. Then the garden was gone, and I was back on my bed, holding my breath and expecting to see blood flowing from a dozen new wounds. I didn’t.

I saw something worse.

The lightning bursts in my skin, which had been growing like slow blooming fireworks, suddenly stopped. For a second, for one brief, wonderful second, I thought that Pritkin had somehow managed to fix this. But one look at the confusion on his face told me I was wrong.

And then I felt a familiar sensation: barbs sinking deep.

Zeus, it seemed, had decided that sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, a fitting term for one who had appeared in goose form to one of his mistresses. But he didn’t want pleasure from me; he wanted power. My power, all that I’d taken from him and everything I had left. It felt like a hundred fangs biting deep—and starting to feed.