Page 5 of Until the End of Ever
He absolutely did, so I nodded, noting he wasn’t concerned about calling his mother’s name.
“But she was a minor goddess. That limits what I can achieve.”
“Your mother’s power diminished your father’s?” I concluded.
He nodded. “Half of his, half of hers. To say it plainly, he’s a one hundred, and she’s a one. That makes me a fifty-and-a-half, at most. Not you. Someoneforgedis built by one creature, not two. They can become just as great as the one who built them.”
This brought me back to one question I’d asked myself many times over the years. “Who saved me, then?”
Apollo’s eyes didn’t leave me. I could read it in his steady gaze: he wasn’t going to speak that name.
“Could we have a prophecy about it?” Silver asked.
I grunted in exasperation. “Silver,no.”
In the light of everything else that had happened today, this felt unwise. We were no longer talking about maybes and what-ifs. If we received a prophecy, it was going to bereal. And it could drive us insane. Not to mention, Apollo himself had said it could be dangerous to the one who spoke it.
My best friend was not to be deterred. “We have like, two minutes left with him, and excuse me, but fascinating as all of that was, we still don’t know who cursed you or how to stop them. I say, let’s hear the future.”
I groaned. Gideon chuckled. Ronan bobbed his head enthusiastically.
Lucian, for his part, seemed to consider it carefully before finally settling on, “We need answers.”
Heagreed with Silver?
“All right,” I made myself say, grimacing. “That’s what we came for anyway.”
Apollo smirked.
And then he was gone in a flash of golden light.
2
LUCIAN
For long seconds after the creature vanished, I wondered whether he’d actually left us hanging in the middle of the conversation. Based on our thirty minutes of acquaintance, I wouldn’t put it past him.But the cave started to shake again.
All five of us were back on our feet in a flash, on high alert.
“What next?” Ronan chortled, highly entertained. “I have to hang out with you guys more often.”
Sadly, he was too far away for me to kick, and paying too much attention to the fissure in the cave to catch my glare. Not that he’d ever been intimidated by it.
“Should we have a look?” Gideon asked.
What was it about me that attracted idiots with zero sense of self-preservation?
Kleos replied before I had a chance. “Gideon,no.”
I could tell from her tone she said that often.
Given the way the rest of the morning had unfolded, I half expected to have to face another monstrous serpent, or an equally terrifying creature out of Tartarus, all over again.But while I could sense a presence, this one didn’t seem like animminent threat, unlike our two former visitors. It was more distant, like anechoof a power.
Still, better safe than sorry. I didn’t even have to consciously move; one of my arms pushed Kleos behind my back while I lifted one hand, prepared to strike.
Her ocean-blue eyes found mine, questioning. If she didn’t understand why I had to ensure her safety, I wasn’t going to spell it out for her.
“We need a better strategy than the one we had coming in,” I stated. “Ronan, Kleos, and I are the shield. Gideon and Silver, you’re the blade. We block, and when there’s an opening, you attack. No one jumps in half-cocked. Understood?”
