“I don’t know. The gods might recognize them as my sons. But they’d definitely know you three now.” Father put his hand against an especially large pine, patted it, then turned and started walking back toward the shore.

“So we could have resisted it?” I asked, following, the pine must underfoot still resisting my every step. “What would have happened?”

“If you’d been strong enough, you wouldn’t have gone through the ritual. If you’d tried to resist and not been strong enough, you’d have done it anyway. Why didn’t you resist?”

“It felt so right,” I said, and my brothers nodded, though Kallikles was biting his lip.

“But it wasn’t you,” Phaedrus said. “You’re here, you were on the ship. It wasn’t you making us do that.”

“It was my power. Things done with my power keep on working, even though I’m here. I can’t intervene. But things that have been set up keep on working. Delos is full of my power.” He frowned. “I don’t have any power right now, myself. So I couldn’t give you any. But Delos could.”

“We have power?” Phaedrus squeaked. I didn’t laugh at the way his voice came out because I felt the same myself.

“You said it marked us, you didn’t say it gave us power,” Kallikles said, rolling his eyes, though you think he’d be used to Father by now. “What kind of power? Power to do what?”

“Power according to your souls,” Father said, in that infuriating way he had, as if it were the most intuitive thing in the world and everyone knew it already.

“To do what?” Phaedrus repeated.

“To do whatever you want to, under Fate and Necessity,” Father said.

“Heal people? Walk on lava?” I asked.

“Yes, those sorts of things,” he confirmed. “But feel confident in your power before you try walking on lava! I don’t know how much power you have, I can’t tell without my own power. It may not be enough.”

I looked at Phaedrus, who was the one who wanted to control volcanoes. He was staring at the backs of his hands as if he’d never seen them before.

“I don’t know exactly how it works,” Father went on. “Whether Necessity woke up what was there already, or if some of my power from the island came into you. But right now you can do things I can’t.”

“We could have healed Mother,” I said before I thought.

“Too late,” Father said. “If I’d taken you there years ago, perhaps.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kallikles asked. “If you knew it would do this?”