by Karen Chance
“There are certainly things that can be done that the time line cannot compensate for,” she agreed serenely. “But your power should warn you of those instances, Lady.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” I asked, getting worried. “Because I haven’t heard anything. I never hear anything!”
For the first time, Rhea frowned. “You never hear—”
“And I should, shouldn’t I?” I cut her off, because I wasn’t feeling serene. I wasn’t feeling serene at all. “If I’m supposed to get a warning when I change something, then my power should be going off like a fire alarm right now! Because there was a death. A . . . a man . . . died who wasn’t supposed to, and it was my fault. But not a peep!”
Rhea thought for a moment. “The acolytes—the real ones—would be able to answer your question better—”
“You are a real acolyte. You’re my acolyte.”
She smiled suddenly, a small expression, but it lit her whole face. “Thank you, Lady. But the fact remains that they received training that I did not. However, I am certain I was told that a Pythia will know if the time stream is being disturbed. That she will receive an unmistakable warning. If you received none . . . then perhaps you did not change anything, after all.”
“But a man is dead—”
“He might have died soon afterward in any case.”
“Of what? A heart attack?” Because I didn’t think—no, I knew—that Pritkin wouldn’t have been fighting those fey if I hadn’t been there. He’d have probably gone into hiding as soon as they showed up and, based on what I’d seen, done a damned good job of it.
But with me in the picture, he’d have had to hide two, which didn’t seem like it would be a big deal. But then, people thought the same thing about shifting. Like, what’s one extra person when you’re already going somewhere anyway?
But it made a big difference—just huge—and maybe making someone else invisible wasn’t any easier. Not and keep it up for however long the fey might stick around, anyway. So he’d grabbed his stick and he’d grabbed me and he’d started booking it for the nearest highway—or, since it was medieval Wales, the nearest sheep trail—out of there.
But he hadn’t made it.
And now a fey was dead who shouldn’t have been.
But Rhea didn’t seem to agree.
“If you were given no warning, this man could not have survived,” she insisted. “By whatever means, he must have been fated to expire before he could do anything for which the time line could not compensate.”
Unless I was too out of it to notice the warning, I thought grimly. Or unless I didn’t know what a warning was supposed to sound like. Or unless whatever he was supposed to do, he did back in faerie, where my power didn’t work, so who knew what I’d just screwed up?
God, it was supposed to be so easy! Find Pritkin, have Rosier say a few words, done. But we’d missed him three times now, and I didn’t even have a way to get back for a fourth, and even if I found one—
“Lady,” Rhea said, and it brought my head up, because it sounded unusually stern.
I blinked at her.
Gray eyes searched my face, and the frown on her forehead grew. “You are tired,” she told me. “And have been working far too hard. You have had too many people depending on you and too little support. You are, if I may say so, badly in need of rest.”
“I know. I can’t shift again if I don’t get some sleep. But first I need to—”
But Rhea was shaking her head. “Not sleep. Rest. You need some time free from stress and worry. You need to relax. You need a—”
I burst out in half-hysterical laughter before she could say it.
“I’m sorry,” I told her after a minute. And I meant it, because she didn’t deserve to be laughed at. But a vacation was not in my near future.
Probably not in my far one, either.
“Then some kind of stress reliever,” she said determinedly. “I could make you . . . a drink?”
I shook my head. I could still taste the wine from the Bollocks. Which meant I might never taste anything ever again.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
“Then let me run you a bath.”
I thought about it. And suddenly, all the aches and pains of a very long few days, of sleeping on a tree root in Wales, of climbing up and down, up and down, more hills than I could count, of being so sure we had him . . . only to have him slip through our fingers again, hit me.
“A bath sounds good,” I told her fervently, and got out of the tub.
I went to get some nightclothes, and by the time I got back, a bath pillow had been put in place, the dirt had been washed away from around the drain, and hot, frothy bubbles were taking its place. Rhea bustled out, and I eased my aching body into the hot, hot, almost-too-hot water, wincing because it caused every scratch and bruise to stand out in sharp relief. But it felt good, too, soothing away the pain almost as fast as it caused it. And in a minute, Rhea was back with that drink I hadn’t wanted but suddenly did.
Because it was milk and there was a plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies to go with it.
A bubble bath and chocolate chips, I thought, slightly in awe. I might have just died and failed to notice. I dug in, and they were as good as ever, soft and melty and perfect. Tami always had been the best cook, and most of her stuff was homemade, because it was cheaper.
And better, I thought, looking up halfway through.
And caught Rhea watching me with a strange expression.
“Did you want some?” I asked indistinctly, because I had a cheek full of happiness.
“No,” she whispered. She sat on the vanity stool.
For a while, she just watched me eat cookies.
“You said your power doesn’t communicate with you?” she finally asked.
I nodded.
“At all?”
I thought back to my early days in this job, before I had completed the ritual to get the top spot, and was just another heir in competition with Myra. My power had jerked me around all over the place, like some kind of wild, time-traveling puppet, trying to stop whatever she was about to mess up. I’d really resented it at the time. Now . . . well, it wasn’t like I wanted to meet my acolytes again, but I preferred it to meeting Ares. But I wasn’t meeting them, because my power wasn’t taking me anywhere. Or telling me anything.
I swallowed milk. “No. Agnes told me once that I didn’t have to worry about learning how to be Pythia, that my power would train me. Like it did for the early Pythias who had to figure things out for themselves. But it hasn’t.”
She frowned. “It ignores you?”
“Well, it does what I want . . . if I’m not too tired. So I don’t think you can say ‘ignore.’”
“But when you talk to it, it doesn’t answer back?”
“What?”
“When you ask it a question. You don’t get an answer?”
“Ask it . . . a question?”
It was her turn to look at me.
And then to keep on doing it, longer than was comfortable.
“You . . . have never . . . asked your power . . . anything?” she finally said, in a tone that could only be described as “appalled.”
Poor Rhea. I kept freaking her out and I wasn’t even trying.
I sighed. “Asked it how?”
“I . . .” She stopped. And then just sat there some more, blinking. “I’m . . . not sure.”
“That would make two of us.”
“But you can do it,” she insisted. “Lady Phemonoe said many times that she had to ask the power about this or that. And you are her heir, and a Pythia of great ability—”
I choked back a laugh.
“You are! You have done more already than some ever did! And you have done it alone!”
“Not alone,” I correc
ted. “I’ve had help—”
“I have yet to see any!”
Rhea seemed to be getting a little upset, for some reason.
“I have had help,” I repeated, because it was true. “It’s just that, right now, people are a little freaked out about the war. Like I am about this.”
She shook her head. “But you shouldn’t be. The power is your partner, your helper, your . . .” She threw her hands up. “I do not understand how you have done so well without it. I truly do not!”
“Well, that’s what I’m saying. Today didn’t go so well. And I really need to know if I screwed something up.” And how badly, and if I was supposed to fix it, and God, I hoped I wasn’t supposed to fix it!
“I cannot help you,” Rhea said, looking upset. “The lady . . . she never said . . . merely that she had to ask.”
“Like you would a person?” I asked. “Because Apollo’s dead—”
“But the power isn’t Apollo. It came from him, long ago, but since coming to us, it . . .” She stopped, and thought for a minute. And then started speaking slowly, as if trying to remember some long ago conversation. “The Lady said that we don’t know what it is, exactly, or what it’s become since Apollo released it. But we know what it isn’t. It isn’t human and doesn’t think like a human. But it isn’t a mindless energy source, either. Those who try to exploit it find that it actively works against them.”
I nodded, thinking of Myra. Every time she’d shown up to cause trouble, the power had thrown me at her, ruining her day. It might not have been able to stop her from using it to travel around, but it could make sure she regretted the trip. “So . . . I work for it, basically?”
But Rhea shook her head. “No. Some people have thought that the Pythias are merely the power’s avatar, a body for it to inhabit. But that’s not the case. Nor are you subject to it. You are partners.”
Which was great, but that didn’t do me a lot of good if we couldn’t communicate.
“Partners how?” I persisted, because any information was more than I had.
“The power uses your clairvoyant abilities to look into the past, into the future, and provide you with information,” she told me. “And options. The Pythias have to do the actual work, and make the final decisions. But the power gives you information that no one else could have. It is why all Pythias have to be powerful seers.”
I blinked as something finally made sense. “So you’re saying I almost never have visions anymore . . . because my power is using up all the bandwidth?”
Rhea nodded. “The more you use it, the fewer visions you will have, as it needs your abilities to see where to take you in the past. That is one reason for the court—our clairvoyance compensates in the times when yours is . . . busy.”
“Like when you saw Ares’ return,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Rhea blanched, whatever details she was remembering haunting her eyes. I wasn’t sure whether that had been her first vision, but since she’d said the power didn’t come to her, it was a possibility. And what a way to start!
But a moment later she swallowed and recovered. “Yes. The power may have tried to show you as well—I am sure it did—but the amount that you have been using your gifts . . . and for so long . . . and it couldn’t risk exhausting your abilities when you might need them again at any time . . .”
“And it couldn’t give a heads-up to the acolytes, since they’d have just thrown a party,” I said sourly.
She nodded again. And then frowned. “Are you sure it has not been helping you, Lady?”
I thought about it while I washed off more Victorian-era grime. Maybe it had been, in some ways. Like maybe Rosier and I hadn’t ended up in the middle of the Welsh countryside by accident. Maybe we’d gone there because I hadn’t been thinking about a particular place when I shifted; I’d been thinking about Pritkin. And he hadn’t been at court.
It was possible, now that I thought about it, that we’d originally landed somewhere pretty close by. But I’d been unconscious and Rosier had been trying to get away from the entry point as fast as possible, and we’d missed him. Only to meet up again later, because we were still in the same general area.
My power had known where he was, even though I hadn’t, and it had taken me to him.
That sounded like help to me.
But, on the other hand, if my power was trying to help me, it had seriously bad timing! It had taken me to a Pritkin in the middle of a crisis. He must have thought he’d lost his pursuers—he wouldn’t have been stopping for a swim otherwise—but he hadn’t. And I hadn’t been with him for more than a few minutes when they showed up. So why take me back then?
I mean, honestly, wouldn’t a week earlier or later have been a whole lot better? Some day when his biggest problem was deciding what to have for dinner? Or that he spent washing his socks? Or was sick in bed with a head cold and didn’t do anything? Basically any day when I wouldn’t be at risk of changing time, because absolutely nothing dangerous was happening?
I’d thought my biggest challenge would be getting to Wales. Once I had that potion, and we actually got all the way back to the sixth freaking century, I’d thought my job was done. And the damned thing is, it should have been. Pritkin should be back, this should be over, and I should be able to concentrate on other things.
So why wasn’t I?
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But . . . I wouldn’t give any odds. You said Agnes asked it questions?”
She nodded again. “I’ve heard her say so many times.”
Hello, I thought, feeling slightly ridiculous.
Nothing.
“Hello?” I said, out loud, because what the hell.
More nothing.
I sighed again.
“I should know this. I should be able to help you!” Rhea said, looking about as frustrated and upset as I felt. Which wasn’t fair.
“You have helped me,” I told her. “You got the power’s warning to me when I was too tired to see it for myself. And you told me something tonight that I didn’t know, something important.” I smiled. “And it’s kind of hard to get answers when you don’t even know the questions. So thank you.”
She nodded, biting her lip. But she still looked miserable. “Here. Have a cookie,” I told her, passing over the plate. There was exactly one left. She looked at it and then at me. And then she ate it.
And finally smiled back, because there was nothing Tami’s cooking couldn’t fix.
Chapter Twenty-five
The riverbank was fuzzy, indistinct, like daylight seen through fog. It matched the sky above me and the river beneath me, but not the man in front of me. He was all too real as he squatted down or went to his knees or did something that caused most of his body to disappear underwater.
Except for the golden head, which ended up on a level with my gently floating body.
And the warm hands that slid, water slick, between my thighs.
I could feel his twin at my back, slipping an identical pair of hands beneath my hips, lifting and supporting them at the same time. Although the river was already doing that, so I didn’t see why he needed—
A pink tongue flickered out, tasting the beads of water on my inner thigh.
Oh.
That was why.
A question I didn’t need a translation for appeared in a pair of green eyes. And stayed there as more water was slowly licked away with each drag of his tongue. Lower calf became upper, became knee, became behind the knee, and I should stop him, I thought; I should stop him now.
But I didn’t want to stop him now. He’d started to feel like a mirage, there one minute and gone the next, or like a ghost, only less real because ghosts came back. But he was here now, warm and alive and catching my gaze again, his own burning hot even with his lips curved in a grin, like he was laughing and asking and daring me, all at the same time.
>
This was what Rosier took away from him, I thought. The chance to be this carefree—he never would be again. The chance to explore who he was, what he was, instead of being told. The chance to develop free of the creature who was never around when he was younger and needed him, but was the first to show up when he started giving evidence that he might be useful.
Twenty-four years. He’d had twenty-four years. And then fighting and running and . . . God, I knew exactly what that felt like!
Only no, I didn’t. Because I’d never even had that. I’d been brought up in a place where walking on eggshells was everyday life; where a madman ruled over a personal fiefdom and could have people killed at any moment; where there was no choice about anything, from what I wore to what I ate to how I used my gift, and no freedom, no freedom at all.
Until I took it, or thought I did, and ran away. But to what? Years of paranoia, of living with the idea that that madman would find me again, any minute. Of watching everything I said and everything I did and still jumping at shadows, because he might be in them.
I hadn’t even been able to dance at the club where I worked part-time, because I had to keep an eye on the door. Tons of people my age came every night to laugh and talk and enjoy themselves. And to let loose, just for a little while . . . but not me. Never me. What if I let loose and it was the night one of Tony’s boys showed up? What if I got too carried away and didn’t see him? What if he saw me first? What if, what if, what if?
I’d been young, but I couldn’t act like it; I’d been free but only in name.
God, I really had been the perfect Pythian candidate, hadn’t I?
Warm breath ghosted over me, heating me in ways breath had no right to. Stop him, some still slightly rational part of my brain was demanding. Stop him now!
But then Agnes’ apartment flashed across my mind, so perfect, so pristine. Of course it was. There’d been no husband there to come home and kick off his shoes, had there? To throw his jacket and whatever all over the sofa. No children to scatter mess around, and leave toys in the middle of the floor for everybody to trip over. Not even a dog. Just a perfectly kept apartment full of exactly no one, not even quiet-voiced initiates half the time.