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“But that’s just it—they still do! I thought that, eventually, everyone would figure out who they were working with and things would calm down a little. And in some ways, I guess they have. The Circle’s old leadership was trying to kill me, while Jonas has just been trying to manipulate the shit out of—” I caught myself, but not soon enough. “I’m sorry,” I told her, slightly appalled. “I didn’t mean—”
“Why shouldn’t you have meant it?” she asked evenly. “It’s true. Everyone is always trying to manipulate the Pythia. The Circle has merely proven particularly adept at it.”
There was some bite to that comment; I guess she and Jonas hadn’t had a chance to mend fences yet, assuming he’d even tried. I knew he was busy, but he hadn’t stepped so much as a foot in here since he visited her—once—while she was recuperating. And that had been partly because he had war business to discuss with me!
But then, Rhea hadn’t gone to visit him, either, so . . . I didn’t know.
“We made up recently,” I told her. “Jonas said he realized that he hadn’t been treating me fairly—”
“Good of him to acknowledge that.”
Only the tone didn’t match the words. The tone said, “He’s a bastard, and you’re crazy if you ever forget it,” which . . . fair enough. Jonas was kind of an old bastard, but he was also head of the Silver Circle and one of my chief allies. And when he wasn’t trying to maneuver me into being his little puppet, he was a damned good one.
It was kind of the same deal I had with Mircea. We’d been allies, then lovers, and now . . . I wasn’t sure what we were now. But whatever was going on in our personal lives, we still needed each other.
Life was complicated.
Which sucked, because I wasn’t. I’d grown up in a vampire’s court, in the middle of constant intrigue, so you’d think I’d be better at it. And I was—sometimes—when I had to be. But I’d never learned to like it.
I didn’t want to manipulate anybody. I just wanted all the people I cared about to be safe and come hang out and drink margaritas. Seriously, that was everything I wanted in life right now. Was that too much to ask?
Guess so.
I drank beer, and wondered if having a margarita on top of it would get me smashed. Considering that I hadn’t eaten all day? Probably.
I sighed.
“You said that people don’t really see you?” Rhea prompted, because, yeah. We’d gotten off the subject.
“No. I mean, there’s one who does, but his frame of reference is a little out of date. Hopefully, he’ll come around. But the rest . . .” I’d been looking at traffic again, but now I turned to look at her. “They’re making statues, did you know? At the consul’s house. These huge, sixteen-foot-tall marble things—one of which is of me. And I know it’s just propaganda, all right? I know that. But—”
“But?”
“But it’s not only propaganda. People keep expecting things of me.” I thought back to what Adra had said, which had so thrown me that I hadn’t even had a reply. Because he was wrong. I had my mother’s abilities, but not her power, and that wasn’t going to change.
I’d told him the truth about what had happened on that battlefield. Together, Pritkin and I had made one big, godlike move—and that had been it. I’d used everything I had, plus everything he’d been able to give me, to rip open a path between realities and let loose a god. Who, even drained almost dry, even basically a ghost, had still been more of a threat than me!
Ares hadn’t been looking for me that night; Ares could have given a crap about me. But as soon as Apollo showed up, he’d been seen as a threat. And Ares had been right.
Because I wasn’t my mother. But if everybody kept expecting that, and worse, if they made actual war plans based on that—well, then I was going to freaking doom us all, and I didn’t know how to get them to see it.
I also didn’t know how to explain all that to Rhea, or want to give her a burden that wasn’t hers to bear. “They think I’m more than I am,” I finally said.
She didn’t say anything, but I saw her biting her lip again.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can say whatever you want.”
She hesitated, and then came out with it in a rush. “Is it possible that it’s you who doesn’t see?”
“What?”
She immediately looked horrified. “I’m sorry! It—it wasn’t my place—”
“It’s all right. If not yours, then whose?”
But she just shook her head. “Mother used to tell me things sometimes, and I—I wanted to help her, so much, but I didn’t know what to say—”
“You didn’t need to say anything. You being there was enough.”
