“I’m glad to see you found the spring,” Father said, once we were well away.

“Why didn’t you warn us?” Kallikles asked.

“I didn’t know for sure Delos would affect you,” Father said. “And I didn’t want to disappoint you if it didn’t. I did tell Arete that it might help.”

“Was it our souls?” I asked.

“Your souls and my island,” he said. “What happened?”

“Nothing much, really,” Phaedrus said. “We went to the spring and waited, and Arete came and gave us water. That’s all. But I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“It felt right,” I said. “It felt like knowing what was right and doing it because it was inevitable. There wasn’t any choice.”

“Then you were in the hand of Necessity, at the edge of your Fate, doing what was inevitable,” Father said. “All of you. Once you were on Delos, you had to go through that ritual, and you knew it and you did it. The sprinkling on the shore is the echo of that.”

“I hated it,” Kallikles said. “Not at the time. At the time it just felt right, the way Arete said. But the more I think about it the more it felt like having my own self taken over. I wasn’t in control of what I did. And afterward when Klymene spoke to me it took a real effort to answer. I felt drained, even though all I’d done was walk through the woods and drink some water.”

Father put his hand on Kallikles’s shoulder. “It’s hard for anyone to resist Fate and Necessity.”

“I didn’t even try,” I said, and saw my brothers nod. None of us had tried.

“What did it do?” Kallikles asked.

“Connects you to me, to the world. If you weren’t my children it would mark you as votaries. As it is, it marks you as what you are. My children. Heroes.”

“How does it work?”

“It’s a Mystery.”

“Mother always said you said that when you didn’t understand something,” I said.

“That’s exactly what a Mystery is, something the gods don’t properly understand,” he said. “Fate and Necessity are the bounds set on us. All of us. Fate is the share our souls chose before birth. Necessity is the edges of that.”

“If we were marked as heroes, did the others notice?” Phaedrus asked.

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Did they?”

“Ficino noticed something, but he didn’t say anything,” I said. “And maybe Klymene—she was looking at Kallikles in a funny way. But nobody said anything. Is it going to happen again?”

He spread his hands. “I don’t know. If you go back to Delos, probably. And in Delphi, perhaps.”

“You said it marks us,” Phaedrus said, coming back to that. “Who does it mark us to?”

“The gods,” Father said, casually. “If you meet them, they will know what you are, now.”

“But not Porphyry and Alkibiades and Euklides back on Kallisti?” Phaedrus asked.

“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?”

“I didn’t know. I thought it might. And you were all so young. And we wanted you to be your best selves. I didn’t know what that would be. It wasn’t until you said you wanted to come on this voyage that any of you said you wanted to be heroes.”

“So we could do the kind of thing gods do? Like transforming people into things?” Phaedrus said, pensively.

“Yes, but it’s not usually a good idea,” Father said. I saw an expression on his face that I hadn’t seen since before Mother died. He was worried. “You have power. You might be able to do that. But please don’t!”

“How do we use it?” Kallikles asked.

Father’s brow furrowed a little. “You just reach out and use it. You’ll work it out. You’ve all learned logic and self-control.”

“Not like the gods,” Phaedrus said, and laughed.

“How about time travel?” I asked.

“Don’t try that!” He looked really worried now. “That does take experience. It isn’t time travel. You step outside time and then back in. Being outside time isn’t like being in it. Look, please don’t try that until after I have my own powers and I can show you how to do it. Terrible things could happen to you. You could get lost forever.” He laughed suddenly. “This reminds me of when the boys were all starting to walk at once! Suddenly nothing was safe, and we had no idea what you could get into or do. Simmea—am I ever going to stop missing Simmea?”

“Ever is a long time for a god,” I said. “Can we use this power to keep from dying?”

“Your body will have to die, eventually. But you can keep it healthy meanwhile. And you don’t have to stay dead, if you choose to be a god.”

It was such a scary thought. “You’ll help us?” Phaedrus asked.

“What, I have to run entry-level divinity classes now? Of course I will.” He hesitated. “You’re heroes. In some ways, you have more ability to use your powers than I do mine, even when I have mine. Gods are bound by Fate and Necessity, of course, but we’re also under the edicts of Zeus—we can’t use our powers to interfere in human affairs unless we’re asked. You can keep right on interfering as much as you want because you’re still mortal for the time being.”

“What?” Phaedrus sounded affronted. “What about what Athene did setting up the Republic? Wasn’t that interfering in human affairs?”

“The Masters prayed to her for help doing it,” Father said. “She could grant their prayers. She couldn’t have done it alone.”

“And buying the Children?” I asked.

“The Masters decided to do it. She just chose to help. It was all human action and the consequences of human action.” He looked helpless.

“And what she did to Sokrates?” Kallikles asked.

“He was her votary. You can do whatever you want to your votaries. And no other gods can do anything to them.” He looked ashamed. “We don’t always behave as well as we should.”