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“What about you?”
“They said I resembled her more in temperament, although I never saw it. She was more . . . fiery. More highly strung. I remember her as beautiful and passionate, proud and ambitious.”
I bit my lip. I thought that described Mircea perfectly.
“I always thought I was more like my father,” he told me.
“How so?”
Mircea’s head tilted. “He was a . . . prudent sort of man, a diplomat, for King Sigismund of Hungary. He was around your age when he was sent as a special envoy to Constantinople to discuss a possible merger between the Roman Catholic faith and the Orthodox. It never happened, of course, but he impressed the Holy Roman Emperor with his tact and judgment.” Mircea smiled. “Although probably not for his piety.”
“He wasn’t religious?”
“No more so than was politically expedient. My mother was the devout one in the family. Forced her poor sons into the care of the Dominicans for part of our education.” He shuddered.
I smiled. “You don’t like monks?”
“I always have suspicions of any man who can willingly turn his back on the finest of God’s creations.”
Brown velvet eyes met mine, and a shot of something warm and electric shot right through me, making my pulse pound harder in my throat—and other places. I decided I really wanted that drink now. Luckily, another of the ubiquitous floating trays was headed my way.
I moved forward and reached for a glass, at the same time as a man on the other side. My hand brushed the flute, toppling it and sending a splash of golden liquid onto his pristine white shirt. He looked down and I looked up, an apology on my lips. And that was where it stayed, as both of us froze in stunned recognition.
Because we knew each other, and neither one of us was supposed to be there.
Chapter Nine
I stared at the thin, vaguely horsey features and pale blue eyes of the mage in front of me, and hoped I was imagining things. He looked a little different in a well-fitted tux instead of seventeenth-century slops, his sandy blond hair slicked back instead of falling messily around his face. But it was him. The guy I’d once helped Agnes apprehend before he could blow history to kingdom come.
If I’d had any doubts, they were erased when he suddenly gave a screech, knocked the tray of drinks at me and bolted. A choking mass of thick, blue-black smoke boiled through the room as I stumbled back. Someone fired a gun and someone screamed. And then everything slowed down—literally.
The whole room suddenly looked like it was on slowmotion replay. I fell back into Mircea, my gown fluttering lazily around me, as the serving tray arced high in the air above. Glasses scattered, golden liquid sloshed and the silver surface flashed in the candlelight for a long moment....
And then sped back up and hit the floorboards with a crash. But it was barely audible over the sound of rapid-fire gunshots, breaking glass and the collective panic of a crowd unused to danger. Not that I was having much of a different reaction, and I was plenty used to it. I hit the ground instinctively, only to have Mircea grab me around the waist and jerk me back.
That was lucky, because the crowd took that moment to decide on the better part of valor, and there was a stampede. Ladies in fine gowns and men in tuxes forgot about elegance, threw away decorum and fought to be the first out the door. The place where I’d been kneeling a second ago was suddenly a mass of swirling hems and pounding feet.
“What happened?” Mircea asked, pushing me behind him.
“Agnes,” I gasped. The smoke burned at the back of my throat, making it hard to talk, hard to breathe. “She can manipulate time for short periods, stop it . . . slow it down . . . and she must have recognized him—”
“Recognized who?”
“The guy from the Guild,” I said, desperately trying to spot him in the crowd. But the smoke made it difficult to see anything, and most of the guests were taller than I was. I hiked up my skirts and scrambled onto a nearby table.
“What guild?” Mircea asked, but I didn’t answer. I could see over the crowd now, but not through the smoke. But there was something going on near the back of the room—spell fire lit up the haze in spots, like strobes on a dance floor. And most of the colors were in the red and orange range—offensive magic, war spells; not the soothing blues and greens of the protective end of the spectrum.
I hopped off the table and ran.
Mircea grabbed me before I’d gone a yard—and then flung us to the floor as a stray cu
rse blistered the air overhead. It crashed into the window behind us, shattering the glass and sending fire running up the brocade curtains. More smoke, thick and smothering, added to the mix, threatening what little air was left in the room.
“Let me go!” I choked. “He’ll kill her!”
“Kill who?”
“My mother!”
