Summer didn’t look away from Iason. “Why do you think Drakos had his army? What did you think they were for? With the last of the light mages dead, he could strike at the breadbasket of Iperios and conquer the surrounding countries in turn. You were always meant to die. It was simply a matter of when.”
Iason thought of Sophie, dead in the wreckage of a magical explosion in Duciel. Countless other children like her, people with no one to defend them, no one to care if they were gone, lost to a plot concocted by a man who wanted unbridled power.
“It hurts you,” Tanis said. Her voice was soft, as though she was surprised, and she drifted closer to Iason. “Just the thought of it hurts you.”
“He cares about things like that,” Levi said, and Tanis turned her wide, inhuman gaze his way.
“Don’t think we’ve forgotten you, Sea-Father.”
“It’s so weird how people call you that,” Sophie whispered.
“It’s that or Sea-Daddy,” Levi whispered back, and Sophie choked on a laugh. Iason covered his mouth with a hand, and Summer sighed.
“Lazaros seems to think the two of you are bound by magic or destiny,” Summer said, as Levi waggled his eyebrows at Sophie, trying to make her laugh. “A wizard in Mislia is dangerous enough. A wizard with a dragon husband is trickier still.”
“I’m a god, you know,” Levi said. “Not merely a dragon.”
“He’s the Sea-Daddy,” Sophie whispered, and doubled over with silent giggles.
“We’re working on the bond between us,” Iason said quickly, looking sidelong at Levi. “So he can regain his dragon form and go back to the ocean.”
Summer narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to remove the bond? May I examine it?”
“Only if you don’t do anything to it, mage,” Levi said, all humor draining from his face.
“I hardly imagine I could.” Summer closed her eyes, and Tanis loomed over her, matching the movements of her hands and the swell of her chest with each breath. Something tickled in the back of Iason’s mind, and he heard Tanis’s voice, light and whispery, in his head.
“Your bond is out of balance,” she said. “Like the tides without a moon to anchor them. You may break it, but the force it will take will likely destroy you, wizard. Would you be willing to die to free a god?”
Iason thought of Sophie sitting next to him on the beach, holding his hands.Promise.
I don’t know,he thought.
“And if you strengthen the bond instead, will you be willing to live? Because you will—you’ll live long and wild, an ancient being centuries after the rest of us have faded away, watching humanity grow and change, swell and diminish. Even demons fade into the dark. Even gods. But this god is the oldest, and to be tied to him is to be tied to the forces of change, which are never-ending. Can you stand in the center of a storm and see everything you know wither and shift and grow and wither again?”
Then, in the dark of his mind, in a voice that could have been his or could have been another’s, soft and wicked:
Do you deserve to?
Iason opened his eyes. Summer was talking to Levi about balance and chaos, and Sophie was looking at Iason with concern, but he couldn’t seem to gather his thoughts. Tanis was still watching him, as though expecting an answer, but Iason had no answer to give. He sat there, holding his cup of lemonade, until Summer stood and wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“We’ll keep an eye on you,” she said, as Iason sat quietly, thinking of the world shifting around him, mountains eroding into hills while he remained unchanged. “But I don’t believe you’re here to get involved in our work. Thank goodness. I have enough to deal with, frankly, and any one of you would be too much.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Sophie said, scratching Argo under the chin.
“Good. You should. Keep an eye on these two,” Summer added, patting Sophie on the shoulder. “You seem to be the most sensible out of the lot of them.”
“It’s a curse,” Sophie said, grinning, and Summer actually smiled back. Then she was gone, and Iason felt Levi’s hands on his shoulders, protective and warm.
“I’m not sure what she told you,” he said. “But we’ll work it out.”
“Of course.” Iason gripped the cup so hard his nails squeaked against the ceramic. “We’ll have to.”
ChapterNine
When Iason picked up the third book in a row after dinner that night, Levi decided he’d had enough.
Sophie was in her room, reading something that was hopefully more entertaining than whatever was in the thick, dusty, leather-bound tomes Iason was obsessing over, with Argo gnawing happily on a bar of soap in his bucket. But Iason was about as communicative as a clam, and Levi’s attempts to ask him what he was reading, what he’d learned, what he waslooking for… were met with grunts or a hand wave, or, the last three times, simplyignored.
