by Karen Chance
There’d been something missing in my life lately that all the running around in the world couldn’t compensate for. Something that was shortly going to be missing again, when I went back to court and my big, cold bed, all alone, where I’d toss and turn and hope he wasn’t doing something that might get him killed. Again.
And this time, it might not be something I could fix.
I’d rather stay here and just hold him for a while. Wrap my arms around him and maybe my legs, too, and hold on. It didn’t even need to be sexual; I just wanted to feel that heartbeat under my cheek and bask in the warmth of a whole, unharmed body—preferably someplace where it would stay that way!
I was sick of worrying about him, of being separated from him. Sick of smelling nice, floral scented sheets when they should have smelled like gunpowder and magic. Sick of the Circle, which seemed determined to keep us apart, and the damned demon council, which had tried to make sure that I’d never smell that combo again—
My brain skidded to a halt.
Pritkin broke off and shot me a glance, because he doesn’t miss much. “What is it?”
It took me a minute to answer, because some things were finally making sense. Not entirely, and not a complete picture. More like a half-done puzzle with most of the center missing.
But, suddenly, there were a few more pieces on the board.
“There was one spell that Jonathan was interested in,” I said slowly. “Lover’s Knot.”
“And you know that how?”
I gave him a short version of the events in HQ’s library.
“You can see through the eyes of a cat?”
“Yeah, well, not normally.” I skipped over it, because I didn’t want to get on the subject of enhanced abilities and master vampires. “But the point is, we did use that spell once, when fighting Jo. And Jonathan did take a lot of trouble to remove it from the library—”
“Yes, but why?” Pritkin looked baffled. “There are other copies.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. But I can’t get in the Pythian library to check there—”
“Because it was destroyed.”
Sure, let’s go with that, I thought.
“—so I don’t understand what he was doing. But we did defeat Jo using that spell. Maybe he’s afraid—”
“Of what?”
“Of us. Remember what Adra said?”
The leader of the demon high council had not liked the idea of me and Pritkin combining powers. The demons remembered mom’s famous hunts, and didn’t want a repeat. Alone, I was no threat to them, since godlike powers don’t pair so well with a regular human body. When I got tired, it didn’t matter how much power I had. I couldn’t channel any of it.
But Pritkin and I together worried them a lot more. He was a prince of the incubi on his father’s side, which meant that he could magnify power through sex—by a lot. We’d joined forces on a memorable evening in Wales to help kill a god through the energy we created, and Adra had all but admitted that the reason the council had attacked Pritkin wasn’t really about him. It was about what he and I might do together.
It had been infuriating to find out that I’d almost lost him for nothing. Because that was what their fears had come to: a big lot of nothing. Pritkin could magnify my power, raising it to basically the level of a god’s—for a hot second. And then we had to lose it or die, because we weren’t gods and it would burn us alive to keep it.
In other words, we’d get off a single volley, and then be defenseless against who or whatever we were fighting. Even if we decimated half of a demon army, the rest would destroy us right afterwards. The council had been worried about nothing, had almost killed my lover for nothing, and now, it seemed, Jonathan might be trying to do the same thing!
Why couldn’t people just leave us the hell alone?
“I remember,” Pritkin said. “But Adra was wrong, and if Jonathan thinks the same way, he’s wrong, too.”
“Which won’t keep you alive!”
“I’m more worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself—”
“Exactly!” It came out as a snarl, before he visibly reined himself in.
I stared at him for a moment, a little taken aback. He’d been so relaxed all night that I’d thought he was over it. That the anger he’d shown earlier had cooled and that he was fine.
Apparently not.
“Okay, what?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I gave him the look that deserved, because there was clearly something. “I thought you were angry at Jonas—”
“I am.”
“—for not killing Jonathan—”
“A damned fool move!”
“—but now it’s kind of looking like you’re mad at me, too.”
Pritkin scowled. “I’m not angry with you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You know you’re going to tell me sooner or later, so why not get it over with?”
“This isn’t the time.”
“Why not?”
He looked at me incredulously. “After the day you’ve had? And apparently the week as well? You don’t need this—”
“I also don’t need to be treated like a child.”
“That isn’t what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” Because it was kind of looking that way.
Of course, there was a reason for that. I’d changed a lot lately, but I wasn’t sure how much Pritkin knew that. He’d been cursed for the better part of a month, and then here for another one while the invasion was planned.
And two months in my life was a long time.
“Listen,” I said. “There are a few things I need to tell you—”
“Like the fact that you’ve been training with Lady Herophile?”
I blinked at him, caught off guard. “You knew?”
Pritkin had stolen an olive from my untouched salad, and was sucking the juice off a thumb. But at that, he looked up and the green eyes narrowed. “I’m not stupid, Cassie.”
“I never thought you were.”
“I suspected something for a while, but when you used Astara, I knew. According to Jonas, it’s a very advanced technique, one that even your acolytes might not know. And even if they do—”
“It would kill them to perform it.” Damn it, I’d worried about Jonas figuring that out, when there’d been another witness who knew me better and worried about me more. “How did you know it wasn’t Agnes?”
“Lady Phemonoe had a reputation for being a stickler. I didn’t think she would bend the rules so far. Lady Herophile, on the other hand—”
“Was more like me. She bent rules to the breaking point.”
“She was known for using . . . unorthodox methods,” Pritkin agreed. “And you met her in Wales and then again in London. It wasn’t hard to guess.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“I wanted you to tell me. I thought we trusted each other more than this.”
I fidgeted uncomfortably. Because we did. We always had. It was just . . .
“Being Pythia means playing the cards close to the chest sometimes, doesn’t it?” he asked, watching me.
“I don’t want to!” I said passionately. “But there’s just . . . so much, you know? So many decisions, and half the time, I don’t know whether I’m making the right ones. I didn’t want to keep it a secret—”
“But you didn’t know how I’d take it.”
I just looked at him, because it was the truth and we both knew it. But it felt miserable to have to admit. I trusted Pritkin, more than I’d ever trusted anybody. I knew he’d never betray me, but there were things that I was afraid he wouldn’t understand.
And that the people around him just might.
He sighed and sat back against the wall. “I had a feeling it was something like that.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize. You had to get
training somehow, and there weren’t many options. Jonas failed to teach you much of anything, Lady Phemonoe wouldn’t even try, and your mother . . .”
“Wouldn’t see me.”
It still cut deep.
“What else were you to do?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” I said, because I wanted him to understand that. I didn’t want this to come between us. “Gertie offered, after seeing how crap I was at going after Jo—”
“Crap enough to kill her.”
“Barely! Gertie said she’d wondered why I’d used such a limited skill set in Wales—”
“Whilst also outplaying her.”
“I didn’t outplay her. She caught me, repeatedly—”
“And you got away, repeatedly.”
“Do you have a point?” I asked, because he kept interrupting.
“Only that, perhaps, she didn’t choose to train you because you weren’t good enough, but because you were. You killed a fey assassin without even being able to see him—something I wouldn’t have believed possible if I hadn’t witnessed it.”
I fidgeted some more at that, because I’d had help there. Help that I also couldn’t talk about. Or maybe I could. Maybe I’d been hiding all these secrets and it wasn’t even necessary.
But what if it was?
Pritkin was part of the Corps and he was here all the time, especially lately. What if he accidentally slipped up and said something? I didn’t think it likely, but anybody could make a mistake, even someone as smart as him. And a little slip to somebody like Jonas . . .
What would the head of the Circle say if he knew I was sharing my power with a master vampire?
Or would he say anything? Would he kill him? Would he blackmail him? Or would he blackmail me?
Jonas had resented losing the influence he’d enjoyed with Agnes. I didn’t know how far that had actually extended; how much he’d really influenced her versus how much she’d let him think he did. But he believed that he’d had a Pythia in his pocket and now he didn’t.
What would he do to get that advantage back?
Damn it, I hated this! Hated that I had to think like this. I loved Pritkin and I trusted him; I just didn’t trust all of those around him. And I was right not to. The Pythia couldn’t be a puppet of the Circle and still do her job, I knew that.
But it still hurt, so much. He used to be the man I told everything to. When had that changed?
I looked at him miserably. I wanted to come clean more than I’d ever wanted anything. I wanted to talk and talk: about Jonathan, and how afraid I was of ending up like Jo; about all those people at court, waiting for answers that I didn’t have; about my worries over Rhea, and what would happen if I died without an heir; even about the mess with Mircea. I missed my best advisor, missed getting his feedback, missed feeling like somebody understood . . . hell, I’d missed that more than the sex!
And now he was sitting there, waiting for an explanation, but I didn’t have one.
He looked at me for a moment, and then got up and held out his hand. “Come. There’s something I want you to see.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Dessert came just as we were leaving—of course. I boxed it up and took it with us. Along with the rest of the bread—because I did not have some weird kind of problem with bread! And a new bottle of wine since we’d drunk most of the last one.
Pritkin had gone to see Tobias again while I was busy. He came back with a thermos of coffee, because he’d gone too long without a fix, and a set of keys. Like normal, if slightly old-fashioned keys, the kind mages didn’t use because they had wards.
“What are those for?” I asked.
“Your suite for the night.”
“My suite? You mean . . . we’re not sleeping in the hobbit hole?”
Pritkin paused. “I think that’s the nicest way I’ve ever heard Corps’ housing described.”
There’s a reason for that, I thought, but followed him down a skinny hallway under the stairs.
We went up another set of steps, down a couple of corridors, and then down a sloping pathway that had me hugging Pritkin’s ass the whole way. Which . . . could have been worse. And then I got lost, because the pub seemed to be built into the landscape like everything around here, with much more inside than you’d think.
I wasn’t too happy about that, as the little corridors we traversed were kind of close, with no windows and low ceilings, and the whole thing seemed to be chiseled out of stone. It reminded me uncomfortably of the Pythian library, which did not bring up good memories, or of an ancient tomb. I was about to ask if we could revisit the whole hobbit hole thing, when Pritkin unlocked a door at the end of a hall.
“Tobias is one of the proprietors who provides rooms for visiting dignitaries,” he said. “Since you can’t shift back to court just now, I arranged for you to have one for the night.”
And, okay, I thought, as he threw open the door. I was going to stop making assumptions. Because this was beautiful.
It was still Tudor, with dark wood paneling, matching floors worn smooth by countless feet over the years, and a ceiling of white plaster and open beams. But this was upscale Tudor, like Queen Elizabeth was coming and you’d better have all your ducks in a row. Or at the very least, carefully stitched onto your hand embroidered bed hangings, along with rabbits, deer, a whole garden full of flowers, and a couple of peasant girls, scandalously showing off their shins as they waded through a creek.
There were also oil paintings on the walls, fresh flowers stuck in vases, a stack of wood in a gorgeous old fireplace, and some modern upgrades in the form of a decent bathroom and some French doors in the living room.
I pushed open the latter and then stood there, transfixed.
“Oh! Pritkin, look!”
The doors let out onto a balcony overlooking the square, with a cluster of very un-Tudor wrought iron furniture taking up most of the space, but I didn’t care. Barely noticed it, in fact, because I was too busy staring at the crowd three stories below us. Who were currently getting snowed on.
I looked up, and sure enough, a blizzard of tiny flakes was spiraling out of the darkened sky despite the fact that I was pretty sure it didn’t snow in October around here. And even if it did, that was rock up there, regardless of what it looked like.
“Somebody is going to get his butt kicked,” I said, laughing. And craning my neck, trying to see where it was all coming from.
“Maybe not,” Pritkin said, coming up beside me. “And who knows? Perhaps it will cool a few tempers.”
It took me a second. “Wait. This was you?”
“I admit nothing.”
And then I was laughing harder, because son of a bitch!
But no one seemed to mind too much. Even the overworked guards were just standing around, staring upward in surprise. While everybody else—
“They’re trying to make snowballs,” I said, grabbing Pritkin’s arm and pointing at a small group off to one side.
They were doing a pretty good job of it, too, since almost everyone in the crowd was a magic worker. They could summon the flakes out of the air without having to wait for them to collect somewhere. And then it was on, guys lobbing snowballs instead of spells, girls laughing and squealing and then throwing some themselves, because even big bad war mages had been kids once. The disgruntled and hungry diners, waiting outside a dozen establishments, were suddenly smiling, and holding out hands and, in a few cases, tongues, to catch the flakes.
The little town was turning into a winter wonderland.
“You haven’t seen the best part,” Pritkin told me, pulling me back into the living room. And then stopping abruptly, as something chimed in the air around us. He scowled, but flicked a wrist, as if throwing something at the fireplace. And a second later, the mirror over the top of it fritzed and shimmered and changed.
To an image of Jonas Marsden’s face.
I froze for a second, thinking that Pritkin was busted. But then I mentally rolled my eyes at
myself. I didn’t think Jonas was all that interested in pranks, even impressive ones.
Which was borne out by his first words.
“John. We’ve had a look at our new guest, and found something . . . unexpected. We’d like to have your opinion.”
Pritkin hesitated, but then nodded, not that Jonas had waited for it. He’d already done something that bisected the mirror. Half of it still showed his face, backed up by some generic office, and the other—
I sighed, and slumped against the back of the sofa, wondering what it took to get a night free of horrors.
Because it was Jonathan, of course. Buck naked and sitting on a chair in what looked like a holding cell, with the horrible face still visible on his stomach. And still moving slightly, because I guessed this was some kind of video feed.
He didn’t look any better naked than he had clothed, but was so grotesque that he drew the eye even as he repelled it. But with some distance, instead of standing right in front of him, I noticed a couple of things that I’d missed. A couple of horrible things.
“What the—” I stood up and went around the sofa to get a better view. “What are those?”
“More trophies, one assumes,” Jonas said.
I glanced at him, and then back at Jonathan again. And, suddenly, I understood what he’d meant. Because there were two more lumps, far smaller than Jo’s, on the other side of the dark mage’s torso.
And one of them was moving, too.
It was maybe the size of a baseball, and a livid reddish-purple, like a recent wound. But I didn’t think so. Because there was a face in there, small and scrunched up and half hidden by the mottled color, although not a human one.
“Demon,” Pritkin said, coming around the couch to join me.
“That was my assessment as well,” Jonas said. “Although some of our experts disagree. They don’t think it possible.”
“Don’t think what’s possible?” I asked, still staring at the hideous little thing. It had eyes, tiny black ones, or maybe just bumps that cast shadows at the appropriate places. It was hard to tell.
And then it blinked at me, and I shied back to the point that I hit the coffee table. “He’s possessed?”