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“Good idea!” It was easily twice the size of a regular pillowcase, because the pillows were twice the size of regular pillows. They had to be, or they’d have looked ridiculous on that thing.
I glanced back at the bedroom worriedly. Under the assumption that the consul had prepped this place for me, what, exactly, had she thought a hundred-and-fifteen-pound woman needed with a bed that big? Was it a status thing? Was it done to fit the size of the room? Was I supposed to be holding orgies? What?
“Lady?” Rhea said, and I turned to find her holding up the case, now full of waterlogged cards.
“Stren-stren-stren-stren—”
I tossed my card in with the others. And then blasted the lot of them on high, while Rhea held the other end of the case and fluffed it around so that the hot air would reach them all equally.
“We could use the clothes dryer!” she yelled, because more of them were talking now.
“But it wouldn’t be as much fun!” I yelled back, laughing.
Because it was. And I guess Rhea thought so, too. Because for a minute, she looked like the kid she’d never gotten to be.
All this talk about childhood made me wonder how it had been for her, growing up at that other Pythian Court. Because it hadn’t seemed all that much fun to me. Prim, proper, and beautiful, yes; fun, no.
And while the other girls had been able to flaunt their family names and the age-old pedigrees that went with them, Rhea had had to be a nobody, just a coven girl that someone had been dumb enough to let in and who never fit in with the cool kids. The ones who’d acceded to acolyte status almost as a matter of course, as if it had been ordained from the time they exited the womb. And who had received all the training that was denied to her, because she supposedly wasn’t talented enough.
Hilde was right; Rhea was probably super talented, considering who her parents were. But she didn’t believe it, because she’d always been told otherwise. She couldn’t see her own worth, because no one else had ever seen it, except for her mother. And Agnes hadn’t wanted her daughter following in her footsteps because she had thought she’d be happier elsewhere.
But shouldn’t that have been Rhea’s decision?
I thought about Jo, another outsider in the court, although for a different reason. Jo had made acolyte, as Rhea had not, because she belonged to an old magical family who had pulled the usual strings. But she hadn’t been part of the cool girls’ clique, either, although not because of a lack of talent. Because her talent had gone down an unauthorized path.
Jo had been a necromancer, a magic worker with power over the dead, one of the most reviled of magical gifts.
During the wars between vamps and mages hundreds of years ago, necros had served both sides, wherever they could get a patron who would protect them. Low-level necromancers had been prized by vamps as field medics, with their ability to manipulate dead flesh allowing them to greatly speed up the healing process. Mages had likewise employed them as spies, since their ability to see what their creatures were seeing gave them eyes in an enemy camp that were virtually impossible to detect.
But as soon as the wars were over, all of that changed. Necromancers went from being a tolerated asset to a feared danger almost overnight. Vampires hated them because they could influence and sometimes even control baby vamps. Mages mistrusted them because they could create unkillable creatures to do their bidding and steal information from dead minds. Which was why one of the first stipulations of the treaty that had ended the long conflict had been to put considerable restrictions on what they were allowed to do.
And serving on the Pythian Court was definitely not allowed.
Jo had been forced to hide her gift, and to use conventional magic—her secondary skill—against the other girls’ primary ones. So, of course, she’d made a poor showing. They’d resented her as a political appointment who they didn’t think deserved the honor and treated her as deadweight that would soon be winnowed out.
And, oh, how she’d resented it!
Over time, Jo had turned from an angry, narcissistic young woman into what I have no reservations at all about calling a monster. She’d joined the other side in the war, not in hopes of wealth or honor or position, but simply out of revenge. She’d worked to bring the god Ares back to earth specifically because she knew what kind of destruction he’d wreak. She planned to use him, as she’d triumphantly told me, to utterly destroy the magical world that had marginalized and rejected her.
She hadn’t succeeded, but she’d come awfully close. I still had nightmares about how close. I could still see the glee in those bright green eyes at the death and destruction she was causing, and the stretch of that wide, red mouth while watching others’ pain.
I guess some girls really did just want to watch the world burn.
Which is what made it all the more amazing that Rhea had gone down an entirely different path.
And that was despite being in a worse position than Jo ever was. As an older initiate without acolyte status, she’d been left in limbo, not fitting in with either the younger girls or the older adepts. She’d ended up as little more than a servant, helping out in the nursery where the youngest initiates were kept until they were old enough to move into shared rooms.
She’d nursed their colds and held their hands at night when they cried because they missed their families. She’d read them stories, taught them their ABC’s, and helped the older girls with their homework. She’d been a constant prop to her mother, especially in the final days of her life, when Agnes was so ill. And, as far as I could tell, she’d never uttered a single complaint.
Or, you know, tried to burn the world down.
She’d even helped a bumbling, clueless Pythia, the woman who had gotten the position that another girl might have thought she deserved. But instead of sulking in a corner or trying to sabotage me, Rhea had fiercely defended me and my office. She’d taught me things I’d never known about the Pythian Court, she’d gone into a firefight with me and some crazy coven witches to rescue that court, and she’d slit her own throat later on to protect it.
I didn’t deserve her.
I knew I didn’t.
But I was selfish enough to be grateful that she was here anyway.
