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Was there a more forthright version of herself Cassia had failed to become? A less honest Cassia she had avoided? Or were the past, present, and future all somehow true, as Kassandra seemed to perceive them? Would that mean Cassia was both honest and dishonest, and always had been, and always would be?
“You must know,” Cassia said, “why I am not certain it is right for me to accept these robes. I fear they would be wasted on me.”
“That is not how gifts work.”
“I do not wish to dishonor your gift.”
“You want them. That is enough reason for you to keep them.”
Cassia did want them. She wanted so much. Was it all irrevocably out of her reach? “I am not sure of my right to petition Orthros’s oracle and Lio’s Ritual mother. But if you could see fit to also give me the gift of your advice, you would have my gratitude.”
“Whomever’s oracle or Ritual mother I may be, I invited you here, and that gives you every right.”
“Then, may I ask you to tell me my future?”
“You may certainly ask. But you don’t need to.”
“Oh, but I do. I have never needed insight into my future more than I do now.”
Kassandra folded her hands in her lap. “My foresight is for navigating uncertain futures and giving people hope of what they would not otherwise dare to imagine. I make a point never to use my magic to tell people what they already know.”
“But I am so uncertain. I don’t know what is to become of me.”
“Tell me this troubling vision of your future.”
What kind of oracle wanted Cassia to do her work for her? “Has Lio told you anything of what I intend?”
“All Lio has told any of us for the past two nights is that you cannot get away from the embassy. Given the tenuous political situation and the lives that hang in the balance, no one is willing to question that, whatever we may think the real reason is. None of them suspect you plan to go back to Tenebra and take the throne from your father.”
A little shock went through Cassia at the words. Kassandra spoke them so matter-of-factly.
“Except Argyros,” Kassandra added. “Lio told him everything.”
“So you have foreseen my intention.”
“You or Lio will tell me about it eventually.”
Cassia clutched the robe to her. “Can you tell me if I will succeed?”
“What do you predict is the answer?”
“Yes,” Cassia said. “I know I can do it. But what will it cost me?”
“Name your price.”
Cassia could not put a cost so high into words. “There is so much I cannot know. Imust know, Kassandra. Will my policies convince Orthros to keep the border open? Will I live long enough to finish my work and escape Tenebra? Will I survive my reign? Will Orthros be here for me? Will I make it home?”
“On the contrary, Cassia, you are the only one who can know that.”
“How can I discern if Konstantina will keep the border closed forever? How can I predict if a fever will waste me away or an apostate mage will cut my life short?”
“Whether those things happen or not, you know what will happen long before.”
“I’ll die,” Cassia whispered. “I’ll starve. My body will last and last, but the rest of me will already be gone.”
She gasped a breath, if only to prove to herself that time had not come, and there was life left in her yet.
“The cost is me,” she said.
