“Are you doing your job? Jonas was right about one thing. You’re the only Pythia we got. Putting yourself in danger for no good reason—”
“It’s a good reason.”
“We both know what it is, or should I say ‘who’?”
I’d been drying my face, but at that I looked up.
“Everybody knows what you’ve been doing,” he told me.
“I doubt that.”
“Not the particulars, maybe, but the main point—yeah, I think we got that.”
“Good for you.” I pushed past him and went into the bedroom.
Marco followed. “Listen to me. You lose people in war, all right? You need to come to grips with that.”
I jerked open a dresser drawer. “I need? I’ll ask you the same thing I asked Jonas: what the hell are you saving me for? To trot me out when Ares shows up, and say hey, here’s our champion? Because that’s not going to work. I’m not humanity’s get-out-of-jail-free card!”
“I never said—”
“You implied it. Everyone’s always implying it.”
“Everyone is trying to keep you safe!”
“I’m not safe!” I turned on him. “None of us are safe! We’re all in this together, and if the gods come back, vampire or mage or Pythia or whatever isn’t going to matter!”
“If they come back. We don’t know—”
“We know. Rhea saw. She saw him come back, and not half dead like Apollo—”
“Rhea saw,” he repeated. “Why didn’t you see? You’re Pythia, not her.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see much anymore. Maybe the power is used up with all this shifting.”
“Or maybe there’s nothing to see. Maybe she’s wrong—”
“And if she’s not?”
“All the more reason for you to stay here, and not waste yourself—”
“I can’t stay here!” I slammed the drawer shut.
“You need to calm down.”
“I am calm! I just want to know what you or Jonas or anybody thinks I’m going to do for you if Ares comes back. Here’s a clue—I’m going to die, just like everybody else. Keeping me in reserve is no different from . . . keeping a queen in reserve on a chess board because you’re scared to lose her. Know how best to lose her? Lose the game!”
“We’re not playing a game,” Marco said as I started back for the bathroom.
“No, we’re not. But life involves risk.”
“Yeah, but maybe I don’t want to risk you.”
“Maybe it’s not your call.”
“Maybe I don’t want to see another girl I love lying bloody and broken in the damned road!”
I turned toward him and saw the agony on his face. Like it had just happened. Like all those years hadn’t mattered at all.