back in. And to make matters worse, they had supporters on this side of the barrier, including the fey king Aeslinn, who had donated all those warriors last night.
We were attempting to hunt him down before he succeeded in finding a way to throw open that door, leading to the ass kicking of the century for our side. So far, it had been going better than expected, mainly because we had a demigod in the ranks, the child that Artemis had had before her death. And despite the Pythia’s questionable taste in jewelry, she had been able to pull victory after victory out of her ass.
Problem was, it only took one defeat, one thing that we didn’t see or account for, for the tide to change. Once the gods were back, they were back, and we had no way to fight them. Aeslinn’s capitol currently lay in ruins, his people scattered, his army decimated. But he was still out there, he had a fighting force, and he was plotting.
The question was, what was he doing?
“But this did not work out quite as planned,” Hassani said, watching me. “The gods’ experiments resulted in some of the greatest heroes—and monsters—of our mythological past, but the disciplined armies they hoped for did not materialize.”
“We don’t know that,” I pointed out tersely.
“Oh, but we do. Not from records, I grant you. Few have survived from that era, and none from the gods themselves. But we can extrapolate from the changes they made in the prototypes.”
I frowned. “You mean the dusting away in the sunlight, stake through the heart stuff?”
He nodded. “And the instability of weres around the time of the full moon. If an army is loyal to you, you have no reason to reduce its effectiveness in such ways.”
“And an army that goes insane once a month is vulnerable,” Louis-Cesare added. “As is one that burns up when the sun shines.”
I looked back at him. I had no idea what he thought about what we’d just seen, but he hadn’t pulled away from me, and there was no revulsion on his features. Just concentration, as if he wanted to understand this.
I just wanted Hassani to get to the point already!
The consul nodded. “Such a force can still be used against your enemies, who do not know of the safeguards that you have built in. But should your army rise against you, you can easily wipe them out.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what does any of this have to do with Dorina? She wasn’t tinkered with by the gods; she wasn’t even born then!”
“No, she was not,” Hassani agreed. “And we also know when your father was born . . .”
He trailed off, waiting.
I just looked at him. If he wanted to play little games, he’d picked the wrong woman and definitely the wrong night. He began to look slightly uncomfortable after a moment, but he didn’t say anything else.
“He is speaking of your mother,” Louis-Cesare finally told me, and I suddenly understood the consul’s silence. He’d wanted my husband to say those words, because if it had been him—
We’d have had a diplomatic incident on our hands.
“I’m done here,” I said, and got up.
But Louis-Cesare obviously wasn’t and he still had hold of my hand.
“Dory.”
“This is bullshit. You know it is.”
“Dory—”
“First, he insults my sister, comparing her to that evil . . . thing . . . we killed, and now my mother?” I looked at the consul, who was still just sitting there. “You don’t know the first damned thing about my mother!”
“And neither do you,” Louis-Cesare said, causing me to look down at him, confused and hurt.
He took my other hand as well. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be for added comfort, or if he was trying to make certain that I didn’t put a fist through Hassani’s face. But it made me feel trapped and that . . . was a mistake.
“Let me go.” It was flat and completely uninflected.
Louis-Cesare let me go.
I started for the door, got halfway there, then spun around, so angry I could barely see. “My mother was a Romanian peasant girl! She died almost six hundred years ago!”
“So I understand,” Hassani said, leaning forward and finally speaking quickly, as if he didn’t know how much time he had. “The question is, when was she born? Was she the last of the godly prototypes, one more powerful than all the rest? Was she the reason Artemis acted when she did, and drained herself so