“Gods fighting,” Mircea murmured, looking at us.
“What?” Pritkin glanced at him.
“Something one of my kitchen boys said. I didn’t understand it until now.”
“We are not gods!”
“No. We’re a god. And our fight is right out there.” He inclined his head toward the battle. “Will you walk away from it?”
“If it means saving Cassie’s life? Yes!”
“That’s not your call,” I said, furious.
“I’m making it mine!”
“It is his call,” Mircea said, surprising me. “At least partly. If one of us dies, all three of us do.”
“Not if we take off this goddamned spell!” Pritkin said and raised a hand.
I pushed it down.
“You’re not seriously doing this,” I hissed. “You’re not leaving them to be slaughtered!”
“They’re not going to be slaughtered. I told you, we’ll go back and warn the army—”
“And they’ll call it off. They’ll cancel the whole thing. They won’t have any other choice. Not against that!”
“We’ll find another way,” Pritkin said stubbornly.
“What other way?” Mircea asked. “We have been looking for a solution for months now, bending all our resources to it—”
“Another one!” It was savage.
I put a hand on Pritkin’s arm. “You were right when you said we were back there again, in Jonas’s office. Repeating the moment when you tried to warn me off to protect me. But that didn’t work and when we talked it out afterward, you said we were partners—”
“Not in that!”
“In what, then? When it’s easy? When it’s safe? This job isn’t safe—”
Pritkin roared. There was no other word for it. An animalistic sound of pain and fury that would have normally had me backing up against the wall, wondering about his sanity.
It didn’t now. This was all insane. And I knew how he felt. I didn’t want to risk them, either, neither of them. But there was no other choice.
“We can win the war right here,” I told him. “Right now. My power knew that; that’s why it didn’t warn me about Jonathan. It’s why you tried to shift us outside a room and ended up shifting us back in time and to another continent! It wanted us right here, right now.”
“You don’t know that,” Pritkin said stubbornly.
“No, although it fits the facts. But I do know this. If we go home and lick our wounds, the war could slog on for who knows how much longer. Months, years, decades? How many would die then?”
Mircea didn’t say anything. He wanted to, but he knew there was nothing he could add that would help. And he’d been right. This was Pritkin’s choice. We had to go in united, or not at all.
“You said we were partners,” I pressed. “Was it a lie?”
Green eyes met mine, and they were burning. “You know it damned well wasn’t.”
“Then come with me. Protect me.”
“And if I can’t? The Pythian power doesn’t work in Faerie.”