“Tell me, what do you do if there is no throne handy? Do you carry a portable model with you, or do you just commandeer whatever is handy, like lawn chairs and bar stools?”

“Your father once told me that a dog sitting on a throne is still a dog, while a king in a crumbling rocking chair is still a king.”

Nice choice of words, considering his official title was preceptor of the Iron Dogs. “My father?”

Hugh sighed. “Come on. I saw the sword, I walked through what remained after Erra’s destruction, and I found your flowers where you and the shapeshifters fought the Fomorians a year ago. I felt the magic coming off them. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

It was like that, then. “Fine. What do you want?”

Hugh spread his arms. “What do you want, that’s the question. You came here, to my castle.”

“That insulting-intelligence remark goes both ways. You set a trap, lured me across the ocean into it, and now I’m here. If you wanted small talk, we could’ve done that in Atlanta.”

Hugh smiled. Your teeth are too perfect, Hugh. I can totally help you with that.

I pretended to study the Golden Fleece. These were just opening feints. Soon he would get serious and go in for the kill, one way or the other. The fleece looked in too great a shape to be centuries old.

“Did you really kill a ram with gold wool?”

“Gods, no. It’s synthetic,” he said.

“How?”

“We took a ram pelt, coated it in magic to keep it from burning, and dipped it in gold. The real trick was getting the proportion of gold and silver right. I wanted to keep the flexibility of gold, but it’s so heavy the individual hairs kept breaking, and too much silver made it stiff. In the end we went with a gold-copper alloy.”

“Why go through all this trouble?”

“Because kingdoms are built on legends,” Hugh said. “When the hunters are old and gray, they will still talk about how they went to Colchis and hunted for the Golden Fleece.”

“So you want your own kingdom?” Aiming high.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Perhaps.”

“Is my father aware of your plans? History says he doesn’t like to share.”

“I have no taste for the purple cloak,” Hugh said. “Only for the laurel wreath.”

The Roman emperors had assumed the purple cloak as the sign of their office, while victorious Roman generals would ride through Rome in triumph with laurel wreaths held over their heads. Hugh didn’t want to be the emperor. He wanted to be the emperor’s general.

“What are your plans, Kate? What is it you want?”

“To be left alone.” For now.

“You and I both know that won’t happen.”

I touched the Golden Fleece. The tiny metal hairs felt soft under my fingers.

“I killed Voron,” Hugh said quietly.