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“They are not the same thing!” she said, furious. “That is why we have a Pythia, to speak for us—all of us. And Mother knew this, but she loved you, and it tormented her, but she loved you—”
“And I loved her!” he rasped. “For fifty years—”
“Then prove it! Prove it and do what she would have wanted. Let Lady Cassandra go, before it’s too late. Let her do this.”
“She can’t do this, not without help!”
“Jonas,” I said, putting a hand over the one he still had on my arm. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I can’t do this. I can’t win this war for you on my own. But maybe I can win it with you.”
He looked from me to Rhea for a long moment, pain and fury and fear all there in his face, clear for anyone to read. He wasn’t going to do it. It was like my life lately: too much, too fast. Or maybe not, I thought, as his hand suddenly sprang off my arm. “Go.”
I didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. I grabbed up the mage’s coat, still smelling of nineteenth-century soot, and shifted.
Chapter Fifty-three
I didn’t have to ask if they’d found the potion. Marlowe’s office door was open, and curls and puddles of lethal substances bloomed bright in the darkness: red and deep purple and orange. A group of war mages, dark ones judging by the lack of insignia, remained frozen in a contorted mass in front of the cabinets, coats swirling and shields half raised as they fought to get away from the dangerous tide. Except for one who had landed in a potion puddle that must have been just outside the spell range.
Because it was busy sizzling through what remained of his flesh.
It looked like somebody had broken through the wards, everyone had rushed forward for a wholesale plunder—and then someone else had thrown down a bunch of lethal substances, catching them all off guard. And then frozen them where they stood.
And that included the competition, I thought, staring at a withered corpse caught halfway to the floor. The limbs were gray and shrunken and desiccated, the face unrecognizable. But the red hair was as vibrant as ever.
So it was the brunette.
I turned and went out of the office.
I didn’t have to ask which way she’d gone. The corridor to the right was a frozen tableau, with bolts of spell fire suspended in the air, unmoving. Explosions of plaster hung overhead like clouds, sprays of glass twinkled like stars, and potion bombs had detonated in what looked like tufts of cotton candy.
But I stopped anyway, grasping the door frame, indecision clawing at me.
Because I didn’t have to do this. I could shift back in time a day and warn everyone. I could tell Marlowe to move his damned potion. Could tell the Senate to up their security. Could—
Be ignored, disbelieved, and not taken seriously, just like I had been my whole life.
My name wasn’t Cassandra for nothing.
And I could almost hear the response, if I told Mircea to move a potion—one he knew I wanted badly—from Marlowe’s hands to somewhere less secure. “So that you can access it easier, dulceata?”
Plus, even if I could get them to believe me, I didn’t know who the acolytes’ contact was. A vampire, she’d said. Someone with access. Someone who might learn of the move, and then I’d be no better off—in fact, I’d be worse. Right now, I still had the remains of a full bottle of potion in me. Tomorrow, it might have worn off.
But if I stayed and failed . . .
If you’re ever going to talk to me, I told my power silently, help me now. Do I go forward, or do I go back?
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For a long moment, there was nothing, except my own gnawing anxiety. But then the corridor behind me dimmed, ever so slightly, or maybe the one ahead brightened. It wasn’t a lot of difference, was barely any at all, to the point that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking for it.
But I had been, and it was there.
“So, lousy odds either way, but slightly better ahead?” I asked. But that time, I didn’t get a response. Which, judging from past experience, meant I’d gotten it about right.
I swallowed. And then I ducked under a pinkish red cloud, which would probably have eaten my face if it were moving. But it wasn’t—nothing in the whole corridor was. Including the line of bullets hanging in the air just ahead, on their way to obliterate a mage’s chest.
He was one of the Circle’s men, whose failing shield was down to a faint flicker of green in the air around him. I scooped the slugs out of the air and threw them down the empty hall behind me, hearing them explode against the floor once they cleared the area of the spell. They echoed loud in the stillness, but it didn’t matter.
She already knew I was coming.
