by Karen Chance
I started to answer, then realized that I didn’t have one. Not one I could share, anyway. In fact, there were so many topics to avoid right now that this conversation was starting to feel like a minefield: my current trainer, who I wasn’t even supposed to know, as it broke a crap ton of Pythian rules; Jonathan and his murder of Emma and useless destruction of that spell; and Mircea, whose borrowed abilities had allowed me to take out a fey.
The first one might get me lectured on the reasons for Pythian norms, if I accidentally spilled the beans. That was especially true with Hilde on my court. She could have trained me on the Pythian power with no risk, however minimal, to the timeline.
But she’d never been Pythia, and that involved so much more than just nifty new spells. And whether she liked to admit it or not, she was old, like really old, and there were plenty of techniques that would be dangerous for her to do. Like Astara.
Which was probably why Jonas was suspicious: he knew she hadn’t taught me that spell.
But it was frankly none of his business who had taught me what, or how I got the training I’d missed out on. That was court business. Unlike the last two items on that list.
“Cassandra?”
I paused some more, despite probably looking really suspicious at this point. But I didn’t know if I had anything useful to offer about Jonathan or Lover’s Knot. While talking about them at all risked spilling the beans that I was currently tied to a master vamp who was able to bogart my power and . . . yeah, no.
I needed to get that spell off before anyone found out what Mircea was doing, or it would be a toss-up as to who would kill him first: the Circle as guardians of the Pythia, or jealous members of the vampire senate.
Maybe they’d finally be able to cooperate on something, I thought grimly.
But what I said was: “The power trains the Pythia.”
Jonas smiled at me. “So it does.”
“You could have been killed,” Pritkin said, going back to worrying that bone some more. And this time, his voice was low and seemingly calm, which was bad. Pritkin was fine as long as he was shouting; it was when he got quiet that you had to worry.
But I wasn’t willing to sit and be lectured—by either of them. I had a point to make, too, and it was a good one. “I wasn’t the target.”
“He attacked you—”
“In your chambers. Where I wasn’t supposed to be. He probably didn’t want to face two opponents, so when I showed up, he decided to take me out first, then continue to wait for you.”
But Pritkin didn’t look impressed. “A fey assassin has a chance to kill the Pythia, one of their chief opponents in the war, yet you think he was after me?”
“He was in your chambers,” I repeated.
“Could anyone have known you would be there?” Jonas asked me. “Was this a regular event?”
“Lunch, kind of. Dinner, no. I texted Pritkin to set it up.”
“I was upstairs for a meeting earlier, where the wards are minimal,” Pritkin added. “When I received the text. But my phone is secure—”
“No phone is secure,” Jonas said. “Spelled communication only, from this point on.”
Pritkin nodded.
Jonas turned his attention back to me. “You took dinner to his room?”
He already knew the answer to that. There were war mages crawling all over the tiny space right now. One of the bastards probably had my cream puff in an evidence bag.
“I picked it up at the bakery near the crossroads,” I confirmed. “I suppose someone could have seen me, and figured out that I wasn’t dining alone by how much food I had. But there was no way for them to know where I was going—”
“Wasn’t there?” Jonas asked, but he wasn’t looking at me.
Pritkin had a hand on the back of his neck, his head tucked and his forehead lined in thought. “We’ve been careful.”
“How careful?”
And suddenly, there he was: the shrewd, dangerous mage looking out from under the Santa Claus disguise. Pritkin wasn’t even looking at him, but he must have heard the switch in his voice. Because his shoulders stiffened.
“Not enough,” he admitted.
“Not enough for what?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“If you are known to regularly be in someone else’s company, it makes you vulnerable,” Jonas explained. “Your security at the Pythian Court becomes irrelevant, when it is known that, sooner or later, you will visit your lover. Someone doesn’t have to attack you at your home base, where you are surrounded by wards and guards; they merely have to wait.”
“In Pritkin’s rooms. In the heart of HQ.” I wondered if he understood how crazy that sounded.
“I admit, under normal circumstances you should have been safe here—”
“I was safe here.”
“You were attacked here!” Pritkin snapped.
I crossed my arms. “And which of us is dead?”
“If the fey had been carrying a ranged weapon, he could have shot you as soon as you materialized in the training salle! Or didn’t you think of that?”
For a moment, we just glared at each other.
Jonas sighed. “This is partly my fault,” he admitted. “I should have put a stop to this before—”
“A stop to what?” I asked.
“—but it was useful. Many people are concerned that you are too close to the vampires, Cassie. Having you seen to be dating a war mage was . . . reassuring . . . for them.”
“My love life is nobody’s business—”
“It is when you are Pythia.”
“—and even if it was, it wouldn’t be up to you to lecture me. You and Agnes were an item for years!”
“Not in wartime.” The steel was back in his voice. “Anything that makes you vulnerable at this juncture must be reconsidered.”
“Then reconsider it. And once you have, keep your opinions to yourself.”
He blinked at me.
I was too angry to care.
I was also tired of this conversation.
“Jonas, if we could have a minute?” I said, looking at Pritkin.
I expected an argument, but didn’t get one. He shut his book, and put it back on the shelf. “Of course. Would you care for some tea, Cassie?”
“Love some.”
He left.
I was about to ask for a silence spell, because I didn’t trust that wily old wizard at all, especially in his own lair. But one clicked shut around us before I could. “I can’t believe I’m spelling the Lord Commander’s office,” Pritkin said.
“There are worse things,” I pointed out. “Like the Circle finding out that you’re Merlin.”
The scowl he’d been wearing for the last half hour reached epic proportions. “I never used that name—”
“Myrddin, then. Does it matter?” He started to say something, but I interrupted him. “You know damned well that the fey have every reason to want you dead!”
The emerald eyes narrowed. It did strange things to my stomach, because, as usual, he’d forgotten to shave and was also in uniform, which included khakis that strained over muscular thighs and shirt sleeves rolled up to show strong, tanned forearms. He looked ungodly hot, even with the disastrous hair.
But that wasn’t the point.
“Aeslinn was there,” I reminded him, talking about the Svarestri king and an adventure we’d had while I chased Pritkin’s soul through time. “He saw you in Camelot—”
Pritkin scowled. “It wasn’t called that. It was never called—”
“What difference does it make what it was called! Or what you were called, or what anything was called! Aeslinn could have easily realized the part you had to play in ruining his plans to bring back the gods the last time. Why wouldn’t he fear that you might do it again?”
“Or that you might,” said the stubbornest man on Earth. “You were there, too, as I recall.”
“This isn’t about me—”
“We don’t
know that.”
“We do know that! It was your goddamned room!”
“Where anyone with a brain could have known you would be. Cassie, this will be investigated, and all possibilities considered. But in the meantime, you have to stay at court. I need you to promise me—”
“I have a job to do!”
“Not with the invasion about to take place! You have excellent wards there; they’ll keep you safe—”
“Yeah, they helped so much here.”
“The ones at court are not the same kind. I’ve layered them with fey magic—three different varieties. You also have the coven girls now,” he added, talking about the newest additions to my staff. “Their magic is based on that of the fey. If Aeslinn sends another assassin after you—”
“He didn’t send this one!”
“—you will be far better protected there than anywhere else I can think of.”
“And what about you?”
He frowned. “What about me?”
I couldn’t help it; I grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him to me. A hard hand settled on my hip and another on my nape, making it a question of who was grabbing who, exactly, but I was too pissed to care. “You—goddamnit, Pritkin! What if I’m right? If that thing was after you—”
“Unlikely. There is no reason for the Svarestri to connect me with a court long since faded into legend, and a name I no longer use.”
“We don’t know what they might have figured out, and until we do, you should be back to court, too. As you said, the protection there—”
“I can protect myself.”
“And I can’t? I think I just proved—”
“That you recklessly put my safety before your own?” he asked, the scowl deepening. “A fact you’ve done more than once!”
“Because you were the one in danger—”
“Or you were!”
“Damn it, Pritkin! You drive me crazy!”
“What is it you Americans say? Right back at you,” he snarled, and hard lips came down on mine.
It was a good kiss. Okay, it was very good. Enough that I found myself letting go of his shirt front and curling my arms around his neck instead, while his hand got a little grab ass-y with my pretty new skirt. And what was underneath it.
We finally broke apart, and his face had softened. From terrifying mage to wistful lover. For a moment, I actually thought I’d won an argument for once.
“You’re too valuable to risk,” he said, and opened the door for Jonas, who was standing there with his ear pressed to the wood, looking frustrated.
But not as much as I was!
“Go home, Cassie,” Pritkin said striding out of the room. “And stay there!”
Chapter Twelve
I shifted into the corner of my bedroom that I’d designated as the “landing zone.” It was kept free of anything that I could materialize in the middle of, like toys that the younger initiates sometimes dragged in, or furniture, or people. Of course, there weren’t supposed to be any people in here right now, although privacy for a Pythia was relative. But for once, it seemed like I’d gotten—
And then I smelled the cigar.
Crap.
The room was dark, with the curtains over the balcony closed tight. They were of the blackout variety, since a Pythia’s sleep cycle isn’t always normal, so I didn’t know exactly when I’d gotten back. But I knew immediately that I’d screwed up.
I’d become so used to my little time thefts that I’d stopped worrying about things like letting my bodyguards know when I’d be gone. Because they usually gave me hell over it—they would prefer me to never go anywhere at all, ever—and because, before they figured it out, I’d be back. But I hadn’t done any fiddles this time, keeping my promise to Tami, and now I was busted.
And by my chief bodyguard no less, who was hella hard to lie to.
“Have a nice trip?” Marco asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
I sighed.
“I know you must have,” he continued. “I can smell . . . let’s see . . . potion residue, dirt, spent magic, coffee, burnt wood—”
“You can smell all that?” I sniffed myself. But my borrowed senses were taking a break, I guessed.
“—and oh . . . what’s that other one? Wait, wait, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out, any minute now.”
“The blood isn’t mine,” I said testily, because of course that’s what he meant. Even microscopic amounts were a flashing neon sign to a vamp.
“Or from this world,” Marco added viciously. “You smell like Faerie!”
Since he’d said “Faerie” and not “fey”, I decided to deliberately misunderstand. A trip to old Romania wasn’t going to go down well, much less with Mircea’s super fun side quest. But a fey assassin would be far worse.
Plus, there was a better than average chance that Marco was going to hear about yesterday’s activities anyway, through the mental grapevine from his old family. Why not get out in front for once? And maybe get some help with a problem in the process.
“You can blame your boss for the detour,” I said, fumbling into the room. VampVision hadn’t bothered to click on, either, and I didn’t know how to trigger it. I couldn’t see a damned thing.
“I don’t have a boss anymore, unless you count you,” Marco said. “And I can’t count you, can I? I can’t be a body guard with no body to guard!”
The cigar flared again, lighting up handsome Italian features—heavy dark brows, a strong nose, and a stubborn chin—as he pulled nicotine into a system that couldn’t use it. I didn’t know how a body, much less one of Marco’s hulking size, became addicted to a substance that didn’t do anything for him. But then, I wasn’t sure that he was. I’d formed a theory that his cigars served the same purpose as a baby’s pacifier, giving him something to mangle in times of stress instead of whoever was out of reach.
Too bad that I was back now.
But at least he switched on a light. A lamp blazed, high beam bright in the darkness, showing a six-foot-five-inch body draped over my sturdiest arm chair, because anything else would have buckled under the weight of all that muscle. Marco used to be a gladiator back in the day, and the pastel Izods he preferred to wear now—a pale, shell pink in this case—did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact.
Maybe he liked them because they were stretchy, I thought, watching biceps the size of baby heads test the sleeve strength. At least they didn’t need buttoning up. He’d have never gotten a dress shirt to stay closed, which might explain why he didn’t wear suits like most of the guys.
Marco saw me ‘mirin and, in spite of everything, flexed a pec at me. It made me want to laugh. And to regain some hope that maybe I wouldn’t get yet another lecture.
“If I’m the boss, then I don’t get yelled at, right?” I asked hopefully.
He gave me the look that deserved.
I sighed again.
“The trip into Faerie wasn’t my idea,” I repeated. “You know I hate it there.”
“For a place that everyone hates, they’re trying damned hard to get in,” Marco said sourly, because he wasn’t a fan of the invasion. “And what was that about Mircea?”
I didn’t answer because it was too complex of a story for the hike to my bathroom, long though it was. My bedroom/sitting room/balcony/bath combo was as big as some apartments, and bigger than the one I’d had in Atlanta, before I got tapped for this job. I could have put my old digs and most of the apartment next door in here, and it had been advertised as a “spacious two-bedroom property.”
Of course, “spacious” had been relative, meaning that my dining table had folded down from the wall, and you couldn’t enter the kitchen if it was set for dinner. But sometimes I missed it. Like now, I thought, as Marco followed me into the cool embrace of my bath. It was blue and white and Greek isle themed, and had a tub the size of a small pool.
God, I loved my bathroom!
Normally.
“I need to shower,” I told my s
talker, but trying to move a vampire, especially one the size of Gibraltar who doesn’t want to be moved, is a waste of time.
“You slip out of the apartment,” he said heavily, “without telling anybody—”
“I said I was taking a nap. You should have assumed—”
“—are gone for hours—”
“—that I didn’t want to be disturbed—”
“—come back reeking of alien blood—”
“—so if you were worried, it was your own fault. You shouldn’t have been in here!”
“—and what the hell is wrong with your eyes?”
Crap.
I checked them out in the mirror over the sink. And, sure enough, they were back at it again. Dimmer than before, but brighter than they were supposed to be. Like way brighter. I looked like I was wearing some of those colored contacts that made your eyes really vivid.
No wonder Pritkin had known something was up!
“Cassie.” It was Marco’s serious voice, which meant that I wasn’t going to be able to dodge an explanation for much longer.
“I have to get a bath,” I reiterated. “And while I’m doing that, I need—”
I almost said Hilde, who was an all-around badass with magic. But she was also old school Pythian Court, meaning that she’d probably be after Mircea with a stake and a hammer before I could finish explaining. And, knowing her, she might just catch him.
“—the coven girls,” I finished.
Marco cocked an eyebrow at me, but I can be stubborn, too. I guessed he decided it would be easier to wait me out. He left.
I started to get undressed, but before I’d gotten very far, I heard something from the attached dressing room. It wasn’t a big noise, hardly anything at all. But I was so keyed up these days that it sounded like an airplane taking off.
Or like someone moving around in there.
I thought about getting Marco back, but the days when I needed a big, strong vamp to protect me were over, even if he didn’t know it. He did a great job of guarding the initiates, but I could take care of myself. And if anyone had managed to breech my court’s defenses and threaten my girls, they were going to answer to me.
And I’d be worse than ten Marcos!