Chapter Twenty-Five
I just sat there since there was nothing else to do, waiting for Faerie to provide some inspiration—only she seemed to have gone off somewhere—and trying to find the calm I didn’t have right now.
Seeing Zeus again, even as a bad TV-type broadcast, had been terrifying. I’d told Pritkin the truth; the old bastard wasn’t here, probably couldn’t be, considering that he and his current avatar were facing invasion by Caedmon’s forces. I wondered how that felt, being besieged by your own son.
Of course, with Zeus, it probably wasn’t the first time.
But he had a thousand tricks up his sleeve, and with someone like Feltin, he probably didn’t need to be on site. He could play puppet master from the other side of Faerie, dangling rewards and punishments as a carrot or a stick for his latest donkey. And doing a bit of mind control when that wasn’t enough.
And the fact that he wasn’t even having to break a sweat to ruin our plans was just—
“There she is,” the incubus said, watching me through a crack in his lids. “Your mother, peeking out of your eyes. I saw her in London, and I’m seeing her now. The difference is that you’re starting to see her, too. And that scares the hell out of me.”
“I’m not my mother.”
“Yes, so you keep telling people. But has it occurred to you that most of us would be gibbering right now? You’ve just seen Zeus for the first time since that complete debacle in Romania, where you literally died . If you had any sense, you’d be looking for a bed to hide under—”
“I’m done hiding!”
“So it would seem,” he murmured, and I suddenly realized that I’d swooped on him like Feltin had that fey in his office.
For a second, both of us froze, barely breathing. Then, I slowly crawled backward and sat down, working to get myself under control. It didn’t go so well.
Yeah, I should be scurrying away and searching for a bolthole, but I already had one. It was buried somewhere under the stables, where nobody ever went except for the demigoddess who ran this place and her stooges. I was as safe as anybody could be in this world, but I only wanted to get out.
And put Zeus’s head on a goddamned pike .
“You sure your mother is dead?” the incubus asked dryly. “And not doing a little puppeteering of her own?”
“She’s dead,” I said harshly. “This is all me.”
He thought about it. “Why doesn’t that reassure me?”
I crawled back over, getting into his face slowly this time because I wasn’t Zeus and wouldn’t act like him. But I wanted Pritkin’s alter ego to get this . And we didn’t have time for subtleties.
“We will die in here,” I told him. “Not our bodies, maybe, not yet, but our chances. Any hope of beating this bastard is ticking down with the clock. And if we don’t win this, he will come for us—me, you, everyone we care about. We’re at the top of his hit list, and you know it. So get over whatever this is, right freaking now, and help me!”
The incubus’s eyes narrowed to the point that I could barely see the stars anymore. And his expression blurred the lines so that I wasn’t sure who I was talking to or if it mattered. Because on one thing, at least, both men agreed.
“I am helping you, even if you can’t see it,” he said shortly.
“Martyring yourself is not helping me!”
“Martyr—my dear . I am an incubus. That word isn’t even in our vocabulary.”
“Then what the hell is this?”
“Demon practicality. Humans always see things in black and white, with no shades of gray. It’s been your problem all along and is one my “brother” unfortunately shares.”
“So, how should I be seeing it?” I demanded.
“Simple. We miss the race. Bodil is satisfied. Winning two out of five challenges would make us the odds-on favorite and upend everything. But not even bothering—or daring, as it will be believed—to show up will effectively tank our chances. The main thing the fey look for in their leaders is courage.
“So, she comes to let us out, either then or at the end of this farce. I explain what that bastard Feltin did and that if she will be so good as to use her demigoddess abilities to lift the curse, I will show my gratitude by retiring from her lands forthwith—”
“And then what?” I demanded. “Watch the world burn? Two of them?”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, give it a rest. Do you remember that camp? How close it was? Or Romania, where you—at best—managed a draw? And that only because of an ability the Pythian library had that Zeus didn’t know about, coupled with your unparalleled ability to piss people off.
“If he’d been thinking clearly, you would be dead, permanently.” He made a sound of disgust and grabbed my shoulders. “Listen to me, and listen well. You’ve done better than anyone could have expected, but you were right before—you aren’t your mother. And I am not some demonic god or whatever storyline you have my brother believing. We are not going toe-to-toe with the king of the gods and walking away, not again. We’re going to die, or we’re going to run, that’s the truth—”
“And leave the job to who ?”
“Who cares?” It had an edge of shrillness to it. “When the hell did this become our responsibility? We’re two very small, very insignificant players on a huge cosmic stage! You sound as if—”
“You’re a coward.” I stared at him. “I thought after London—but you’re a coward .”
“You’re damned right,” he said, with no embarrassment at all. “I’m a bloody coward. In a case like this, anybody with a brain would be!”
I felt my eyes narrow. “Are you calling me stupid?”
“Well, if the high heel fits—”
He’d let me go during that exchange, so I took the opportunity to grab him. And to shake him as hard as I could, only that amount of muscle doesn’t shake. All it got me was another raised eyebrow, and I swore to God—
“I’m calling you young,” he said flatly. “And na?ve. And brainwashed—”
“By who?”
“By any number of centuries-old people, putting more and more of the burden for this war on your fragile shoulders and not caring when they inevitably snap. But I do care—”
“If you cared, if you loved me as you once claimed, you’d help .”
“Help you kill yourself?” The mulish chin was back. “That I won’t do. I won’t endanger you or let you endanger yourself by giving you power. And that’s not the spell talking. Fey magic has a limited grip on me; unlike my other half, demon blood is resilient—”
“Then help yourself!” I interrupted because the damned man could talk all day! “Zeus is still looking for you. He wants to strip your soul and gain your power—”
“He’ll have to find me first.”
“And you think he won’t? That he can’t? The only safety for you is if we beat him!”
“Nice try, but my father has eluded that old bastard for centuries, proving you wrong—”
“Centuries when the gods weren’t here . They had to work through intermediaries like Aeslinn and that demon lord we saw in the Common who regularly erased his memory. But if they come back—”
The incubus smiled. “If. So far, everyone who has tried it has died.”
“Because we beat them!” I practically screamed. My God, and I’d thought Pritkin was hardheaded! His incubus made him look positively easygoing, and I was running out of arguments. “Do it for Pritkin, then—”
“Who will then help you, thus putting you in danger? No. Bodil will be back eventually, and I can wait for her.”
“Can he ?”
“Who knows? Who cares?” the familiar face darkened. “My dear, foolish brother can look out for himself, as he left me to do for so long. And who knows? If Zeus’s spell destroys him, perhaps it will leave me in charge for a—”
I don’t remember moving, don’t remember anything until his head snapped back, with the shape of my handprint livid on his cheek. “You wear his face,” I hissed. “But he was right all along. You’re not him! And you never will be!”
Retreating, I went to the corner with the damned bucket and sat there, my back to the room, because I didn’t want him to see my face. Demons only respected power, and right then, I didn’t have any. I never did unless it was borrowed from someone else.
I sat there for a long moment, almost shaking with rage. But it didn’t last. I felt myself deflate and grow almost perceptibly smaller, just a tiny, insignificant thing like the incubus had said.
And a grubby one.
I’d been wearing this gown for a while, being too afraid in Faerie to take it off. And although it had been laundered a few times, it looked the worse for wear. Augustine was going to have a fit when he saw it. . .
If he saw it.
I stared at the toes peeking out from under the hem, visible now that the armor had retreated, and tried to push thoughts like that away. It was stupid, and I always did this, and it wouldn’t help! But I didn’t know anything that would.
The toes didn’t look any better than the gown. The chipped paint was in all colors of the rainbow, courtesy of my little initiates, who loved painting anyone they could find. My big, strong vamp bodyguards fled in terror when a mob of them came hunting their latest victim and still ended up with sparkly nails more often than not. But the last time they’d caught me was before my foray into Faerie, which was beginning to be a while ago.
So long that I wondered if I’d ever see them again. Like Tamsin, with her vibrant red hair, a coven hallmark. It was a Little Orphan Annie bush most of the time and long, Victorian-era sausage curls when anyone had the time to fix it up.
But what she lacked in hirsute management, she more than made up for by a precocious ability with the Pythian power. She was four and already calling it to shift things to her that she couldn’t be arsed to get for herself. Annabelle, one of my acolytes, had started to whisper that she’d be shifting herself soon, and how would we keep up with her then?
Or Betty, an old-fashioned name for an old-fashioned girl who liked having tea parties with our resident ghost, the Pythian librarian, whose hairstyle she’d recently copied. I was starting to suspect her of being a ghost magnet because there had been a lot more ghosts around my court than usual lately. And most of them hadn’t come to see me.
Or Mira, our artist, she of the epic ‘fro and the ratty pink bunny suit that she wore everywhere, although it was starting to look as bad as my gown. Rhea had given up enchanting her drawings, which Mira insisted be animated, and had started enchanting the crayons used to make them instead. Resulting in epic Cassie pics—Mira’s favorite subject—showing up everywhere.
They usually depicted me putting a beat down on one of the gods, with a couple of golden whips—which I didn’t have the power to manifest most of the time—flashing. Or facing down Ares with an emerald green thunderbolt, which she’d carefully spread some glitter on to make it clear that it was magic . Or dressed in one of Augustine’s ridiculous gowns, which she always managed to make even more outrageous. . .
I stared at my ratty-looking nails and felt tears well up in my eyes, and I didn’t care enough to brush them away.
It was too much, suddenly, that little reminder of a better world. One that I’d thought I was almost back to, with Pritkin in tow, and could put this damned land and its goddess and its stupid, endless problems behind me. I could go home. . .
Only I couldn’t, and even if I could, without an end to this, would home even be there for much longer? Would my court? Would my girls ?
No. It wasn’t even a question. Zeus played the part of the avuncular All-Father, but he was a bastard. He’d hunt them down, one by one, not because he needed to; they were no threat to him. Even Rhea, the oldest, was only nineteen and half-trained. But because he’d enjoy it.
He’d killed two of the three Graea, old demigoddesses who had been acting as my protectors since I got this crazy job. Unlike everyone else, they’d known who my mother was as soon as they saw me and had signed onto team Cassie. And like Bodil had said, that didn’t improve anyone’s longevity.
He’d almost killed the previous Pythia, Agnes, and her mentor and mine, Gertie, until she sent me away in sheer self-preservation. He had killed thousands of war mages and vamps, who had been bearing the burden of this war largely alone. He’d cost me my ghost companion, Billy Joe. . .
I was sobbing in earnest now and didn’t care. I couldn’t do this! Not alone, not with Pritkin spelled and possibly dying, and everybody else off limits or lost or . . . or something. I couldn’t even say the words, that Mircea might be dead, too, and that it was my fault because I could have saved him—and I should have, even if it made him hate me!
I should have figured it out, made better decisions, done something . But I hadn’t because I wasn’t good enough for this job, and all my bravado and “badass” this and “goddess” that didn’t change that. And now I was truly alone, and I couldn’t think, didn’t know, wasn’t enough . . .
Billy’s necklace bumped my hands when I bent over and put my face in them, and I felt my breath hitch. He’d died defending and believing in me, and it had all been for nothing. Because it ended in a dank cell in Faerie that I was too stupid to get out of!
I felt arms go around me, and someone pulled me back against a hard chest. I knew it wasn’t Pritkin, or at least not the right Pritkin, but it felt so good I didn’t care. This man had said he loved me once, too, but I didn’t know what that meant to a demon.
Not enough, apparently.
We sat silently for a moment because I guessed there wasn’t much left to say.
And then there wasn’t anything because the room winked out.
“What the—what is this?” the incubus demanded.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell whether this was another hint from Faerie or something more sinister because I hadn’t felt the transition into the Common. Of course, I hadn’t always before, but it had been a lot more abrupt since losing the link to Pritkin’s fey blood.
But this transition had been so effortless that if I’d had my eyes closed, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
I put a hand down to the cool marble floor I was sitting on, so different from the dank stone of a minute ago. It was a massive, white, polished slab with gold veining that ran halfway down the wide corridor we were in before being paired beautifully with another. And so seamlessly that it was almost impossible to tell where one began and the last finished.
There was also light here, faint but like actual moonlight, not the dim, underwater world of Nimue’s mountain. It was flooding over the marble from a window at the end of the hall, where diaphanous curtains were being tossed around by what smelled like an ocean breeze. But that was the only sign that we might be near water.
“What is this?” the incubus demanded again. He grabbed me when I didn’t answer, but it didn’t help because I still didn’t know.
But when I slowly, carefully got to my feet, they felt solid underneath me, not the hazy, not-actually-there sensation of my recent trips into the Common. Where I hadn’t even needed to walk, with Faerie towing me along like a kid dragging a balloon behind her. Only that was not nearly as reassuring as you’d expect since that meant I might not be in the Common at all, but then what was this?
Illusion? Some shift that couldn’t be happening because I was the only person in Faerie who could currently do that? A trick?
And if so, a trick by who?
I’d started to break out into a cold sweat, as the answer to that last question was obvious, when the incubus grabbed my chin. “Look at me!”
I looked and immediately crossed incubus trickery off the shortlist because he looked as spooked as I did. “What? Is. This?” he demanded and then didn’t allow me a chance to answer. “No, do you understand? I said no!”
“No to what?” I asked, which was hard as he was pushing my cheeks together to the point that my lips were pursed.
“No, I am not doing this! I am not being drawn into another of your weird, metaphysical adventures! I am not!”
“Okay,” I said through duck lips. “Then how do you suggest we get out?”
“You take us out!”
“I didn’t take us here, and keep your voice down!”
“Why?”
“That’s why,” I said, dragging him through an open doorway as the sound of booted feet rang down the hall.