Shatter the Earth

by Karen Chance

“No, but that’s how it is when you’re Pythia. That’s how it was for your mother. Every group is trying to tug you this way or that, to get influence, or a favorable ruling, or whatever it is they want from you, and there’s always something. God forbid you should have a life of your own.

  “But Agnes made one for herself anyway, one that included Jonas—and you.”

  Rhea got up because it had started to rain outside, and the window had been left half open, tossing the sheers around. And sending a light sprinkling of water over the bed whenever the wind blew just right. She pulled the sash down and closed the drapes, taking her time, pretending to be busy when what she really wanted was to think.

  I didn’t mind.

  She finally came back over to the bed, and started spreading out the blankets she’d taken from the wardrobe, because the room was chilly. “That’s why Mage Pritkin doesn’t live at court,” she said slowly, as if puzzling it out. “And why you haven’t made any formal declaration about him or the vampire.”

  “Lord Mircea,” I said gently, because if she got into the habit of speaking about him any other way at court, it wasn’t going to go down well. The vamps who were with me were all emancipated, and could do as they liked. But once upon a time they’d been Mircea’s boys.

  And once in a vamp family, always in a vamp family.

  Emancipation just meant that you didn’t take direct orders anymore. It did not mean that you put up with anybody disrespecting the boss. Especially a boss like Mircea, who had always been very good to his family.

  “Lord Mircea,” Rhea agreed. She finished making the bed, and sat down on it again, her forehead creased. “You are playing a game, too, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Am I?” I watched lamplight flicker on the ceiling.

  “You’re allowing everyone to believe what they want about your private life, and tell themselves whatever story they want to hear. The vampires believe you’re with Lord Mircea. You bear his mark, and his people help to guard your court. But you let the mages believe that you’re with Mage Pritkin—”

  “Because I am, in fact, with Mage Pritkin.”

  “But on your terms. He isn’t influencing you; he’s helping you. He is loyal to you, and not Jonas.”

  “He’s loyal to the Corps, too, just not blindly.”

  Rhea was quiet for a moment, as if thinking that over. “What happens when they figure it out?” she finally asked. “When people realize what you’re doing? What happens if . . . if you have a child?”

  “Figure out what?” I said, dodging the harder question. “I’m a flighty young woman who dates around. Who knows who I’ll be with next?”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is as far as they know. Caedmon, the fey king, haunts my court, although I don’t know if he’s looking for a new wife, or whether he’s got some kind of other plan. I can’t read him. And one of the big Were chieftains sent me a freshly slaughtered deer that he took down himself. Apparently, that counts as flirting.”

  “I know.” Rhea wrinkled up her nose. “I was there when it was delivered. It was awful. They hadn’t cleaned it, or even skinned the carcass. Or taken the head off! It was lolling with its tongue sticking out, and its eyes—” she shuddered.

  I decided not to tell her what was in the sage sausage that Tami had served that morning.

  “I know it won’t work as an excuse forever,” I said instead. “But it works for right now.”

  “And the other?” she persisted. “What would you do with a child?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  “I know what you wouldn’t do,” she said. “You wouldn’t send her away. You wouldn’t bring her back only to save your lover’s reputation. You wouldn’t treat her like a mistake you didn’t want, hide her from the world, give her a different name and pretend she didn’t—”

  She stopped abruptly, and I could tell that she was fighting back tears.

  “You really think that’s the only reason she brought you back?” I asked, after a moment.

  “Why else?”

  “Because you’re beautiful? And brilliant? And powerful . . . and her daughter?”

  Rhea had been staring at the bedspread, but at that she looked up, and seemed startled, as if she’d never heard herself described that way. But then her face fell. “She never said those things to me. She didn’t feel that way—”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Her hand crept up to her face, where the slap mark still burned. “I think I know that,” she whispered.

  I decided to hell with it, crawled across the bed, and put an arm around her, like I’d been wanting to do for the past half hour. “That slap wasn’t meant for you,” I told her. “It was meant for me.”

  “What?” She looked up.

  “Agnes doesn’t like me. When I was here the first time, we had a training exercise together and . . . I won.”

  “Well, of course you did,” Rhea said staunchly, which was absurd. Agnes’s knowledge of the power was way better than mine, and her control—including split second timing—was like none I’d ever seen.

  Well, except for maybe mom’s.

  “If you consider ageing the ballroom out of existence and killing my substitute body in the process to be winning,” I agreed. “Which I guess Agnes does, because she’s hated me ever since, and tonight she took it out on you.”

  “She’s jealous,” Rhea said. “She was always the best by far out of Lady Herophile’s acolytes.”

  “I’m not an acolyte.”

  “No, you’re a Pythia. One not much older than she is now.” Rhea shot me a look, and I was relieved to see that she seemed a little better, even cracking a smile. “She’s very competitive. It likely bothers her to have someone better at anything than she is training here, even if it’s only for a while.”

  “Well, she won’t remember any of it, after I’m done,” I said. Gertie was going to erase her memory. She had to; Agnes would have been appalled to find out that, someday, she was going to play a big part in my life.

  Very big.

  And then I thought of something else. I glanced at Rhea, who was so like her mother in so many ways. Same looks, same magical ability, same natural stubbornness . . .

  I wondered if she was competitive, too.

  Something must have showed on my face, because Rhea began to look alarmed. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Just that no one else had been able to get through to her, and . . . well, I thought that Agnes owed her daughter some training. If nothing else, it would allow Rhea to throw her mother around the room a little.

  Might be cathartic.

  “I don’t like the way you say nothing,” Rhea told me worriedly.

  I grinned. “You need to learn to trust your Pythia.”

  “I do trust you, it’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  She swallowed, and then came out with it. “You have a very unorthodox way of looking at things!”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure Gertie will sort me out, sooner or later.”

  “Gertie’s not much better!”

  I laughed. No, she wasn’t. In fact, before I came along, Gertie had been the wild child of the long and mostly sane line of Pythias. Which was why she was the only one to offer to teach a demigoddess foundling raised by vampires anything at all.

  Of course, she was probably regretting that decision now.

  “I have to take a bath,” I said, to change the subject, and because it was true. The effects of my shower were long gone, and I had dried patches of Were blood burning all over me.

  “I’ll bring you a nightcap,” Rhea promised, sliding off the bed.

  “Non-alcoholic, please.” The room was spinning enough as it was.

  “I’ll see if they have any hot chocolate. I used to make it for the little initiates all the time, to help them sleep. They were very restless when they first came here.”

  “Or they just liked chocolate,” I
said dryly.

  “Or they just liked chocolate.” She smiled. “I’ll see if there are any marshmallows. They still used the real thing in this era.”

  She left and I fell back against the bed, a happy smile on my face.

  This was why you had acolytes.

  Chapter Twenty

  Despite being filthy, I seriously contemplating just sleeping where I lay. The bed had one of those down-filled mattresses that grabs your ass like it’s trying to get handsy, and then draws you down into enveloping softness. It was cold in the room, and there was no duvet, but there were plenty of blankets thanks to Rhea, which created a nice, soft nest when I wadded them up a little.

  But the Were blood was itchy and I knew I’d sleep better if I bathed first. So, I levered my lazy ass up and ran a bath. It did not require going very far since the tub was parked between the bed and the wardrobe, the house dating to a time when separate bathrooms weren’t a thing. The loo was down the hall, but if you wanted to get clean, you did it here.

  It didn’t matter; it was still glorious. The heat seeped into my bones, and the light of the old-fashioned lantern on the bedside table—because the newfangled electric lights hadn’t made it up this far yet—glimmered on the ceiling. It reminded me of the night Pritkin and I had spent here, sharing this same room, this same tub.

  For an instant, I had a flashback to golden light on water-slick skin, a warm mouth on mine, and the gleam of lamplight on wet blond hair. And, even better, the feeling of closeness, of assurance that, as long as we were together, everything was going to be all right. That we would figure it out.

  Damn, I wished he was with me now!

  But there were certain things I couldn’t tell even my lover. He’d have been stalking Mircea before I got half of the story out, and I did not want to see those two go at it. My life had enough drama already.

  I slid a washcloth along an arm, and it was a warm, dragging caress, like steamy lips moving along my skin. The little waves lapping at my sides felt like fingers playing along my ribs. I relaxed back against the end of the tub, watching water bead on the mounds of my breasts, like golden droplets of oil in the lamplight, and wished that he was here to lick them away.

  Stop it! I told myself. Pritkin wasn’t here and I was just going to get frustrated imagining him. Not to mention that he would have freaked out over what had just happened downstairs.

  It seemed that Rhea and I had interrupted Gertie attempting diplomacy with a Were clan, who was in a quarrel with some of the local vamps. It hadn’t been going well, and our arrival didn’t help. With Lover’s Knot riding me, I had registered on Were senses as a vamp. The Were in question, already spooked by several vamp attacks on his family’s stronghold, and in a place where no vamps were supposed to be, had naturally assumed the worst. He’d thought an assassination attempt was imminent and . . . overreacted.

  Some of his family, waiting outside, had also attacked when they felt him change, leading to what could have been a big problem. But while Agnes could be a bitch, she was never a coward. She’d gone to calm them down, and had ended up shifting a knife away from one, after it had been used to shank a court servant.

  The war mages that guarded this place had arrived shortly thereafter, and quieted things down. And from what I’d heard, the servant wasn’t badly injured and should recover. But it had been a close thing.

  If I was Gertie, I wouldn’t have been too pleased with me, either.

  I shivered a little, although not because of Gertie. The bath was hot, but the cold air of the room sent goosebumps washing over any protruding skin. I ran more hot water into the tub, and clouds of steam billowed everywhere, as soon as it touched the air. It was like trying to bathe in a sauna.

  But it felt sooooo nice. I stretched, wiggling my toes near the end of the tub, and felt a wonderful sense of lethargy seep over me. Maybe I’d just sleep here.

  But parts of me, it seemed, weren’t all that tired.

  My breasts were almost completely submerged now, with just the tips breaking the sudsy surface. They looked like tiny islands emerging from the sea, although they’d have to be volcanic islands, because they were getting higher and perkier all the time in reaction to the cold. Until the spiraling steam seemed to coalesce around them, banishing the chill, and relaxing the tiny muscles.

  Before peaking them all over again, this time for a different reason.

  What felt surprisingly like a warm mouth closed over the delicate flesh, causing me to jerk slightly in surprise, and to send a wave of suds splashing over the side of the tub. But the shock didn’t last long. It melted into a golden glow that suffused my entire body, as the phantom mouth tasted first one aching little mound and then the other, making me squirm and gasp and wiggle.

  My imagination was on overdrive tonight, I thought hazily. I could almost feel the lips sliding a little on the wet flesh while the tongue caressed me. I could just about discern the occasional scrape of teeth, smooth and hard but being careful not to nick me. I stretched again, luxuriating in the imagined sensations, and it almost felt like the mouth fell off my breast for a second, only to recover and close back over it.

  I blinked a little at that, wondering how steam could feel so real. Don’t drift off, I told myself sternly. Erotic dreams are fine until you drown in the tub!

  But then the mouth started to suck, and I forgot everything else. With every pull, strong but gentle, with every small noise I made, and with every little shudder of pleasure that shot straight to my core, the warm wetness seemed to become more solid, more real. I gave a moan, and my hand sent my washcloth sliding down my inner thigh, as if it had a life of its own. It felt good smoothing over my skin; it felt better than good. As if every sense I had had been heightened and dialed up to eleven.

  But not as good as it could have been.

  Because it wasn’t my touch I craved. It wasn’t mist and steam that I wanted to have caressing me. I knew exactly who I wanted, and when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t even surprised to see a face emerging from the swirling steam.

  Pritkin, I thought dreamily, recognizing the image my brain was conjuring up. I wish you were here.

  The steam thickened once more, and the washcloth turned inward. I gasped because it felt almost like a tongue, a little smooth, a little rough, probing, questing. Like a lover beginning to learn your likes and preferences. Which was silly, because Pritkin already knew mine. A half incubus is a fast study, and he’d been an eager pupil!

  Like the watery hands now sliding over my skin. They were only waves, I knew that, but they didn’t feel like it. Waves don’t have palms that cup you, or fingers that explore you, or the strength to part your thighs.

  My knees fell open, lying against the tub on either side and the washcloth drifted away, no longer needed.

  Yet the warm, wet caress abruptly intensified. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said that it really was a tongue now, the clever little muscle beginning to take over where the washcloth had left off. It might just be an underwater ripple, but felt like it had weight and substance.

  A lot of substance, I thought, arching up, gasping.

  I shivered again, hard, but not from cold. But from the feeling of being tasted, explored, and nuzzled by an overlarge nose. And then from—

  Oh, God, yes! There! Right there!

  My body twisted in pleasure as warm, flexible water wrapped around that elusive little nub, and began torturing it in the most delightful way. One that had me groaning and my body arching enough to threaten to come out of the bath. But watery hands held me down, one on each of my inner thighs, caressing, massaging, yet pinning me firmly in place, while I was thoroughly ravaged by a ghostly presence.

  But it wasn’t a ghost. I knew them, thanks to my necromancer father, in all their forms and permutations. Had done so for as long as I could remember, and this wasn’t one. Wasn’t a man, either, although he looked like one, I thought vaguely, as a ghostly torso slowly coalesced out of the steam. I couldn’t see
the head now; it was busy underwater. But a strong back had formed and it was very familiar.

  As was the much more distinct face that finally emerged from the bath.

  “Pritkin,” I said breathlessly, finally realizing that I must have fallen asleep in the tub. Or maybe this was some new incubus ability I didn’t know about. Because my lover was half demon, and although he suppressed the hell out of it, those abilities did come out at times.

  And they were glorious.

  I lay there, watching water bead on a broad chest, powerful arms, and a well-defined nose and chin. The head was still somewhat hazy, as were the extremities, and there was no color to the body except for the pale steam still swirling around inside. But it was startlingly real nonetheless.

  The lips moved, almost as if he was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear. He bent closer and tried again, but the same thing was true. There were no sounds in the room except for the softly lapping water, the distant rasp of rain against the windowpanes, and the occasional creak of an old house settling in for the night.

  He put a slowly emerging hand on the tub, just above one of my knees, and my head turned to watch it in fascination. Some soap suds had become trapped and were sloshing around under the transparent surface, making him look like he had white gloves on. And nothing else, I realized, as he rose partly out of the water, revealing the evidence of that fact in exquisite detail.

  Golden light shimmered off of hard pecs, peaked nipples, and a six pack of ribs. Even the belly button hadn’t been forgotten, denting the surface slightly above an obvious Adonis belt. Water ran off the strange body and pelted down into the bath like rain, disturbing the water, but not enough. Because the real show was still hidden just below the surface, and twist and squirm as I might, it wasn’t enough to reveal it.

  “Pritkin!” I complained—

  For a second, before a hard mouth came down on mine.

  It was the strangest sensation: the kiss familiar, yet not. And not just because the lips felt odd against my own. I’d have expected it to feel like kissing a water balloon, a thin skin stretched over boiling steam. But it didn’t. The lips were too firm for that, too warm. I wasn’t sure what they were like, because I didn’t have time to think about it.