I had always known all my children were mine, always known they were heroes, always been able to pick them out of a crowd. Power didn’t make any difference to that. I looked at them across the deck, trying to see where it did make a difference. Arete met my eyes, and as I looked away I recognized and identified my emotion.

I was envious, something I had rarely experienced. Envy is like jealousy, but quite distinct. Envy is when somebody else has something and you wish you had it too. Jealousy is when they have something and you wish you had it instead. I have felt jealous of people, usually when the thing I wished I had was somebody’s attention. It’s hateful, far and away my least-favorite emotion, because it makes me less than I could be. I dislike feeling it, and try to avoid it. Envy has been much rarer for me, because apart from people’s attention there’s normally very little that I want that I can’t just have, and very little of that is something anyone else could have anyway.

But at that moment when I saw my Young Ones coming back aboard full of power, I wanted access to my own power. And I could even have had it, if I really wanted it, far more power than my children had. I could return to being my whole self at any time, at the cost of this mortal life. I considered it for a moment, there on the deck. I could swim to where my priests were standing on the Delian shore watching the ship maneuvering out. I could sacrifice myself there—dying, as was poetically appropriate, where I had been born. I could return moments later in my full power. I just had to want it enough to give up my incarnation—and that meant wanting it more than I wanted to fulfill Simmea’s dying wish.

It was tempting, but only fleetingly. I looked down at the choppy sunset-hued sea between the ship and the shore. Simmea had taught me to swim. And Simmea had wanted me to stay in mortal form. She had some reason, and I felt sure she was right, whatever that reason was. Until I understood it and fulfilled it, or until I happened to die naturally, I would stay incarnate, even if it was inconvenient. Even when it hurt. Envy wasn’t pleasant, but it did teach me something about myself, even if it was something I didn’t much like. I was glad to have time to compose myself before there was a chance to talk to the Young Ones. I wouldn’t want them to know I suffered from such a mean emotion.