They splashed the hard lines of his chest, with one nipple still stark white, while the other was peach-pink and almost lost in golden body hair. They crossed his face diagonally, like a swath of woad on an ancient Celt, leaving one eye in blind relief and the other a brilliant, glowing green. They painted his lower body, too, with patches of color showing through the marble-like sheen, and tiny golden hairs glinting on his thighs.

And every movement was filling him further in.

Thrust—his hair took on a golden tint.

Thrust—his lips, colorless lines a moment ago, were now faintly pink, with strong white teeth just visible behind them.

Thrust—and I cried out, my orgasm building fast, and color spilled up from the connection between us to flood Pritkin’s entire lower body. He was like an artist dipping his brush in paint, and I was the paint. I didn’t understand it, but I’d seen something like it before… somewhere. I just couldn’t think…

Maybe because the changes were happening to me, as well.

Only I wasn’t adding color; I was losing it. Specifically, I was losing more of the silver filaments that had been multiplying in my flesh. A moment ago, they’d been bright, so bright, that they were almost too much to look at, spilling over my skin practically everywhere. And while they hadn’t been advancing anymore, they’d clung to my body like they planned to be permanent, like liquid metal tattoos.

Now one of the biggest was drawing up under the hand that Mircea had placed in the middle of my chest, getting smaller and smaller until he plucked the remainder up like a dropped handkerchief or an annoying cobweb, and tossed it away. It wasn’t happening all at once; Zeus was making us fight for every inch. But it was working.

And so was something else.

Overhead, the glittering black bands of incubus magic had been joined by ones of another color. Sparkling silver-white, they twined around and through the rest, as if two wildly different galaxies were dancing with each other. I stared up at them, entranced by their otherworldly beauty, but not sure what I was seeing.

Was that some of the lightning that Mircea had taken out of me? Was he turning Zeus’s own strength against him? Because that was how we’d gotten rid of Ares.

But that would be dangerous, so dangerous, with the All Father still in command of his power. Mircea had long ago been nicknamed Mircea the Bold, and he didn’t shy away from risk. But he also wasn’t stupid.

But then, what was it?

I put up a hand, felt it brush against my fingertips, felt it resonate deep inside me. I knew this power, as much as I knew Pritkin’s, instinctively, immediately. Because it came—

From family, Mircea confirmed, with vicious satisfaction in his mental voice.