I was the one who had taken a little time to catch up.

I rolled over on all fours, gathering strength to stand. I was a little wobbly, and my wrist felt like it might just be on fire. But I got into a crouch on the balls of my feet.

The Spartoi looked me over. “You would duel me?” he asked, amused.

“That’s the idea.”

“To what end? Even were you somehow to win, my kind are immortal. My brothers would simply resurrect me.”

“You know,” I told him. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

“And why is that?”

“You sent them a sixth time after my mother, didn’t you? To hedge your bets.”

“Yes?”

“It didn’t go well,” I said, and threw out a hand.

A time wave flowed across the grass, churning up the dirt as it flowed toward him. He transformed in an instant, surging up from the ground on a rush of air that almost knocked me down as the wave flowed underneath. A group of trees behind where he’d been standing suddenly shot up, ten and twelve feet in seconds, but he was twice that high, huge wings blocking out the light as he banked and turned and dove—

The ground around me exploded in fire even as I shifted. I landed in a nearby copse of small trees, hoping for cover. But he must have anticipated that. Because almost immediately I had to shift again, as the trees burst into flame, flooding the landscape with garish light and sending strange shadows writhing over the ground.

I could see them from the other side of the hill, where I’d landed behind a rocky outcropping. They backlit the huge form of the transformed Spartoi, which was hovering in the air, powerful wings churning up the air. His back was to me because he was still facing the trees. But I couldn’t stay where I was. He was already spiraling up to get a better look. Any moment now, he’d spot me—

A wave of fire came my way, before I’d finished the thought. And it wasn’t a narrow stream that I might have been able to dodge. It was a wall of flame that blistered the air, like a tidal wave, if they came in crimson and gold.

I shifted again because I had no choice, but I couldn’t keep doing that. I had my mother’s power, but not her stamina. I was already panting—that time wave had been a bitch—and another few shifts would have me close to exhaustion. I had to make the shifts I had left count. Which is why, when I shifted again, it was back in time.

Normally, I wasn’t good at judging short time shifts. A day I could do, or even twelve hours or so, but anything less was tricky. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. Okay, most of the time it didn’t. So I was pretty surprised to land on the right side of the Spartoi at roughly the same moment that it set the trees on fire.

But not as surprised as having a second dragon pop out of the air right over my head.

I froze, hiding in the shade cast by my pursuer’s own body. I guessed I knew what that quicksilver feeling had been earlier. He must have put the same spell on me they’d used on my mother.

Which meant that I couldn’t time shift, or I’d take the asshole with me.

Perfect.

The only thing that saved me was that he’d been looking outward instead of straight down and didn’t immediately spot me. Maybe because he was too busy screaming a warning to his former self. I didn’t know what language they used, but if he told him where I was about to shift to, former me would soon be dead. Meaning present me would be dead. Shit!

Luckily, everything had happened so fast that his alter ego didn’t have time to capitalize on the information. He went screeching toward former me, my Spartoi spiraled up looking for present me, and I decided to hell with this. Despite the cold, my hair was sticking to my cheeks, my palms were sweaty and my heart was drumming in my ears. I thought I had maybe one more time wave in me, if I was lucky.

This one had to work. And as fast as these things moved, there was only one way to ensure that. I gathered my power and shifted—

Onto its back.

I’d hoped it wouldn’t notice an extra hundred and twenty pounds for a few seconds, considering it had to weigh something like seventy times that. I was wrong. I’d no sooner rematerialized than it let out a bellow of rage that echoed off the surrounding mountains and almost deafened me. And then it did a barrel roll.

I screamed, with nothing to hold on to but rain-slick scales that tore at my palms even as I grasped for them. But I launched my last time wave, even as I fell. I saw it veer off course, saw it slice into one of the great wings, saw it miss the body. But I didn’t have time to curse.

Because the next second, I was hitting down—hard.

I landed on my side, and, of course, it was the side with the injured wrist. A wave of pain engulfed me, so fast and so hard that it froze a scream in my throat. Or it would have, if it hadn’t already been knocked out of me. I writhed in the mud, too crazy with pain to do anything else, including think, for a long moment.

And when I did manage to gather some thoughts, they were nothing I wanted.

I told myself I’d just had the wind knocked out of me, that I’d only fallen maybe two stories, and onto soft ground that had just been churned up by the talons of those two beasts. In a minute, I’d get my wind back, I’d gather my strength, I’d get out of this. There was nothing to worry about, no need for panic.

And if I’d had any breath, I’d have laughed. Because if ever a situation called for panic, this was it.

I did finally manage to drag in a shaky breath, but by then it was too late. A shadow fell over me, a human one, because the Spartoi had transformed back. I suppose he didn’t think he needed the extra power to take out a halfdead body, and it didn’t help that I kind of agreed with him.

He stopped beside me, staring down out of those horrible eyes. “You forgot,” he said gently. “My father was Ares, god of war.”

And my mother was death, I didn’t say, because I didn’t have the breath. I just stepped out of my body and grabbed him.

I don’t know if he could feel my dim, insubstantial hand around his throat, but he acted like he felt something. He staggered back, flailing and tearing at nothing. Because what I was, he could no longer touch.

But I could touch him, although for a long moment, it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing was happening, just like with the damn apples. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, his face began to change.

Liquid skin pulled away from flesh, from muscles, from bone. Eyes rolled in sockets, hair grayed and whitened and then fell out as the skin holding it in place rotted away. The tongue, a bloated black thing lolling in his mouth, tried to move, to speak, to curse, before suddenly deflating and disappearing, withdrawing back into the skull like the eyes, like everything, until the bones cracked and splintered and the whole thing dusted away on the breeze.

For a moment, I just stared at the imprints of his feet in the soft soil, which were quickly filling up with rain. That had worked. I couldn’t believe that had worked. I’d . . . I’d won? I didn’t feel like I’d won. I felt dizzy and sick and more than half crazy, like I wanted to run screaming around the hillside. Only I couldn’t. I didn’t have feet anymore, either.

I didn’t have anything, I realized, except for the tiny bit of life force I’d torn away with me when I came out. And after using up most of it on the battle, it was fast running out. I turned, feeling misty and jumbled and oddly . . . disjointed, like parts of me were already trying to float away....

And saw the small pale slash of my body lying almost halfway across the still-burning hillside.

It was so far. How had we come this far? I didn’t remember moving much at all. Of course, I didn’t remember much of anything except watching the Spartoi’s face peeling back.

A breeze came by, blowing some burning cinders through me, and I flinched. I didn’t feel them, was starting to have trouble feeling anything. Or concentrating . . .

I needed to move. I needed to get back. I needed to get back now.

I started forward in a vague, streaming motion completely unlike walking. And that was wrong, wasn’t it? It hadn’t felt this way before in the apartment, had it? I couldn’t remember. But it was wrong somehow, a halting, dragging feeling, slowing me down, pulling me back. I turned, half expecting to see that a piece of myself had caught on something, stretching my metaphysical form behind me like taffy.

But I didn’t. I saw something worse.

A seething cloud of blackness had boiled up behind me, blocking half the sky. It looked like a storm cloud, except storms are laced with lightning, not iridescent feathers. And they drop rain, not tendrils of odd, black smoke.

“No,” I whispered, knowing what it was. And that, without a body, I was nothing more than a tasty snack for any passing spirit.

And then it was on me.

I screamed, expecting it to hurt, but it didn’t. It didn’t. But the draining sensation ramped up a few dozen notches, causing my hand to shimmer in front of my face as I reached out, trying to part the thick, blue-black clouds to see. But it didn’t want me to see. If I could see, I could find my way back, and once inside my body, I would have not only its protection, but that of Pritkin’s talisman, as well.

Pritkin. The name caused pain, caused my tenuous concentration to wobble, and I felt a stinging slap to a face I no longer had. Sentiment . . . sentiment in battle got you killed. Not once in a while, not occasionally, but almost every single fucking time. You do not stop to cry or whine or mourn, not in battle, never in battle. That’s for later, when you’re safe, when you’re home. Do you understand?

I’d understood. I’d told him I understood. I’d promised, and now I had to . . . I had to . . . concentrate.

Yes, I had to concentrate. I had to get back to my body . . . my body. Where was my body? I couldn’t see. And now it did hurt some as the draining sensation picked up and—

Blue-black clouds were everywhere, almost completely cutting off any vision. I surged forward, hoping I was going in the right direction, only able to catch glimpses, here and there, of stars and trees and my body, which seemed to be constantly changing position. I knew it wasn’t moving, knew I was the one getting off course, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.