Tempt the Stars

coming to the watering hole?” he shot back. “Even though they know the lions come there, too?”
    “Yeah, but that’s water. That’s a necessity.”
    “As is energy in a world where power rules. Why do you think Rian betrayed Casanova? She’s known him for centuries. They have a bond—”
    Casanova huffed out a bitter laugh.
    “It’s true,” Pritkin insisted. “You gave her a great gift. The greatest you can give a demon. You gave her power, more than any other host she could possibly have found. And power can give her . . . everything else.”
    “So she sold me out for power,” Casanova said bitterly. “I suppose she thought a vampire would understand that.”
    “She sold you out for life,”Pritkin said sharply. “Which she might otherwise have lost in one of the power struggles that are epidemic at court—at
every
court. Rian was young and weak when she came to earth. Now, after gorging for centuries on as much energy as she could absorb, she goes home, not as a pawn to be used and possibly sacrificed to someone else’s ambition, but as a power broker in her own right.”
    Casanova blinked at him, looking as thoughtful as a guy with that much hell juice in him could. But I just stared at the tabletop, where the flickering light turned the dust that had gathered in the sticky bits into a topographical map. A map of a universe that was suddenly far larger than I’d ever imagined.
    “And at the time we’re discussing, power was even more important than it is now,” Pritkin added. “The ancient wars were ongoing, with the few demon races who stumbled across earth losing badly before its discovery. The power they gained from it helped renew their resources, gave them a fighting chance in battles on a scale humans can’t imagine, battles that lasted hundreds of years and spread across countless worlds, battles that, if they had been lost, might have resulted in the destruction of their entire species. So yes, they came, no matter the risk. And the gods knew that they would.”
    There was silence at the table for a moment, as everyone struggled to grasp that. I didn’t know how the rest of them felt, but I wasn’t doing so hot. Pritkin was right; I couldn’t imagine war on that scale. I couldn’t imagine something else, either.
    “I still don’t see what this has to do with my mother, or with you,” I said, after a moment.
    “Artemis the Huntress,” Caleb murmured, his eyes suddenly widening. As if maybe he did.
    “Yes,” Pritkin confirmed. “She was the most feared of the gods by demonkind. The most respected, and the most hated.”
    “Why? You said all the gods hunted demons!” I said hotly.
    “Yes, but she didn’t merely wait at the watering hole for them to come to her,” Pritkin said quietly. “She could open the gates between worlds, a talent that allowed her to take the offensive far more easily than the rest of her kind.”
    “She hunted them here,” Caleb said, as if he didn’t quite believe it. “She hunted them in their own worlds.”
    “No,” I said, but Pritkin was nodding.
    “Every source I’ve managed to find says the same thing. She tore a bloody swath through a hundred worlds. Cassie—” He held up a hand, when I started to protest again. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You must have seen the souk in Zarr Alim?”
    “Zarr Alim?”
    “My father’s capital city.”
    I nodded, confused and angry.
    “Well, if you’d had time to look around, you might have come across small amulets being sold by old women in the marketplace, amulets with a familiar face on them. They are still used as wards against bad fortune by the local inhabitants, even though no one really remembers why anymore. Just that once, long ago, their ancestors wanted protection from the face on those coins.”
    “And what a pretty face it was, too,” someone said as a hand stroked down the side of my hair before abruptly clenching in it.
    A very familiar hand.
    And
fuck
.

Chapter Twenty-eight
    “Release her!” Caleb jumped to his feet and threw out a hand—and a spell. Which ricocheted off the demon lord at my side and exploded against the ceiling, leaving a big black mark among the dirt and smoke stains. None of the bar’s regulars so much as flinched, except for the bartender, who hurried over with a bow and another glass.
    Pritkin didn’t react, except to pour another drink, so I didn’t, either. We both knew Rosier couldn’t hurt me. He’d sworn a vow, which