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“They were stupid, then.”
He smiled slightly. “Do you know, some of them came back? For several years, they came, by twos and threes, men and women in gray, and stayed for a while in the forest near the house. They didn’t invite me to their camp, but they knew I would come, and I have to believe that was why they were there. They taught me things: magic, the lore of their world, even some of their language. But they never took me with them when they left. And they never told me why.”
“They were stupid,” I said again, more harshly that time, because there had been wistfulness in his voice, and the echo of the confusion and pain of a child who didn’t understand why he wasn’t good enough. Why nobody wanted him.
“They were fey,” he repeated. “They think differently than we do. Although I’ve never understood their criteria for who they take and who they don’t. I’ve seen them take some who . . .” He cut himself off.
“Be glad they didn’t take you,” I told him. “You were better off.”
“I doubt that.”
“I don’t. You don’t know what it’s like, growing up around a bunch of people who treat you like an inferior, who see you only as a commodity to be used, who couldn’t give a shit about you unless you’re benefitting them in some way. . . .” I stopped, biting my lip. “You’d have tried to fit in, done your best to learn about them, to be one of them. But it would never have worked. You’d have always felt like what you were—an outsider. Because you’re not like them. You’re not . . . like anybody.”
I looked up to see his face swimming in front of me.
“Be glad they didn’t take you!”
“Someone in your life was stupid, too,” he told me. And then he kissed me.
Chapter Forty-nine
The explosions, flickering light, and gasps and oohs from the crowd, all receded into the background. For a second, there was nothing but sensation: warm hands, stubbled jaw, lips that should have been hard, that were always hard, but were suddenly soft and gentle. And a strange feeling in my stomach, something like when we went over the falls.
I don’t know why; it wasn’t even a particularly passionate kiss. Wasn’t like the one on the riverbank, which had been lusty and amused, a payback for my spying on him coupled with a half-serious offer. Or the one after we got here, which had been all happy and relieved and glad to be alive. I wasn’t sure what this one was, except that it was tender and sweet and yet somehow more unsettling than the others, a lot more, and—
I broke away, half panicked for no reason I could name, and a wash of noise and light broke over me.
“Look,” Pritkin said softly. “It’s your big moment.”
“What?”
I blinked, and looked around in confusion. And then at the big, empty space, which wasn’t empty now. Because it was full of an image of me facing off with the Svarestri leader, a tiny, flimsy figure next to the staunch solidity of the trolls or the jagged electricity of the Svarestri.
With, yes, her mouth still open.
But thankfully, my part was mercifully brief. The story quickly focused on the real hero: the guy under the seats. And it was hard to argue with that logic, since we’d have all been dead without him.
But I thought it was a little unfair that he wasn’t shown with a wide-open mouth, too, considering he’d barely shut up the whole time.
“He was very brave,” I said loudly, because several trolls in a nearby tree were watching me. Our hosts seemed to agree. Mugs were hoisted, fists were pumped, and grins were exchanged all around. And then gasps and ooohs and claps of sheer delight, as fire-us started tear-assing around the circle of trees, which was standing in for the massive cave.
“They know they can’t hold here forever,” Pritkin said, watching them. “The light fey are too powerful, too united. But you take your victories where you can get them.”
And, suddenly, I was seeing it through their eyes. Because today had been a victory, hadn’t it? I’d been focused on surviving for so long that sometimes, even the idea of victory, of winning this, seemed like a child’s dream.
What did I have that could stand up to the kinds of things we faced? Half the time, I didn’t even know what they were. I might have my mother’s blood, but I wasn’t my mother. I might be Agnes’ heir, but I wasn’t Agnes. I was a second-rate, badly trained, mostly clueless Pythia who had been stumbling my way around for three months now, somehow managing not to get killed.
And kind of expecting not to manage it for much longer.
I’d been so focused on that, that I’d forgotten to look at it the other way, the way I had when facing off against the Svarestri leader. Because I was still here, wasn’t I? Despite the attempts of everybody from the Silver Circle to the Black, from my own acolytes to myths and monsters and freaking gods, the bumbling, stumbling, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me Pythia had not only survived but had beaten them. Had beaten the whole damned bunch of them, and suddenly I was yelling, too. And crawling to the edge of the platform to scream along with everyone else as the great Svarestri warriors fired and fired. But kept. Missing. The target.
“You can’t shoot your way out of a paper bag,” I yelled, despite the fact that no one here knew what that was. “A paper bag!”
The crowd agreed. They roared as the whole crazy spectacle ended with sparks raining down from above, like falling boulders, and fire-us zooming out of the cliff side and then on a victory lap around the tree line, through scores of reaching hands that didn’t care if they got a little singed as long as they were part of it.
And for a second, they were, we all were, all the little guys who never figured in anyone’s plans, because we weren’t worth worrying about, weren’t worth thinking about, except to be stepped on and passed over and killed in someone else’s wars. Because the ones with the power thought we didn’t matter, that we were only fit for slaves. Yet today we had proved them wrong. Today we had beaten them.
The show ended with a firework of sparks that lit up the treetops and caused a few unintended blazes here and there that had to be quickly put out. But nobody seemed to mind. The band had struck up again, and everyone was busy drinking and dancing, and leaping back and forth between platforms to gossip with their friends, and to swing by to give us beer, so much beer that Pritkin was laughing and turning it away before long, before we both ended up drunk out of our minds.
