“I do know that. The gods don’t turn down power, Cassie. But diluted among the family, all the multiplied thousands of us, his doesn’t have enough strength left to hurt anyone. Not from so far away—”

“And if you’re wrong?

“I’m not. And what is the alternative?”

“Break the spell. Let me die—”

“No.” It was flat.

It was also stupid. “Better me than the whole family! Mircea—”

I felt his arms tighten possessively, while his mental voice, when it came again, was as angry as I’d ever heard it. “That is not an alternative. And he is vulnerable. Let us make him feel it.”

Then those powerful hands looped themselves in agony, and jerked back.

I thought I heard a roar—of surprise, of fury, of pain—I wasn’t sure. It was distant, unimportant. Because Mircea had begun to feed, not on my blood, but on the foreign energy pulsing within me.

It hurt—the ache bright and sharp and horrible with every draw, fighting with the pleasure of a vampire’s kiss, making me gasp and cry out. It was far worse than a normal bite, but not because of him. But because of the barbed filaments that he was drawing into him.

Little thorns were suddenly tearing loose all over my body, but they went slowly, reluctantly, and damaged as much as possible in the process. Leaving a raw, ragged soul behind, even more injured than my body. Mircea might win this contest, but would there be anything left of me when he did?

It didn’t feel like it.

I thought I’d accepted death, come to terms with it, been willing to pay the price if I could hurt my enemy in the process. But I raged against it now, faced with the terror, not just of ending, but of leaving a world to be ripped apart as Zeus was doing to me. Mircea, Pritkin, Rhea—my entire court—none of them would survive. Because Mircea might understand the gods and their power, but I understood them and their hate.

I should; they’d been teaching me about nothing else since I met them.

So, I did the only thing I could do, the only thing I had energy left for, and screamed my rage at the being who was destroying me from worlds away. I cursed his name even as I felt my hold on life slipping through my fingers, blasphemed every way I knew. And yelled my defiance at the skies—

Until familiar lips stopped me, until a familiar thigh parted my own, until Pritkin drove his tongue into my mouth and his body into mine, at almost the same moment. And I felt a burst of power explode through me like nothing I’d ever known. I gasped against him, and then gasped again when the power of his people, of the incubus royal house, ignited around us in a way that it never had before.