“Have you seen many other Golds?”

“Too many.”

“And what does a Gold look like?” Josh asked.

“Frightened.”

“Oh, I’m not frightened anymore,” Josh said simply. “I’ve gone beyond frightened, past terrified. Now I’m into petrified.”

Prometheus stared intently at Josh. “What frightens you?”

Josh picked up the remote control and started flipping through the channels. “Everything. This place. You. The Flamels. Dee. Machiavelli. The Shadowrealms, the leygates. The magic.” His voice rose with each sentence. “The thought that everything we were taught-every single thing we’ve ever learned, at home and in school, from books, from TV-is wrong. And Sophie,” he finished in a hoarse whisper, finally admitting his deepest fear. “I don’t think I know her anymore. And it’s all your sister’s fault.” He glared at the Elder, his anger making him reckless. “She changed her when she gave her those memories.”

Surprisingly, Prometheus nodded in agreement. “Sisters are a trial,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if they’re Elder or humani. Sometimes I think they exist solely to upset and annoy their brothers. I was once as close to mine as you are to yours.” He paused and added, “I’ve not spoken to her in millennia.”

“What happened?”

Prometheus shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I thought I knew. Now I am beginning to think that I might have been wrong. For ages I thought she had betrayed me to Chronos. Now… now I am not so sure. I made the mistake of not speaking directly to her.” His green eyes glowed in the dark. “Whatever happens between you and your sister, make sure you talk to her before making any decisions. Don’t allow anyone to tell you what she said, or what she did-make sure she tells you herself.”

“Is that, like, a warning?”

Prometheus grunted a laugh. “No, I just don’t want you making the same mistake I did.”

They sat in silence while Josh continued to flip through the channels. “You get a lot of foreign stations,” he said, eventually stopping at a soccer game. The commentary was in a language he couldn’t identify, Korean maybe. They watched that together until one team scored a goal and then Josh said casually, “You’ve trained some of the other Golds in the Magic of Fire.”

“Some,” Prometheus admitted.

Still concentrating fiercely on the television, Josh continued, “And do you know what happened to them? Where they are now?”

“I believe most are dead, Josh,” Prometheus said very softly.

“Most of them?”

“All the ones I trained. I cannot speak for the others.”

Stopping at the Weather Channel, Josh swiveled in the chair to face the Elder. “That doesn’t sound like good news for me, then, does it?”

“Probably not,” Prometheus agreed.

“I know the process is dangerous…”