I tumbled through the portal with a half-crazed mermaid and what felt like an ocean of water. We shot across a large open space, falling, flailing, and, in my case, half-drowning. And hit what might have been a wall, or a mountain, or basically anything else, because I couldn’t see!
          Or breathe, I realized. Or move, with a giant firehose of liquid slamming into me from behind, smashing me into the pale golden stone in front of me like a bug on a pin. And hard enough that I probably would have the pock-marked imprint of the rock permanently embedded into my cheek if I survived this.
          I finally took a breath because it was either that or pass out, and it was half water, half air, which did not improve things. But the mermaid was determined and fierce and currently cursing, and I don’t just mean audibly. She was cursing the water out of our way as she hauled me off the stone, and even stranger, it worked.
          The waves curled back on themselves as if offended or as if Moses had arrived to part them. Only it wasn’t Moses who stumbled out of the wash a moment later. It was two bedraggled-looking women, both on two feet because this mermaid could transform.
          Of course, I’d learned that many, if not all, of the Margygr could. But I’d learned so much lately and had yet to really categorize or absorb any of it that I had just started accepting things. Which was why I didn’t react when a huge vampire grabbed me, spun me around, and planted a fang-filled kiss on my cheek.
          I’d spatially shifted him through the portal a minute ago and thus saved his life, and he seemed appreciative. And so was a fey prince who usually hated my guts but was now clapping me on the back almost hard enough to force me to my knees. I’d saved him, too, by absorbing a bunch of power that some other merpeople had cast in a flooded, quickly collapsing room in another world.
          The power had been intended for a spell to hold the ceiling up, or what was left of it, but hadn’t worked because it wasn’t just the room collapsing. It had been the whole world breaking apart and imploding or exploding; I wasn’t sure, as things had been pretty confused there at the end. All I knew was that the Margygr had been killed before they could direct their magic anywhere, and the rest of us had been about to follow suit until I grabbed all that power and stuffed it down.
          I could do that, as my mother had been the goddess Artemis, and while I hadn’t gotten much from the godly side of the family tree, I could consume magical energy the same way she had. I couldn’t drag it out of someone like her, but had to wait until they coughed it up. Fortunately, the Margygr had, in preparation for a spell they’d never had a chance to cast.
          Unfortunately, I’d used their energy up during our escape, and I currently thought that passing out sounded like a good idea. But I didn’t, as it would destroy whatever tiny shreds of dignity I had left. Which, as usual lately, wasn’t much.
          My name is Cassie Palmer, and not so long ago, I was Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world. But then Faerie happened, and I found myself a refugee washed up on Time’s shore somewhere I didn’t recognize. Because who could recognize this?
          I stared around and didn’t understand anything. But then I was grabbed by the rest of our party, including a water-logged demigoddess named Bodil and a man named Pritkin, AKA my other half, my partner in crime, and the guy I was gonna drag to an altar if we ever got out of here, wherever here was. Because it was supposed to be Earth, but...
          It didn’t look like it.
          But before I could point that out, the water, which had been spewing out of the portal with enthusiasm, hitting the wall where it had tossed us and flooding the floor up to our knees, abruptly cut out. Our little knot stopped grabbing and hugging each other to stare at it, with what was probably varying levels of shock. Bodil, the oldest of us, abruptly sat down in the flood and went blank.
          I sat beside her because it was either that or fall down, and I couldn’t get any wetter. Enid, the aforementioned mermaid, joined us. The men continued standing, maybe thinking it was more manly or because they were looking a little lost, too.
          Fair enough.
          It wasn’t every day you experienced the death of an entire world.
          Or maybe, like me, they just had no idea where the heck we were. That was even more of a problem when the portal disappeared as abruptly as the water had. I guessed its energy had allowed it to persist for another few seconds after the destruction, but it was gone now, and with it went most of our light.
          Most but not all, I thought, staring upward.
          It was hard to see past the portal’s swirling red aftereffects, but I could tell we were in some kind of building. And while the little I could see was mostly sand-covered, it was man-made. Or parts of it were.
          It looked more like a cavern that somebody had reinforced with a framework of heavy timber beams and reminded me of something I’d seen once, but I couldn’t think well enough to name it. But that was a ceiling high up there that sunlight was illuminating through a hole. There wasn’t much light compared to the portal’s previously blinding variety, but it was enough for Pritkin to decide to take a look.
          “Take care of her,” he told Bodil, and could have been referring to either Enid or me. But considering who was weaving about like she would collapse any second, even while sitting down, I was pretty sure he meant me. I tried to stop, as it was embarrassing, but nothing happened.
          So I just sat there, swaying gently, as he and Alphonse, the big vamp, and Æsubrand, the silver-haired fey prince, climbed up a sand drift that must have been three stories high to peer out of the hole in the roof.
          Alphonse made it first, which seemed to piss off Æsubrand, who was right on his tail. Pritkin, whose wet blond hair was shining like a beacon in the spill of sunlight and who wasn’t part of the other two’s dick-measuring contest, brought up the rear. Leaving us three girls alone, although a demigoddess older than the pyramids probably didn’t qualify for that term.
          Neither did I, although I was only twenty-four. My blond hair held no gray, and my blue eyes were unlined, but as Indiana Jones once said, it wasn’t the years; it was the mileage. And mine was... kind of a lot.
          Enid, though, was a fresh-faced teenager and wasn’t looking like someone who had just lost her entire world. The sunlight turned her wet red hair to flame and gleamed in her wide hazel eyes. She’d been wearing a servant’s tunic when she transformed and had managed to keep it on despite hauling my exhausted ass through the portal, so she was dressed, if badly.
          But damn, she made it look good.
          Especially now, with her hand out, palm up, to catch the glistening rays of a foreign sun. Only... it wasn’t entirely foreign, was it? She was part fey but part human, too, and right now, she had a look of intense hunger on those stunning features.
          A second later, she was back on her feet and running up the slope after the guys with an almost feral intensity.
          “She’s wanted to go to Earth for years but stayed back to help others,” Bodil told me. “Her skills with glamourie are impressive and were useful when we needed to hide someone.”
          She was talking about Enid’s ability to conceal half a face full of scars, which had been given to her by a jealous fey who couldn’t handle that a little half-human mutt of a girl was better looking than her. I guessed that had encouraged Enid to work on one skill above all others, and starting so young, she had become amazing at it. Normally, the smooth perfection of her skin was flawless, even close up.
          It had allowed her to help Bodil and a handful of others to free the most endangered slaves of the so-called Green Fey, the ones whose court we’d just escaped, and get them to Earth. They were the descendants of humans brought to Faerie centuries ago, whether by choice or not. And many, like Enid, had never seen their home world.
          She wasn’t going to be seeing it at its best right now, I thought grimly, as the reason her adoptive world had just vanished from existence was operative here, too. And it looked like Bodil’s thoughts were traveling along the same lines. The beautiful ebony face under its impressive cascade of tiny black braids was no longer blank but almost fearful, if someone so formidable could be described that way.
          It seemed unlikely, as I’d just seen her take on an army of elder demons, buying us time to escape a collapsing world, but there it was again. A furtive look, a widened eye, a downturned lip. Bodil was sensing something I wasn’t, and she didn’t like it.
          “Get them back!” she said suddenly, gripping my arm.
          “What? Who?”
          “Everyone! Now!”
          I didn’t know how she expected me to do that, but it didn’t matter. Because here they came, pouring back through the crack in the ceiling, looking like they’d seen a ghost. Or a god, I thought, as a great eye appeared in the crevasse a moment later, peering down into the darkness.
          It was blue, the size of a car, and surrounded by pale blond lashes. But it wasn’t the size that had me reeling from a relief so palpable that, for a moment, it was more dizzying than my exhaustion. The creature I feared the most had blue eyes, but his made this color pale into insignificance. If it hadn’t, in my current state, he wouldn’t have needed to kill me; I’d have probably had a heart attack all on my own.
          As it was, everyone froze, including Bodil and me, and then, without the need for discussion, we slowly sank into the tide still surging around us.
          It wasn’t deep, even though we’d brought a massive amount of water with us. The room we were in was cavernous and had dispersed much of the flow. But the sand that had blown in through the ruined roof had piled around the space, leaving a concave depression where we lay and where some of the water had gathered, forming a pond.
          But ponds were not frequently found in the desert, where we looked to be, something that seemed to have occurred to our visitor. He obviously couldn’t see very well, as the room was dark, and the sunlight outside probably made it seem more so. But some of that sun was playing off the water around us and had caught his great eye. He’d probably glimpsed motion from the guys and come to investigate, and now...
          He was punching the ceiling with blows like a pile driver, causing cracks to spider everywhere and pieces of rock to cave in.
          Shit, I thought but didn’t say, as I didn’t know how good a god’s hearing might be. I flipped over instead and started half crawling, half swimming, even as the first pieces of rock began splashing down around us. They hit with crashes in the shallow water, which wasn’t deep enough to cushion the blows, sending liquid flying, waves churning, and screams echoing in my head that I wouldn’t allow myself to utter.
          Animals don’t scream, I reminded myself as shrapnel peppered my back. And that’s what I was if any of my movements were somehow heard above. Just some desert creature, having squirmed in here looking for a drink and now flailing around desperately.
          Not a person, not a human, and certainly not an out-of-work clairvoyant because my job didn’t exist anymore since the gods had returned and laid waste to two worlds. Like my power, which... hadn’t come back, I realized abruptly. So abruptly that I stopped moving for a second because that wasn’t how this was supposed to work.
          I was on Earth now, which my little band had desperately tried to reach because that was where my power was strongest. It should have allowed me to shift myself out of here and flee backward in time before all this destruction happened to try to stop it. That ability had been gifted to the Pythias by the god Apollo millennia ago, but he hadn’t trusted us with the unfettered use of it.
          Which, considering that I’d recently helped to kill him, was fair. So, he’d tethered his energy to Earth, meaning it could only reach me in Faerie when a portal was open between the two worlds. But I wasn’t in Faerie anymore; I should have access to it! I should be able—
          To pay attention for half a second before I was crushed to death!
          Fortunately, I was jerked aside by Bodil right before a semi-truck-sized piece of ceiling hit down where I’d just been daydreaming and would have flattened me. As it was, it came close enough for my arm to be strafed by the edge, which would have probably taken it off, except that I was dressed in dragonscale armor. Because Faerie was a scary place, but not as much as Earth, apparently!
          Bodil took a wild-eyed second to internalize just how close that had been and then jerked me into the darkness and out of the patch of sunlight.
          However, we soon ran out of room to maneuver at a sand dune taller than us, which we could have scaled but didn’t dare, afraid that the movement would draw the creature’s eye. We settled for flattening ourselves against it instead, while a giant fist kept hammering away overhead. I stared up at the rest of our team, who were hiding in the shadows under the jagged lip of the roofline, having squeezed between its shattered remains and the top of the dunes, staying out of the way of the fist but unable to come down as they’d be spotted sure as hell.
          They were staring back at us or at where we’d just been. I really hoped they couldn’t see us because if they could, it could. And right on cue, my shiny silver armor went black.
          Love you, Augustine, I thought fervently, remembering the designer who had crafted it for me. I wondered if he’d survived. I wondered if anyone had, with gods the size of skyscrapers prowling the damned landscape!
          I wondered if I would ever have the chance to find out, as a massive arm reached into the sizeable hole and started feeling around the floor, searching...
          For us.
          And that tore it for Bodil, who had not spent her life skulking in the shadows, praying nobody noticed her. She was a warrior and wasn’t going out like this, accidentally smashed to death by a careless swipe from a divine hand. If she was going to die, she’d do it loudly and hurt her enemy as much as possible in the process.
          I felt her tense beside me, saw the fire come literally back into her eyes as flames eclipsed their usual sharp black, heard her suddenly indrawn breath—
          And threw myself at her, taking her down more from the surprise of my assault than anything else. We hit dirt and water both, with me fighting like a wildcat with the last of my strength and her staring at me as if I’d gone mad. And maybe I had.
          The cumulative effect of the last few days—because boys and girls, that was all it had been, a COUPLE OF DAYS—would have done that to almost anyone. Especially since, in that period, I’d nearly been killed a few dozen times, been forced to fight creatures I’d never even known existed outside the pages of some warped mythology book, and then had a whole damned planet crash down around my head. And yet somehow, somehow, I was still alive, and she was not messing that up for me!
          I had my heir to find, my power to regain, and two worlds to save, and Bodil was going to help me, all of them were going to help me, or a rogue god was going to be the least of their problems!
          Bodil was staring up at me as if she’d heard all that, which... yeah. Mind reading was one of her gifts, wasn’t it? Just as well.
          I’m not sorry, I thought at her as hard as I could. And while you might know demigoddess stuff better than me, nobody knows how to skulk around better than I do. I spent my whole childhood at it, I’m good at it, and that’s how we’ll get through this!
          No bravado.
          No crazy heroics.
          No nothing, because this isn’t about us; it’s about our worlds. So we suck it up, we do the job, and since the job requires us to be alive, we swallow our pride and we hide. We crawl. We do whatever we have to because if we don’t, there isn’t anybody else, and there never will be.
          Do you get it?
          Bodil nodded, looking a little gobsmacked. But I guessed she agreed because she didn’t overpower me, which she damned well could have. Right then, anyone could have, as I felt terrible, with my magic sitting at zero and now my human strength almost gone, too.
          That little dust-up had been really stupid.
          Or maybe not, I thought, barely aware of it when the giant got bored, the arm was withdrawn, and sunlight flooded back into our gloomy little world.
          And I folded like a pack of cards and went out.
 

          Something smelled good. I felt my nose twitch. Really good.
          “She’s awake,” a familiar, sardonic voice said.
          “How do you know?” That was Enid, and she sounded worried.
          “There’s food cooking.”
          “There is?” I croaked and tried to sit up.
          I failed, not because of my lack of strength, but because something heavy was draped over me. I pushed at it, and it was sort of cloth-like. And furry, I thought, as my hand hit the top.
          I opened my eyes to discover that it was a bearskin—a huge, brown, somewhat moth-eaten bearskin that might have been a rug or some bizarre decoration in another life but was now serving as a blanket for me because I was still damp. Waterlogged armor doesn’t dry fast, with too many cracks and crevasses for small amounts of liquid to pool in, and mine had not morphed back into the tattered silver gown that was its alter ego when danger no longer threatened. Just as well; that thing was starting to take on an odor.
          Of course, so was I, and as it was a cross between panicked sweat, spent magic, and hot, musty bear, it was not pleasant. But that was, I thought, finally reaching a sitting position and discovering a small but cheerful fire over which a pot was bubbling. That wasn’t so strange, except it was in the middle of what looked like a decrepit shopping mall.
          Which it was because I had seen this place before.
          “The coven’s enclave,” I croaked, staring at one of their funny advertising signs, this one with a cauldron that a pert redheaded witch was stirring with a wand. Or maybe that was supposed to be an oversized spoon; I couldn’t tell as she wasn’t moving, and neither were the contents of her brew. That wasn’t normal for the coven’s hideaway, which I’d visited once before when I obtained the prototype for the armor I was currently wearing.
          The local covens had created a town with an underground mall in the desert outside of Vegas, complete with a portal system with no rivals I knew of anywhere. It not only connected the covens’ enclaves around the world to each other, allowing them to maintain their way of life outside the control of the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical authority, but it also had connections to Faerie. I remembered traders striding up and down this street, levitating pallets of goods behind them, buying, selling, and chatting with the colorful part-fey, part-humans that had found a home here.
          They were gone, along with the formerly brilliant, animated street, which had rivaled the neon lights of old Vegas. The magic that had illuminated it was dark now, with some signs still in place on tumbledown, dust-covered buildings, but none were working. I guessed that wasn’t surprising, as many structures looked like a fire had raged through them, collapsing roofs, eating through walls, and leaving everything looking more like a field of charcoal than the colorful, vibrant place I remembered.
          And since the powerful wards that had protected the complex hadn’t been able to extinguish the fire, I was pretty sure I knew what kind it had been. The gods brooked no rivals. It was something that the coven’s patented go-to-ground model for survival had had no chance against.
          “Look!” Enid said excitedly.
          I turned back from perusing the dead street to see her kneeling excitedly on the floor, where cracks in the cobbles had allowed a single green sprout to shoot up between the stones. It was a hardy-looking little thing, nourished, I guessed, from some water source below and strengthened by the sunlight leaking through gaps in the ceiling. It looked like the witches had hollowed out a hill or magicked one on top of their town, but light was spearing through myriad holes in the shell above us, like in the great portal room where we’d arrived.
          “Watch this,” Enid said, looking at me. And then back down to where her little discovery was doing something as she poured a small amount of water on it from a chipped teacup. The sprout shivered briefly as if in a slight breeze and then plopped out another leaf to join the three it already had.
          Enid clapped her hands, seeming delighted, and I decided to blow her mind.
          “Watch this,” I said, and crawled over. I took the cup from her and dunked a finger in it, then touched the wet finger to the tiny “trunk” of the sapling...
          And pulled out yet another leaf.
          “How did you do that?” she breathed as if I’d just performed the world’s greatest magic trick.
          “I didn’t. There used to be a great oak down that way,” I nodded at the far end of the concourse. “The witches who lived here could make seats for themselves by spilling water on a platform they’d caused to grow inside the hollow trunk. They just pulled them up from the wood, like plucking mushrooms,” I showed her with my hand. “It was some kind of spell—”
          Pritkin said a word I didn’t know, but I guessed Enid did as her eyes got big.
“But that’s Blarestri magic!” she said, looking almost shocked.
          “In Faerie. Here, there are no such restrictions,” he told her. “The witches learned their craft from the Old Ones who live in the mountains—” he paused. “Who used to live in the mountains,” he added more softly. “They taught them a unified system.”
          “Why was it not so in Faerie, then?” Enid asked, her eyes sliding from him to Æsubrand, who was trying to roast some small creature on a stick over the flames. “Before you two, I had never thought to meet anyone with all four elements. It was unheard of!”
          “It wasn’t common, even here,” Pritkin said, glancing about at the destruction, expressionless. “But many of the people who built this place had two or even a weak third talent, and they all lived together, so what one couldn’t provide, another did.”
          “Yet on our world, where the magic originated, we were so separate,” she said, frowning at the little plant. And then looked up, her color high. “Perhaps we could have fought the gods better if we hadn’t been!”
          “You’ve answered your own question,” Bodil commented. She had been tending our pot and seemed satisfied as she pulled it off the fire and divvied its contents into fire-blackened bowls.
          “What?”
          “The gods separated the different streams of magic, giving only one to each of their groups of ‘children’ and killing anyone who dared find a way to have more.”
          She glanced at Pritkin and Æsubrand, the latter of whom looked uncomfortable, although that could have just been the effect of her remarkable eyes. They were back to black now, but it didn’t make much difference. Bodil could cow the gods themselves.
          “They wanted us to be separate and warring with each other,” she added. “So that we could never unite to fight against them. And they achieved their goal.”
          “But he has all four elements,” Enid said, nodding at Æsubrand.
          He looked rough, crouched on the dirty cobbles with only about half of his once sleek suit of dragonscale still in place. He’d lost the helmet and a single greave, along with the chest piece of his cuirass, but had used his belt to strap the back piece in place and stabilize the suit. He had acid burns on his chest from the battle to get here, and his formerly sleek, silver-blond hair was frazzled, having dried without any of the usual toiletries the fey used to keep their pride and joy in place.
          He also looked like a man who just wanted to eat his groundhog or whatever in peace.
          He had found a replacement for his once beautiful and now destroyed sword, however, in the form of a rusty pike. I didn’t know if he’d picked it up here, because some of the witches liked old-fashioned weapons as much as the fey, or had obtained it from Faerie before we left. But I suspected the latter.
          It was old and ugly, but he had it cradled in the crook of one arm like the finest of blades. And like a man who was nervous about being attacked again. Or perhaps there was a different reason.
          I realized it might be one of the only things left from his homeworld.
          “Yes, his father made sure of it,” Bodil was saying. “He deliberately married a woman with the powers he lacked. But that was after the gods were gone, and the rules relaxed, and was done to help them return. Although they would have likely killed the prince eventually had he not escaped with us.”
          The latter was said casually, almost as an aside, but it seemed to put Æsubrand off his meal. Or maybe that was the tiny, dangling feet of his treat hanging off the stick. They would have done it for me.
          But not for Alphonse, the big vamp, who, unlike most of his kind, liked to eat just fine. And while he didn’t need the nourishment, I guessed the familiar action was soothing. He picked up the discarded stick and helped himself, tearing into the small body with evident relish.
          Æsubrand accepted a bowl of soup from Bodil without comment.There was a mostly intact teashop down the road, which I guessed they’d raided for supplies. In place of the pot, a dull brass kettle with enough dings and scratches to bear witness to a long life of teamaking was plopped onto the fire while the bowls finished being passed around.
          It surprised me despite the good smells that had woken me up. “How did you make this?” I asked as Bodil handed me a bowl and spoon.
          “Garden up top,” she said shortly, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling. “Ran rampant all these years, but some plants survived. And those little creatures—”
          She looked at Pritkin, who started to supply a name, then glanced at me and stopped. Which meant that this probably wasn’t groundhog. I looked at my bowl but then shrugged and ate it anyway.
          I was freaking ravenous.
          “At any rate, they are plentiful,” Bodil said. “We will not starve, at least.”
Her words were laced with irony, as none of us thought that would be our fate. There were plenty of ways to die here, and that one took too long. Longer than we probably had.
          That thought brought me to the conversation I needed to have with everybody, and postponing it wasn’t likely to make it better. But I didn’t want to ruin any more appetites, so I sat quietly for a moment, sucking down some of the best soup I’d ever had. Or maybe I was just hungry.
          “Other than for the garden, there’s not much in the way of provisions,” Pritkin told me. “We’ve checked the buildings that are safe to enter, and almost everything usable was destroyed.”
          “Not that there was much,” Alphonse added. “Witches got ways of preserving food, but there wasn’t much to preserve. It looked like they were hunkered down for a while, probably living off the gardens and their stores and maybe getting some supplies through the portals.”
          “That could have been what betrayed them,” Bodil said. “Portals leave a trace if you know how to read it.”
          I didn’t say anything, but I was impressed. She’d just seen her world explode around her, killing everyone and everything she had ever known, but here she was, cooking soup and calmly having a discussion. I would have been...
          Sitting here and calmly eating soup, I guessed, because my world wasn’t much better off. If this was how a secret enclave full of some of the most powerful people I had ever known had fared, what did everything else look like? I shivered slightly, not wanting to know, and concentrated on packing away dinner.
          “We don’t need provisions anyway,” Alphonse said, breaking the small silence that had followed her words.
          “Maybe you don’t,” Bodil said, eyeing him as if wondering when he might decide to snack on one of them.
          “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Fey blood tastes nasty. Of course, I never tried any god-blood—”
          “And your first attempt will be your last,” she assured him, but for some reason, Alphonse just laughed, with his dark eyes smiling along with his lips. It looked weird on a face that nobody could call handsome, with its crushed cauliflower nose, too-strong features, and swarthy stubble that added to the low-level mobster vibe. Which was unfair, as Alphonse had been a high-level mobster.
          One who seemed to be in an excellent mood.
          “Probably would,” he agreed. “I saw what you did to that army. Damn. And I mean damn, woman. You can throw down.”
          “At home,” Bodil said dryly. “I don’t know about here. The desert is not my preferred battlefield.”
          No, for someone with water magic, I wouldn’t expect so. But again, Alphonse only chuckled. “Well, good thing our fighting is behind us, then.”
          “Behind us?” Æsubrand said suddenly. Whether over the purloining of his dinner or Alphonse’s relentless good humor, I didn’t know, but he looked pissed. “I would say it’s just begun!”
          Alphonse cheerfully ate a tiny leg at him. “How so?”
          “How so? We are in an alien world—yes, even you! I do not know what fifty years of the gods’ tender care has done to your planet, but I doubt you will like it, vampire!”
          “Alphonse,” the big vamp corrected, “or I’m gonna start calling you elf.”
          “I do not care what you call me!” Æsubrand snarled. “We are in an alien world stalked by creatures of unimaginable power! And yet, somehow, we are expected to cross a desert, find this Pythian heir, who is guarded by those very gods, and have her explain to us what happened before going back in time to change it! And if we fail at any part of that, both our worlds stay dead! And yet you sit there, laughing like an idiot—”
          “I’m gonna overlook that statement since you just lost your world and all,” Alphonse said magnanimously. “But you should probably learn some manners. There are no princes anymore. You’re either one of them, or you’re one of us, and if you’re one of us, you’re on a par with these things,” he waved around the denuded stick with only a few scraps of meat still clinging to the wood, “so we gotta stick together.”
          “And do what?” Æsubrand asked bitterly. “Cower in the shadows like vermin as we did before? I have never been so humiliated in my life—”
          Ah, so that was what was eating him.
          “Didn’t look humiliated,” Alphonse offered. “More like pissing your pants terrified, which—”
          Æsubrand jumped him.
          “—was perfectly understandable, if you’d let me finish,” Alphonse said while the sleekly dangerous fey prince did his best to pound his skull in.
          Æsubrand seemed a little freaked out when he discovered that it was like trying to cave in solid steel, spread over granite, with a titanium underlayer. Alphonse just took it for a second because the prince wasn’t using a weapon, and fists were not very effective against vampire flesh. Then he plucked the enraged fey off his back like a dog scratching a pesky flea.
          “You done, hoss?” Alphonse said, only to have Æsubrand do one of those acrobatic flips he’d used a few times on me and get the big man into a headlock.
          “You insult me!”
          “Not at all. I was there, remember? Cowering right beside you. Or have you forgotten already?”
          “But that is to be expected from one such as—” Æsubrand caught himself just in time.
          Or maybe not.
          “One such as me, huh?” Alphonse asked. “You know, you’re burning through that whole compassion thing real quick. And for the record, some of us low-life scum—”
          “I did not say that!”
          “But you thought it. And us low-lifes think kind of highly of ourselves, too.”
          “It’s not about what you think! Reputation is everything—”
          “Where?” Bodil suddenly piped up, causing Æsubrand to look at her.
          “What?”
          “I said where?” the beautiful fey asked, her dark eyes gleaming. “Where does reputation still matter? In your father’s court? In mine? Before the soldiers who served with you? For they are all gone.”
          She never raised her voice, but the hairs on my arms suddenly stood up.
          “Reputation is meaningless,” she added flatly. “As are most things now. Only the mission matters. Only that is real. Or else. . .” She looked around. “This will become all that is. Can you stomach that, Prince Æsubrand? Can you live with it?”
          “No.” It was a whisper.
          “Then let the vampire—” she caught herself. “Let Alphonse go and come and eat. You will need your strength.”
          And to my surprise, he did as she asked.
          Alphonse turned to me. He was done with his snack and likely didn’t need another, at least not yet. And when he did, it wouldn’t be an animal he’d be going for.
          But right now, he wanted information.
          “So, when are you gonna do it?” he asked.
          I ate soup to give myself a second because I knew damned well what he meant. And why he was in such a good mood. Alphonse thought the battle was over, and our victory was on the horizon. Because that was how this was supposed to work, why we’d fought so hard to get here, and why my head buzzed every time I thought about what lay ahead.
          “Do what?” Enid asked.
          “You know, that thing she does.” He waved a hand; I guessed to indicate a shift. “And flip out of here to go see Rhea, her heir, and then…”
          He trailed off, his sunny smile still in place but his eyes going dark. Because I was still hunched over my bowl, eating soup as noncommittally as possible, and he wasn’t stupid. He knew me.
          He had since I was a kid, when I’d served as court seer for his old boss. 

   Alphonse had been the bruiser who made a mockery of the tall, dark, and handsome vamp trope and served as Tony’s chief enforcer. He’d been good at his job, and not only because he could pick up and break most vamps in half. But because those dark eyes didn’t miss much.
          At least one thing hadn’t changed, I thought grimly.
          “You can do that, right?” he said slowly. “Your power is back, and you’re just resting up to be able to use it. Right?”
          I licked my lips and tried to think.
          But not fast enough.
          “Oh, son of a bitch!”