Free Mad for Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 2 by Lynne Connolly

although I took the opportunity to fictionalize my death. So in the mortal world, I’m thirty years old. D’Argento was there. I take it you’ve guessed his identity?”
    Frowning, Lyndhurst shook his head.
    “Hermes, Mercury. Quicksilver.” D’Argento got to his feet and swept an exaggerated bow. “At your service. I’ve been abroad, collecting information, hunting people. Which is why I have the Italian title.” He grinned. “I invented it for myself and then persuaded a king to give it to me.”
    “I was searching too, while I was in the army.” With a heavy sigh, Lyndhurst shook his head. “I found none. They seemed to evade me.”
    “Because you didn’t reveal yourself. We can teach you how to do that without broadcasting to the populace at large.”
    “Have you met any others?”
    “We had a breakthrough last year,” Blaize told him. “We found Jupiter. We suspected for a long time, but because of my foolish decision to reinvent myself, I had to go to ground for a while. It prevented me from moving as freely as I would have liked. I lived as an ordinary citizen for a number of years, while my new creation came to adulthood.”
    He’d hidden away to give his reborn self time to mature. It had been a frustrating period. The aristocratic title opened doors closed to him as an ordinary subject of the crown, and he could hardly reveal himself too widely. Badly managed. A mistake he could admit to, now. “He’s the son of the Duke of Boscobel. Currently he’s in the country, with his wife. Boscobel did his best to cripple the man. I trust your family didn’t use you in the same fashion?”
    Lyndhurst stared at them for half a minute before he shook his head. Something in that question disturbed him. “My mother gave birth to me that night. From the start it was obvious that she’d birthed an immortal. My father took us to his house. He was an intimate of Boscobel but not an immortal, or at least I think not, because he died shortly after my birth.”
    That was it. Blaize noted the spark in Lyndhurst’s eyes. Something about his birth and his father’s death had caused it. “My mother kept me well-guarded and away from others.” He related his story in a matter-of-fact tone.
    “Is your mother an immortal?”
    “I have always considered her so.” The way he carefully phrased that answer gave Blaize thought. His eyes narrowed.
    “Have you never resented it?” Blaize said abruptly. “You were conceived mortal. You were meant to be something else, someone else. The attributes warped you from what you should have been.” The notion haunted him, that he’d displaced a soul, or that he was not the person he was meant to be.
    Lyndhurst shrugged. “I am what I am. I was born that way, so no. It never occurred to me to think any other way.” Blaize had asked the question that kept him awake some nights, but perhaps it was part of his nature to wonder and remind himself of the fragments that went into making one complete human being. Except, perhaps, for the centaurs.
    The wound to Lyndhurst’s side had completely healed, no mark remaining. Similarly, Blaize felt no further discomfort. If he watched, the scar would disappear. He’d have to keep the site bandaged for a while, but by claiming it was a mere scratch, he wouldn’t have to keep it covered for long. “Who had first blood?”
    Lyndhurst shrugged. “I did, of course.”
    “I’m not so sure,” d’Argento said. “But I had a good amount riding on Blaize being the first. He’s quicker.”
    “But you offset it,” Blaize suggested, knowing his friend too well.
    D’Argento shrugged. “Somewhat. What fool wouldn’t?”
    “This fool,” said Marcus. “I rarely wager and when I do it’s for amusement.”
    D’Argento grinned. “I made a fortune gambling. I don’t intend to lose one doing the same thing. So which is it to be?”
    Blaize grinned. “I concede the point. You may have it, sir. If you agree to help us in our quest.”