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To find the answers we desperately needed.
And, possibly, to save a world.
But I had an errand to do first.
• • •
The hallways of the consul’s stately home looked a little different now, which wasn’t surprising since nothing had happened yet. The attack would be tonight, and when it came, a lot of people were going to die. Some of them would be ours, good people whose deaths I could easily prevent, except for the warning clanging in my mind.
I wasn’t sure why; I didn’t get details. Just that the battle, terrible though it had been, had had a purpose. But I could guess.
The little knots I’d seen of vamps and weres and mages, all battling together, were unprecedented. They didn’t fight alongside each other; they ignored each other or killed each other—except for last night. Which had caught them unawares, with very little backup, and with a mutual enemy that was threatening all their lives. It was the war in miniature, and taught the lesson far better than I ever could.
But it was still terrible, knowing that I could prevent it all, by a single warning. . . .
And in the process, leave us as divided as ever. Facing an enemy that was still hammering at the gates, trying to get in. Who wanted to kill us all.
And so I walked the halls silently, the weight of all those lives on my shoulders, and wondered what really aged the Pythias. Channeling the power of a god when we weren’t one, or this? Knowing things we could never say, seeing sights we could never talk about, keeping secrets our whole lives.
Like Agnes.
I didn’t doubt that Jonas had really loved her; the expression on his face had been eloquent. But I also didn’t doubt that he’d exploited their relationship as much as she’d allow. To the point that she’d hidden their child away, to keep him from doing the same thing to her.
Because she knew: it isn’t easy to say no, and to keep saying no, to someone you love.
Maybe that was why so many of the Pythias hadn’t seemed to have long-term lovers. Maybe that was why even those that had, like Agnes, had been forced to hide them away, to keep people from suspecting that they were being influenced. Maybe that was why so many had seemed to live so alone.
I didn’t plan to be alone for the rest of my life. But I also wasn’t going to be Agnes to anyone’s Jonas. I wasn’t going to have that kind of relationship, and any man in my life was going to have to understand that. Any man, I thought, and pulled open the door to the room where I’d been told I’d find Mircea.
And I did.
But I found someone else, too.
I stopped dead at the sight of Mircea, insensate on a bed, being guarded by a gorgeous brunette.
No, not a gorgeous brunette. The gorgeous brunette, from the painting I hadn’t remembered to ask him about. And not sitting. Lying. Under a thin sheet that did little to hide the ample, naked curves beneath.
She looked at me out of sloe dark eyes, and her mouth took on a contemptuous twist. “He doesn’t need you,” she told me dismissively.
“What?”
“He’s sleeping,” she said, as if I’d somehow missed that. “And I can give him what he needs.”
I bet, I thought, feeling my blood pressure start to rise.
“You can go,” she repeated impatiently. “Vamoose, amscray, make like a tree. Do you get it?”
“Yeah. I got it,” I told her, and reached for my power. And slid a question along one shimmering strand, receiving back an instant reply.
And laughed at the irony.
I could save this one.
Of course I could.
So I did. But I sent her to a pasture in the middle of nowhere, a particularly dung-filled pasture, because power has to be good for something, right? And then I gathered Mircea up in my arms. And I swear I saw a glimmer of dark fire under those too-thick-for-a-man lashes.
“We are going to have a long talk when you wake up,” I told him grimly.
