“Do you think he wanted to hurt Ruth?”
“I’m not Ruth. And I have the Pythian power—”
“But would it draw from that? Or would it draw from you? Most people have one source of power; you have two. What if it decides to pull from the wrong one?”
“It hasn’t so far—”
“So far, we haven’t had a real test. The first time, Emrys was pulled back into hell while he was still giving you power. He never had a chance to take anything back. The second was cut short by Gertie’s arrival. And this time, the fey pulled you away—”
“He won’t hurt me!”
“And what about the opposite?”
I stared at him. “What?”
Fingers, tiny but surprisingly strong, latched on to my arm. “Your mother was a goddess, was she not? And one who fed very much like we do. She pulled life energy from whole demon armies, drained my father right in front of his throne! Yet you’re convinced you couldn’t manage it from one demon, who isn’t resisting, and who even has an open feedback loop between you?”
“But I haven’t—I wouldn’t!”
“You did in Amsterdam. You must have. The Emrys of that day didn’t know how the process worked! He couldn’t have done it.”
“But he was trying to give me power—”
“Yes, to give a simple donation. You were the one who turned it into something else. As you did tonight.”
I was about to argue, but then I remembered Pritkin’s face at Nimue’s, which had seemed pretty freaked out. Like something was happening that he didn’t understand and hadn’t expected. Like he’d thought to maybe get a boost to his power, enough to get us out of there, and instead had gotten a turbo shot that had taken out the wards along with the whole damn wall!
Rosier was watching me. “You understand now.”
I scowled. “I understand nothing! You used power on us in the car. If there was any chance I could drain your son—”
“The feedback loop wasn’t in place then. There was nothing happening there but a simple feeding, which incubi do all the time. And in any case, Emrys was already dying. There was no risk—”
“There was plenty of risk!” I remembered Pritkin’s face, afterward. How traumatized he’d been, how terrified that he might have taken too much. That he was facing Ruth all over again, something that had almost destroyed him, and that had destroyed his life.
After Ruth’s death, Pritkin had gone storming into the hells, looking for his father. Rosier had known what she intended to do, but hadn’t stopped her, probably hoping she’d succeed and that her fascination with the demon world would rub off on his son. Instead, Pritkin had blamed Rosier for her death and intended to return the favor.
The intentions hadn’t panned out, but attacking one of their own had been enough for the demon council, who were already worried about the power of this strange hybrid. They’d demanded Pritkin’s head; Rosier had protested; a deal had been made. Pritkin could return to earth, but as soon as he violated his father’s prohibition, he was to return to Rosier’s realm and stay there.
Forever.
It had left him that strangest of strange creatures: a celibate incubus. It had also left him in a holding pattern that had dominated his life ever since. One in which he couldn’t use his incubus powers, which gave him much of his strength, or make lasting plans for the future, because he could be jerked back to hell at any moment, or have a relationship, or kids, or much of anything else. It had made him a perpetual tourist on earth, watching other people’s lives but never able to have one himself.
All because of a woman’s scheming, and Rosier’s inability to understand what that had done to his son.
Sometimes I wondered if he ever would.
“You weren’t in danger,” Rosier was saying, because he really didn’t get it. “Incubi instinctively know when they’re draining a partner too low. I trusted Emrys to stop before then.”
“But you don’t trust him now.”
“A feedback loop is not a simple feeding. It combines two people’s magic, and it’s . . . heady. Wild. Sometimes it feels like it’s riding you. It isn’t nearly so easy to control, especially for a novice—which both of you are!”
Those tiny fingers dug into my flesh, hard enough to hurt. “If you drain him and he ends up like Ruth, or if he drains you and I have no way back to him, the result is the same! Your mother took my sire; you will not have my son!”
I was about to respond in kind when I saw his face. Rosier didn’t look angry so much as genuinely afraid. It could just be for his plans, formulated over hundreds of years, to use Pritkin as a backup battery for the royal house, generating the energy he needed to keep his nobles in check.
But seeing the expression in his eyes, I thought it could have been more.