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“Are you all right? They wouldn’t let me see you! I threatened to burn this place to the ground and they still—”
“I’m fine. I’m ready to deal with Lizzie.”
There was a sudden silence on the other end of the phone, one that dragged out for a long moment.
“Are you sure?” Jonas finally said, and his voice was different. Rougher. He didn’t like this any better than I did, but unlike Mircea, he understood.
“Yes, wake her up.”
“Do you want to see her?”
No, but I didn’t
have a choice.
There are some things you don’t do over the phone.
“Yes.”
“Ask Lord Mircea to link up from his end,” Jonas said, his voice going clipped.
“Cassie, what is going on?” Mircea asked, and his voice had changed, too.
It saddened me to hear it. All night, he had used what I thought of as our private voice, because I rarely heard it when we weren’t alone. It was lighter, less guarded, full of laughter. Mircea laughed in front of others, too, as he had in the senate chamber, to make a point. But that was different, less genuine. Just another tool. But with me . . .
He was different with me.
Or maybe I just wanted him to be.
It didn’t matter now, because he was back to his formal voice, the careful, weigh-every-word one he used around court, because you were a fool if you didn’t. It cut me to hear it here, but it would cut a lot more if he didn’t get this. “Can you link up?” I asked, because he was just standing there.
Mircea walked over to a mirror, the same one I’d used to admire my silly hairstyle, and touched the surface. Immediately it changed to something I’d seen before, so much so that it felt like déjà vu: a sleepy young woman with matted blond hair, a cot, a cell, plain concrete walls.
“Elizabeth Warrender,” I told Mircea. “The last acolyte.”
As before, she didn’t seem happy to see me. “What do you want?” Lizzie demanded. “And why do you always call me in the middle of the damned night?”
“It’s not night where you are, Lizzie.”
She glanced around. “How the hell would I know? This place doesn’t even have windows.”
“Makes it harder for you to shift out,” I heard someone say from out of frame.
“Shut the hell up!” Lizzie snapped. “How dare you even speak to me? Do you have any idea—”
“Lizzie.”
My voice was quiet, but it turned her glare back to me. “They’re all idiots here,” she snapped. “Sooner or later, they’re going to forget a dose, or be a little late, and then I’m gone. If you had any sense, you’d move me—”
“You know I can’t do that.”
The usual prison for time travelers was in a place known as the Badlands. I’d been there several times, but I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was. Another dimension? A fold in this one? The space between universes where time couldn’t reach? Nobody seemed to know, even Hilde. All I knew was that the Pythian power didn’t work there, making it an ideal cage for time travelers who the court needed to stash for a while.
Of course, most of those were people who had used other methods to travel through time. There were extremely dangerous spells that could manage it, if you were willing to be blown into a thousand pieces if they failed. Or, worse, to be detached from time completely, forever falling through the centuries, unable to gain a foothold ever again.
Those sorts of prisoners were given a time-out—literally. Until the huge amount of magic that they’d somehow acquired to attempt such a thing dissipated. They were then turned over to the Circle for more commonplace punishments.
But the Pythian power didn’t run out. And no one could take access back once it was given. It had to be freely surrendered, and Lizzie hadn’t surrendered it.
