“No. We could be attacked, welcomed, ignored… I have no idea.” All I know is that the power here is staggering—and not exactly comfortable. “The magic here feels strange.”
“How so?” Griffin asks, turning to me.
“Like it’s not something I could—or should—take.”
He frowns at that. Since my lightning is hit-and-miss—mostly miss—magic theft is my best defense at the moment, and neither of us likes what I just said.
“When you take and use someone else’s magic, you heal from whatever wound they inflict on you, but they don’t heal from the magic you throw back at them. Why is that?”
I offer him a cheeky smile I’m not really feeling deep down. “Because Poseidon wanted me to be able to play with the big fish.”
Griffin grunts. But however I might spin it, we both know that’s true. The gifts my God Father gave me weren’t haphazard in the least, but carefully selected for the best chance of bringing me to where I am now—smack in the middle of a Power Bid that could reunite the realms.
That’s the idea anyway.
We point our horses toward the hermit’s house. The large, wooden structure sits at the top of a substantial clearing on the slope of a mountainside. The meadow between us and the house is still green, despite the chilly weather, and the grass is cropped short, so it must be used for grazing. I don’t see any animals right now, but there is a barn. The tree line continues sparsely for about half a mile above the slant-roofed dwelling, and beyond that, the first of the snow and granite peaks of the southern Deskathis tower above this place, growing taller and wilder as they stretch northward toward Olympus.
We rein in partway across the meadow. The ground is soggy here, and there’s a bubbling and probably frigid mountain spring that feeds a ribbon-like stream leading back into the woods. The modest, partially open-faced barn houses sheep and goats, who seem to have decided that inside is better than outside today. I wonder why. The sun is shining, even though it’s cool. Buckets and rusty tools hang from the rough-hewn outer walls, along with a pair of old lanterns that look like they haven’t been lit in years. The place strikes me as having an oddly abandoned, lonely feel, despite the livestock looking in good health and the chimney smoke flavoring the rich autumn air.
I shiver, although not from cold. Maybe this feeling that grates on me like a bad itch is exactly what a hermit looks for. Objectively, the setting is calm and beautiful, but the Gods know I could never live up here all by myself. The solitude would eat me alive.
Dismounting, I glance toward the pine forest we just left, with its dense, frosty carpet of fallen needles and continuous shadows. The warmth of day hasn’t fought its way through—and probably can’t—but it’s still far more appealing than what I think is on our right.
My heart beating a little faster than normal, I turn and face what must be the unique Thalyrian phenomenon that gives Frostfire its name. Running along the edge of the meadow and directly abutting the far side of the house, there’s what appears to be a sheer cliff. We can’t see down into it from here, but the precipice supposedly drops off into an almost bottomless volcanic pit—although I’m pretty sure it’s more than that.
Nervous heat billows up through me—a lot like a scorching blast from what I’ve been told is at the bottom of the ancient caldera: Hephaestus’s forge, the smith God’s fiery domain.
Griffin leads Brown Horse into an empty enclosure, and I follow him in with Panotii, relieved to turn my back on the yawning gap between us and the summits to the northeast. We don’t loosen the horses’ girths at all, since both Griffin and I are currently fervently and wholeheartedly worshipping the cult ofyou never know, so be ready to run for your life.
Little Bean has changed my outlook on a lot of things, my own safety being the primary one. I don’t consider caution to be cowardice. I never have. It was just never my way before. Lately, to Griffin’s unending satisfaction, I’m considerably less prone to running headlong into danger.
“I get the frost part,” Griffin says, taking my elbow and guiding me. He must think I need help walking in a straight line up a hill toward a house. I don’t object. His strong hand is too blissfully cool on my heated skin for me to want to pull away. “But why fire?” he asks.
I lift my nose and sniff. “Smell the air.”
He inhales deeply just as a breeze swirls up over the precipice. His nose wrinkles. “Sulfur?”
“That cliff over there… It goeswaaaydown.”
“Waaaydown?”
I nod, skirting a small animal hole in the ground. “Apparently, that crater is Hephaestus’s forge, where he crafts the weapons of the Gods. Also, Thanos once told me that Hades stokes his furnaces with the magma from the deepest depths of the Frostfire pit, and I assume he knows what he’s talking about, Thanos being Ares and all.”
Just then, whatever is far below belches up steam and a wave of heat, surprising us both. Maybe Hephaestus is working on something down there.
“Humph.” Griffin’s hand tightens on my arm.
I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to fall in, you know. The cliff is all the way over there.”
He loosens his hold. Sort of.
I glance up at him, trying to tame my sudden smile. Domineering and overprotective doesn’t even begin to describe my husband. There’s also deliciously jealous, but that’s another subject altogether. The black stubble framing his mouth makes his full lips look impossibly kissable. It’s been hours since they were last on mine. And I love to kiss the hawkish curve of his nose. So strong and masculine. I adore that nose. And the rest of him. His powerful body. Muscle. Sinew. Bone.
I gaze up at him, nearly sighing. “I love you.”
Griffin stops dead in his tracks and glares down at me. “That’s it. We’re leaving.”
I blink. “What? Why?”
