“One thing?” I didn’t understand half of it, and I’d been there.
She nodded. “The killing blow, the one that destroyed Ares. It was made by Arthur, was it not?”
“Yes.”
Her head tilted. “But that is what I find odd. As I understand it, he was part human and part water fey. Yet he wielded a fire weapon?”
“It was more like he boomeranged Ares’ own power back at him.”
“Yes, but how did he do that? For that matter, how did he wield Excalibur at all? I know it’s a little point, but it bothered me. I wondered why Nimue would even give the sword to him in the first place.”
I thought about it for a moment, and then laughed, suddenly remembering Rosier’s description of the ugliest man he’d ever seen. Almost inhumanly so. “If I was going to guess,” I told her, “I’d say Arthur had some fey on both sides. It also might explain why his symbol was a dragon.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
Billy hurked and coughed and made a strange hnnnz sound in his throat that was just . . . really off-putting. I sighed. What the hell did you do for a sick ghost? I’d never even heard of such a thing.
But I wasn’t taking him to any necromancers—that was for sure.
“I can give you a draw after breakfast,” I said.
“I don’t want a draw. I want this thing out of my throat!”
“What thing?” I asked warily.
And got some more hurking sounds in reply.
I wanted to ask him where he’d gone off to, on the battlefield. One minute he’d been there, right beside me, and the next he was gone. Not that he could have helped; we were both tapped out. But still . . .
I wondered what he’d been up to.
“Just remember,” Rian told me. “Whatever else happened, Ares is dead.”
“But Jo isn’t. Not completely.”
“But she’s just a ghost. What can a ghost do?”
“You’d be surprised.”
And then there was a slight stir on the bed.
I scrambled up and leaned over, to find green eyes open and staring back at me. Awake and aware. And alive.
For a moment, I just looked at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything. And for once, neither did he.
“We were warned that it might be a while, before he gets his voice back,” Rian told me. “In fact, all the senses are likely to be a bit . . . askew . . . for a few days. The spell is somewhat disorientating.”
Yeah, I bet.
I sat down on the bed, and Pritkin managed to grab my arm, after several tries. He tugged me down to him, and for a moment I felt guilty, because I was kind of relieved that I’d have a few days to sort out what to say to him. After everything we’d been through, I honestly had no idea.
But apparently, I was the only one.
“I remember,” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
I met his eyes, and from only a few inches away, they were . . . intense.
I swallowed. “Um. You remember . . . what, exactly?”