“Yes, but why?” Pritkin looked baffled. “There are other copies.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. But I can’t get in the Pythian library to check there—”
“Because it was destroyed.”
Sure, let’s go with that, I thought.
“—so I don’t understand what he was doing. But we did defeat Jo using that spell. Maybe he’s afraid—”
“Of what?”
“Of us. Remember what Adra said?”
The leader of the demon high council had not liked the idea of me and Pritkin combining powers. The demons remembered mom’s famous hunts, and didn’t want a repeat. Alone, I was no threat to them, since godlike powers don’t pair so well with a regular human body. When I got tired, it didn’t matter how much power I had. I couldn’t channel any of it.
But Pritkin and I together worried them a lot more. He was a prince of the incubi on his father’s side, which meant that he could magnify power through sex—by a lot. We’d joined forces on a memorable evening in Wales to help kill a god through the energy we created, and Adra had all but admitted that the reason the council had attacked Pritkin wasn’t really about him. It was about what he and I might do together.
It had been infuriating to find out that I’d almost lost him for nothing. Because that was what their fears had come to: a big lot of nothing. Pritkin could magnify my power, raising it to basically the level of a god’s—for a hot second. And then we had to lose it or die, because we weren’t gods and it would burn us alive to keep it.
In other words, we’d get off a single volley, and then be defenseless against who or whatever we were fighting. Even if we decimated half of a demon army, the rest would destroy us right afterwards. The council had been worried about nothing, had almost killed my lover for nothing, and now, it seemed, Jonathan might be trying to do the same thing!
Why couldn’t people just leave us the hell alone?
“I remember,” Pritkin said. “But Adra was wrong, and if Jonathan thinks the same way, he’s wrong, too.”
“Which won’t keep you alive!”
“I’m more worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself—”
“Exactly!” It came out as a snarl, before he visibly reined himself in.
I stared at him for a moment, a little taken aback. He’d been so relaxed all night that I’d thought he was over it. That the anger he’d shown earlier had cooled and that he was fine.
Apparently not.
“Okay, what?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I gave him the look that deserved, because there was clearly something. “I thought you were angry at Jonas—”
“I am.”
“—for not killing Jonathan—”
“A damned fool move!”
“—but now it’s kind of looking like you’re mad at me, too.”
Pritkin scowled. “I’m not angry with you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You know you’re going to tell me sooner or later, so why not get it over with?”