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I looked down at the table under my hands, where the beautiful, shiny wood had started to gray and crack and splinter. It was only a puddle now, maybe a couple of feet square; I doubted Ingaret could even see it. And if I wanted this to work, she needed to.
“I’ve always been more of a hammer,” I told her, and pushed.
The effect tore down the table, giving me more than I’d expected. A lot more, I thought in surprise, watching not only the table but the gilded chairs around it spontaneously age. And while the slab of thick, dark wood grayed in an instant, fissures forming in the surface and running toward Ingaret’s group like claws, it was the chairs that did me proudest. They exploded away from the table like popcorn, causing people to flinch and step back, before hitting the floor with a clatter.
I wasn’t exactly sure why they were doing that; maybe some buildup of gases under the gilding as the wood decayed? But I’d take it, because more and more of Ingaret’s people were looking like they were having second thoughts. And no more had joined the scarlet thread now wending its way up to the ceiling.
But nobody was leaving, either, and my power was almost spent barely halfway down the table.
“Hurry,” I said breathlessly to the consul. “I’m trying to hold it back, but I don’t know how long I can! I don’t usually summon so much at once!”
“Begin evacuation,” she told Mircea, her dark eyes on mine. “Make sure everyone gets out.”
“And away,” I reminded her, groaning as if trying desperately to hold my power back.
In reality I was pushing forward with everything I had left. The effect continued down the wood, slower now, but almost creepier for it. Little fingers of rot and decay—of death—crept across the mighty slab, as if reaching for the women at the end. And the chairs, formerly exploding, were now collapsing inside their golden sheaths, leaving puddles of gilt behind on the floor, like dropped robes.
Or shed skins.
“You won’t look that good,” I told the women, who were staring at them. “There won’t be anything left of you at all, except possibly for bones. They tend to be more resilient.”
“She’s bluffing!” Ingaret said again. “No one can channel that much power!”
“No human,” I repeated. “I’m not one.” And I gave it everything I had, everything I had left, until it felt like I’d hollowed out my bones, stripped my veins, bled out. Until I would have screamed, but I didn’t have the strength left, because I’d just poured it all into that last, final PUSH.
I groaned and the mighty table cracked and broke and splintered. It sounded like a hundred guns going off as the great slab cleaved straight down the middle, falling into two distinct halves that hit the ground and all but disintegrated. The remaining chairs exploded in fantastic showers of gold, like brilliant fireworks in the gloom. And Ingaret’s own spell finally hit the back wall of the senate chamber and detonated, shaking the room and sending a red glow sifting through the air.
And reflecting in my eyes, or so I was told later, making me look half-angel, half-demon as I shouted: “Run!”
They ran.
Chapter Thirty-two
I woke up to the feeling of somebody watching me.
I didn’t open my eyes, having learned a few things in my time as Pythia, and let myself finish waking up first. This didn’t feel like my room at Dante’s, with the bedclothes under my hands silky rather than velvet, and it didn’t smell like it, either. More of a piney sort of musk—
This was Mircea’s room. I’d know that scent anywhere, as dark and subtle as the man himself. And suddenly it all came flooding back. Including a memory of me somehow walking out of the echoingly quiet senate chamber, Mircea on one side and the consul on the other. We cleared the heavy doors that swung shut behind us before I collapsed to my knees. And looked up at Mircea desperately.
“Can I pass out now?”
“Yes,” he’d told me, his throat working. “Yes, you’re safe now.”
That was the last thing I remembered.
But it wasn’t Mircea in the room with me. The scent of him was distant, muted. He’d been here, but he wasn’t here now, and I wasn’t a vampire. I couldn’t use my nose as another pair of eyes.
So I opened the real thing and almost jumped out of my skin, because that damned dhampir was almost on top of me!
“I knew you were bluffing,” she said, as I scrambled back and almost brained myself on the headboard.
Luckily, it was padded.
Unluckily, there didn’t seem to be anybody else in here, and shifting was . . . God, so out. My whole body felt like a sprained muscle, weak and sore and hurting, with the very idea of accessing the Pythian power ridiculous. I was on my own.
The dark eyes flashed gold for an instant, then went back to brown again. She tilted her head to look at me, and somehow, she’d moved without my seeing her, because she was once again invading my space. Although, frankly, anything within five miles would have qualified.
But even I had to admit that the lovely face was breathtaking, especially this close: the eyes with amber light boiling just beneath the brown, her power kept on a tight leash; the thick, dark lashes that were so like her father’s and didn’t require so much as a hint of mascara; the red lips that were likewise natural—or had the best, most perfect lipstick I’d ever seen. The damned woman was stunning, and it pissed me off, because I knew how I probably looked. And it wasn’t pretty.
