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between the family’s quarters and the underground storerooms, and all they did was raise their hands to her in the sign of the Bull and continue about their business. She paused in the grain room, which was dark except for the flickering of oil lamps. The rows of jars soared above her head. Their shadows were taller yet. She drew in gulps of cool air, but just for a moment—soon people would be stirring.
    The lamp’s base was metal and she had to shift it from hand to hand as she walked so that her skin wouldn’t burn. She set it down quickly on the floor beside Asterion’s bed; it clanged against the stone and he grunted and thrashed, but his rolling eyes didn’t open. Chara didn’t move at all.
    Ariadne stared at his walls for a bit while she thought. The paint on them was all blues and whites: water, sky, the god-bull forming out of a foaming wave. The god-bull on the wall and the god-boy on the bed—she scowled and turned back to the lamp.
    The hem of Asterion’s sheet caught fire almost as soon as she touched it to the lamp. The cloth melted black behind the flame, which widened as it climbed. When it reached the bed frame it was nearly as long as Asterion was, from glowing horns to scuffing feet.
    No
, she thought as she stumbled backward,
I was wrong; I shouldn’t have. . . .
The fire was flowing under the arm and leg closest to the edge; it was around them, over them, in the space of a single heartbeat. He woke with a cry and lurched up on the bed, and the fire was eating at his loincloth. He cried out again; his voice sounded too low, as if he were a man, not a two-year-old boy. He threw himself off the bed, straight at Ariadne. She leapt back and he fell at her feet. Sparks caught in her skirt and she smacked at them with her hands until they died.
    He gazed up at her, and in the space of one more heartbeat his eyes widened and rounded until there was no more boy in them. He heaved himself onto his hands and knees. His loincloth fell away in gobbets of black and embers and his spine arched. Blisters unfurled on his skin and turned almost immediately to coarse brown hair that bloomed along his back and sides in patches that joined. His golden head had gone dark and matted too, and his horns were longer, curving out and up above folded-over ears. He scrabbled at the ground with fingers and toes that fused as Ariadne watched, their nails spreading and yellowing into cloven halves.
    He turned his head—sideways, because his neck was so thick that he couldn’t lift it up. The fire was only sparks now, spinning and settling on his furred body and on the lashes clustered around his eyes. His eyes were rolling again, white and brown and black. She lowered herself slowly into a crouch, too fascinated to be afraid anymore.
    She thought,
He can’t see me
. “Look at you, Brother,” she said, loudly enough to be heard above the
whuffing
of his breath. “Look at what you are—and I’m the one who found out. I’m the only one who knows. So if you change back now—if you can just do that, no one else will—”
    The beast that had been Asterion bellowed. This wasn’t the low cry of before but a full-throated roar that startled Ariadne back onto her heels. The roar didn’t stop. She heard another sound—a scream, behind her—and began to scream herself because she knew she should, and because she was afraid again. The children’s slave ran past her. She flapped her skirt against the sheet until the flames died and then hovered a few paces away from the bull-thing. She raised her hands to her mouth but they muffled nothing. Her scream trailed into a sort of whine, while Ariadne’s continued. Footsteps pounded along the hallway, closer and closer (Ariadne heard them when she paused to breathe). She squeezed her eyes shut.
    “Quiet—
quiet
, Ari!” Deucalion, shaking her by the shoulders but not looking at her. Glaucus was clinging to the doorframe. He was already crying, Ariadne saw. Androgeus strode