“I am a Paladin,” I answered without thinking, and he smiled again. This time, there was something like fondness in it, and to be honest, I think that freaked me out more than the whole sardonic-in-the-face-of-destruction thing he’d had going on.

But then he looked back at the tie in his hands, heaving a sigh. “We can’t last without the Oracle, you see. Her—or in this case his—power feeds ours. We’re all very, very old men, no matter how dapper we appear.” He gestured to himself, and I thought it would probably be mean to point out that he wasn’t exactly rocking it on the dapper front right now.

“Without the Oracle, we wither. We die. It’s why we were so desperate to find him.”

Bee and Ryan still stood by the car, watching, and I gave them a little wave to let them know that I was all right. Then, clutching my skirt in my hands, I sat down on a cinder block next to Alexander, watching him carefully.

“The Peirasmos?” I asked, and Alexander heaved a sigh, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“Had you completed them, the trials would have increased your powers enough for me to use you if I had to. Ephors gain most of our strength from the Oracle’s magic, but the Paladin and the Mage help as well. Not enough, not nearly enough, but some.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s why you stripped Ryan’s powers. It wasn’t so that he couldn’t help me. It’s because you were draining his... his Mage energy or whatever.”

With another one of those humorless laughs, Alexander nodded. “Indeed. All of this had been an elaborate ploy to keep myself alive, and”—sitting up, he placed his hands on his knees, the headlights from Ryan’s car winking off the heavy gold ring on his pinky finger—“you see how well it has gone for me.”

“So the house was an illusion?” I asked, and Alexander shook his head.

“It was real enough. Created by magic, yes, but real.”

My head hurt. My heart hurt. And while I wasn’t sure how it was possible, I was pretty sure my soul hurt.

“If you were dying or... fading, how did you get enough power to set all this up?”

Alexander looked down again. His normally shiny shoes were covered in dust, and he poked at a loose stone with the toe of one. “Blythe proved useful.”

They were only three words, but they sent a finger of ice down my spine. I hadn’t liked Blythe—I’d hated her for taking Bee—but the idea that Alexander had killed her to take her magic...