“What?” Bran gasped. She rocked him back and forth, keeping herself behind him. Defensively, he was a great tool. Offensively? She’d be better off with a rock.

Sylvie took a breath, stepped away from Bran, and when it struck, she was ready. It lunged; she caught it behind the head.

“Kill it!”

Bran backed away, shaking his head. “I don’t kill things. . . .”

Sylvie’s triumph faded; the snake was strong and agile, it might work its way free. And then what? The question was never answered. Its dagger tail whipped around, grew a head, and sank needle fangs into her shoulder.

Pain blazed upward; her fingers on the other head spasmed, loosening, and the snake bit down, chewing a long line of punctures across her arm.

“Oh God,” Sylvie muttered.

She yanked it away from herself, heedless of injury—it couldn’t get worse, now—and tossed it toward the shifting, blazing walls that made up the oubliette. The dark shape flailed and hit the wall and stuck, slowly being eaten away into its component bits.

Pain racked her, sent her to her hands and knees, then to darkness.

22

If at First

SYLVIE WOKE CRADLED IN BRAN’S ARMS, HIM TAPPING HER CHEEK, using her name as a lure to wakefulness, her face pressed up against the drum of his heartbeat. His gentleness was surprising considering what she had just threatened to do. She liked to think she wouldn’t really have done it—wiped out that generous concern and caring nature just to prove a point.

Not to prove a point. But if it were the only way—the dark voice said.

She raised her arms toward the ceiling, still sore, but her flesh admirably clear of serpent bites.

“Make house calls?” she whispered. “I know a girl who needs you.”

Bran dumped her from his lap. “You tried to kill me; why on earth would I help you?”

“It was a bluff,” she said. He relaxed, believing her at once. She thought, no wonder Lilith talked him in circles. He might be a god, but he was an innocent.

“If I had died, would you have resurrected me?” she asked. “Transformed me into something useful? I mean, you’re pretty handy with that, right?”

“I suppose,” he said. His eyes were wary, already seeking ways to deny whatever it was she wanted.

She gritted her teeth, forced temperance to her voice, and said, “What about transforming the oubliette walls—”

He was shaking his head before she could finish, and Sylvie sighed, exasperated but not surprised. “What?”

“I’d have to touch the spell to transform it.”

“So?”

“So I don’t think I could keep my focus while my hands burned away.” In his lap, his hands fisted, the leather creaking beneath them. “Any other brilliant ideas?”

“I don’t see you contributing,” she said. She paced the room, ignoring the way heat and dizziness rushed her every time she pivoted. “You know, when I first met Dunne, I thought you might be hiding from him, afraid of your dominant, dangerous lover. Now, I see it right. He loves you way more than you love him.”

“You don’t know anything about us.”

“I know that Dunne’s up there, getting his ass handed to him by Zeus, running himself ragged trying to find you, and keep the world in one piece. And you—” Sylvie didn’t even need to finish the sentence. One contemptuous eye sweep of the room, ending with him pinned beneath her gaze spoke volumes.

“I gave him immortality. I made him a god—”

“Things you don’t value yourself. It’s like regifting the ugly lamp. Doesn’t count toward virtue points. You didn’t save your lover’s life; he’s not your lover. He’s your bodyguard. Your servant—”

“It’s not like that,” he said. His cheeks flushed.

“From what I see, it’s exactly like that.”

“Black and white. Just like Erinya.” He changed seats to lounge on the fountain’s edge and trailed his fingers in the water. “You see things as wrong or right. User and used. Powerful and powerless. It’s not always about power. Yes, he’s my protector. I love him for it. But that’s hardly the only reason—” He dropped his head forward, hiding his face behind the flame of his hair.

“Did he even have a choice?” Sylvie said. Anger bloomed in her blood, the dark voice unfurling and crawling out through her mouth, whispering venom. “Did you make him love you? Just looked around and picked him up, a twofer kind of deal, bodyguard and fuck toy—”

“No,” he said. His voice was hoarse, trembling along with his hands. The water took on little wavelets, transmissions of his distress.

Sylvie grinned. Hitting a little close to home, maybe? “No? No, what? No, you didn’t pick him out? No, you didn’t crush his free will for your convenience? To give yourself someone indelibly loyal to make sure you never had to do anything you didn’t feel like doing.”

“It’s not like that,” he repeated, telling the water his side of it. “It’s not all one-way. I take care of him, too. When his duties are too much, I give comfort—”

“Duties that you made him responsible for. You made him the god. Gave him a hard job that never ends. Justice will never rest until the earth is scoured clean of human life. What kind of comfort can you offer that makes that bearable?”

He sucked in his breath, wrapped his arms tight about his ribs; his wet hands left streaks of water dribbling down his skin. “You think this is all my fault,” he said. “Blame me for being kidnapped.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I blame you for staying kidnapped.”

“I can’t do anything about it,” he shouted. “I’m just human. Just like you. I don’t see you walking out of here.” He panted, cheeks flushed; she got a quick glimpse of feverish eyes, shining with a gloss of tears. Abruptly, he put his back to her.

“You’re nothing like me,” she said. “And nothing like a human. Humans are animals, subject to biology and primitive urges. Trap us, we’ll gnaw off limbs to escape. You, on the other hand, just shrug and say, don’t have access. . . .”

Sylvie blinked in the sudden silence. Her mind locked on that word. They’d been spitting it at each other often enough. Access?

She turned it this way and that in her head, a tiny glimmer of possibility cooling some of the rage trapped in her skin.

He paced a tight two-step across the oubliette, obviously unwilling to get any closer. A god, she thought, and she’d been shouting at him like he was a disobedient teenager, like he couldn’t turn her into Sylvie-jerky at a moment’s notice. If he could access his power.

She licked her lips. “What do you mean when you say access. Exactly.”

He twitched a shoulder at her, a half shrug, still sulking. She wanted to shake the answers out of him. “Tell me.”

“It’s in the dictionary,” he said, voice rough.

“I swear I will knock you down and brain you against your own fountain if you don’t take this seriously.” Sylvie forced down the adrenaline rush and sank down to sit on the false floor.

“I’m human,” he said. “Human flesh can’t hold a god’s power in its entirety. It would be like expecting a . . . a . . . sponge to dry up the ocean. My power is—”

“Elsewhere,” Sylvie said. “Someplace that you can draw on it, in tiny bits, but keeps the majority of it stored.”

“Yeah.” He paced in the circles the oubliette encouraged. She watched his leather-encased legs go by, once, twice, snagged his ankle on the third go-round.

“You stored your magic. Exactly where? Why don’t the other gods swoop in and eat up all the set-aside power?” Her heart gave a little lurch. Oh yes, she was onto something now. “Why can’t Lilith simply help herself to it? Why all this rigmarole, when the greater part of your power is just sitting there, somewhere, waiting to be used?”

He shook his head as she spoke, confusion on his face. “They can’t get to it. It’s not a where. It’s not a real place. Does this matter?”