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“Yet I’m still far more advanced than any of you,” Demetra retorted.
I no longer heard their quarrel or was even concerned about it since I had to put out the fire on my person.
I refused to go down without a fight.
All the demigods surrounded me in an instant.
I looked down at my chest, expecting a burning hole, but it wasn’t like that. The flame had turned out to be runes writing themselves on my skin in shifting colors—crimson first, then black, purple, blue, golden...
The runes didn’t limit themselves to the space between my left shoulder blade and the top of my left breast, where they were supposed to go. They crawled all over my torso. Crimson, golden, and black runes formed shapes and lines and disappeared, then moved in shapes again on my shoulders, arms, and breasts, like a whole freak show.
Axel looked so awed. I stared at him and then back to the crawling runes in horror.
He pulled my robe down from my shoulders without my permission, and I was too freaked out and too busy watching the runes to punch him in the jaw.
“All twelve of the runes have imprinted on you,” Axel declared. “That’s incredible.”
“It’s impossible. She can’t be a descendant of all twelve major gods! No one can,” Theodore said, his silver eyes widening, but he was elbowed out of the way.
The demigods were in charge now.
The dagger in Theodore’s hand dulled, and the flame vanquished.
“My blade!” Theodore called. “Both the flame and runes are gone.”
“She absorbed all of them,” Zak said, lightning twirling in his royal blue eyes as he studied me like he’d just seen me, truly seen me. “She’s taken all of them as if they were her birthright.”
The runes still twirled all over my body as if trying to decide where they should settle down.
“Just make up your mind already,” I groaned.
Axel tore his gaze from the runes and smiled at me. “You live, Marigold,” he said. “Just as I believed that you’d prevail.”
He gave the impression he wanted to pull me into an embrace to congratulate me, but I was still so mad at him that I shoved him away, then I put a hand up to prevent him, or any of them, from getting closer to me.
I had no idea what these runes were going to do to me and was terrified they’d change who I was. I was comfortable with the old Marigold. But a primal part of me already knew that the blood runes had triggered something dark and dangerous, something that had been buried deep inside me.
“Remove the runes, please,” I said harshly. “I don’t want them.”
That was when the burn started.
Embers of fire sparked off my skin. Then the runes turned to leaping flames. In an instant, I became a human torch from inside out.
Agony tore through me, and I howled.
“What’s going on?” Axel shouted, face paling. “Ice, Paxton!”
The Demigod of Sea conjured icy currents and poured them onto me.
The fire burning inside me hissed and sizzled, turning hotter.
“Stop!” I screamed.
The fucker was making it worse.
“It’s not working,” Paxton said in dismay. “She’s burning from the inside.”
No duh, asshole!
