I blink. The image slaps me hard. It looks like Daphne.
“Every time I look at you and want to grab you and hide you away, keep you safe and mine. Not everyone’s. Not Thalyria’s. Mine!” He lets out a sudden bellow of frustration, and I stare, wide-eyed. Panotii’s ears twitch. Brown Horse doesn’t even blink. Little Bean wakes up with a bang.
His voice quiets again, but I can tell his emotions are still raging inside. Griffin never seems to get angry—except at me. “What happened to Eleni is not your fault. Neither was Galen Tarva threatening your mother with his power, or your mother deciding to turn you into a bargaining chip to keep him away.”
“Well, that deal is more than off since Galen is dead. Mother doesn’t need me now.” Which brings me back to my original point. “I’m not an asset to her anymore; I’m only a threat. I haven’t let her use my abilities for her own gain in years, and there’s no Galen Tarva to hold off anymore with promises of delivering the Kingmaker to him for his own personal use. She’ll try to kill me the first chance she gets.”
I could swear Griffin almost flinches. He stares straight ahead, a muscle flexing in his jaw.
We ride in silence for a long time after that, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
Eventually, he mutters, “This witch had better know what she’s doing.”
“Oh, she does. Or at least that’s what everyone says, including Ares back when he was Thanos. She’s amazing with potions and stuff.”
Griffin glances over, arching a dark brow. “And stuff?”
Is that humor I see returning to his eyes? Or at least normalcy? “That’s what I said,” I answer stiffly, faking offense.
“Make sure you add that to your queenly decrees,” he teases. “I hereby declare that the people of Thalyria shall be safe from royally sanctioned thieving raids, outrageous taxing, random massacres, and stuff.”
I mash my lips together, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a smile. “Maybe I’ll let you write the decrees.”
Griffin nods. “Wise choice.”
“Pfffffff.”
He smiles, giving me the satisfaction I just stubbornly refused him, but we always knew he was the mature one.
“Why Frostfire?” Griffin asks. “It’s an odd name.”
“From what I’m told, it’s because there’s both frost and fire.” I shrug. “I guess we’ll see when we get there.”
“And when will that be?”
“Not soon enough.” I drop my reins, lift my arms, and stretch. My lower back is already hurting. “After we cross the border at the Chaos Wizard’s house, it’s at least another two days to the northeast.” And that’s if my appalling sense of direction doesn’t get us lost along the way.
“Are you planning to say hello?” he asks.
“To the Chaos Wizard?” I shoot him a horrified look. “Are you kidding me? Do you want a snake jumping down your throat? Because I’m pretty sure I’m incompatible still.”
Thank you, Little Bean.
*
Frostfire. Three and a half days northeast of the Fisan border. It would have been less if I hadn’t steered us wrong. But who can tell where east is on a cloudy day? And no one ever said not to take that fork in the road. Seriously. You’d think there’d be some kind of warning when there’s a Manticore lair ahead. Then again, they devour their prey whole, leaving no sign of their victims—not a bone, not a scrap of clothing, not a bloody tooth. Luckily, Griffin and I can throw knives faster than the Manticore can throw poison spikes from its tail. And Panotii is damn speedy when he wants to be.
Magic nips at my skin. My blood pulses eagerly, wanting to snatch up all the power that washes over me with a slightly smarting caress. The magic in the air at Frostfire leaves a sweet-and-sour taste on my tongue, both corrosive and tempting. I’m not sure it’s something I can take, though. It may be too intangible for that. Besides, the euphoria episode in Velos taught me not to steal spells or magic I haven’t identified. Whatever is around here is enticing, but there’s also something dark in the underbelly of it, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want it.
“Finally.” Squinting toward the hermit’s house, Griffin blows on his chilled hands. He draws his Eternal Fires of the Underworld cloak more firmly around his broad shoulders. Jocasta stitched up the tear the Hydra made in the back of it, and the flaming threads glow gently on the inside.
I’m wearing mine, too, but it’s completely dark. Little Bean keeps me excessively warm.
“Anxious for a hot meal?” I ask, eyeing the curling wisps of grayish-white smoke rising from the hermit’s chimney. The air as we leave the thick evergreen forest behind us smells deliciously woodsy, like burning logs, crisp, frosty ground, and moldering leaves.
“There’s no guarantee of that,” Griffin says, although he does look hopeful.
“No. We could be attacked, welcomed, ignored… I have no idea.” All I know is that the power here is staggering—and not exactly comfortable. “The magic here feels strange.”
“How so?” Griffin asks, turning to me.
“Like it’s not something I could—or should—take.”
He frowns at that. Since my lightning is hit-and-miss—mostly miss—magic theft is my best defense at the moment, and neither of us likes what I just said.
“When you take and use someone else’s magic, you heal from whatever wound they inflict on you, but they don’t heal from the magic you throw back at them. Why is that?”
I offer him a cheeky smile I’m not really feeling deep down. “Because Poseidon wanted me to be able to play with the big fish.”
Griffin grunts. But however I might spin it, we both know that’s true. The gifts my God Father gave me weren’t haphazard in the least, but carefully selected for the best chance of bringing me to where I am now—smack in the middle of a Power Bid that could reunite the realms.
That’s the idea anyway.
We point our horses toward the hermit’s house. The large, wooden structure sits at the top of a substantial clearing on the slope of a mountainside. The meadow between us and the house is still green, despite the chilly weather, and the grass is cropped short, so it must be used for grazing. I don’t see any animals right now, but there is a barn. The tree line continues sparsely for about half a mile above the slant-roofed dwelling, and beyond that, the first of the snow and granite peaks of the southern Deskathis tower above this place, growing taller and wilder as they stretch northward toward Olympus.