Karen Chance - Tempt the Stars

“It’s not your needs I’m interested in,” she said, getting in Jonas’ face. There was a war mage at his side, not Caleb, but someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t even remember arriving. But he made a small movement, and the witch bared her teeth at him. “Feeling lucky, sonny?”

“I don’t need luck,” he said, very low.

“No, but considering who you work for, I assume skill is too much to—”

I stopped listening.

“What are you talking about?” Caleb looked like he wanted to put a fist through Adra’s face.

I didn’t. I just wanted Pritkin to move. Wanted to see the chest go up and down. Wanted to see him open those eyes and glare at me about something, anything . . .

“I am talking about the fact that the being you call Artemis had won an entire universe for herself by her treachery, for she was the only great power left. She had ensured that by hunting the greatest of my kind to extinction, and then by exiling her own people. But she made one miscalculation. She left herself too weak to capitalize on her victory.”

“You lie!”

“Why? For telling you what you do not wish to hear?” Adra asked, unfazed. “The one you call Artemis may have founded your order, war mage, but make no mistake. It was to serve her needs, not yours.”

Caleb turned away with a curse and Adra looked at me. “We don’t know what went wrong. Perhaps the spell took more energy than she’d planned, perhaps her fellow gods fought harder than she’d expected. All we know is that the aftermath left her vulnerable, and she was forced into hiding. And she was good at it, for we sought her, those of us she had wronged. And while we did not find her, we ensured that she could not surface, could not risk feeding on our lower orders, could not regain her great strength. We might not be able to bring her to justice, but we could force her to fade into obscurity among the humans, to die alone and unsung, bitterly brooding over how close she came.”

I’d been bending over Pritkin, but at that I looked up at Adra through a veil of tumbled hair. “You’re twisting everything.”

“But we were wrong about one thing,” he told me steadily. “We underestimated, by far, how long that process of decline would take. Just when we were sure she must have died, just when we thought ourselves safe at last, she formed another plan. A plan involving a child.”

“I want a word with the Pythia,” the older witch said. It didn’t sound like a request.

“If Cassie wishes to speak with you, she may, when we are finished here,” Jonas informed her. “Perhaps you can agree that stopping the return of an ancient menace is a little more important than whatever minor issue—”

“Yes, minor ,” she said. “Do let’s worry about the politics before we concern ourselves with silly women’s issues. But if I may remind you, it was a woman who brought you this information, women who assisted in getting her here, women who died tonight!”

“I am not going to do this with you, Evelyn. Really I’m not,” Jonas said, little spots of color appearing on his fair cheeks. “This is not an example of misogyny despite your strange determination to make it one. This is—”

“—ridiculous,” I said, looking at Adra in bewilderment.

“Is it? A child who would be half human. A child who could feed here, on earth, as the gods could not. A child who could be hidden in the most unlikely of places until she grew up, until she came into her power—”

“No! That isn’t what—”

“A child who could be groomed to succeed to the only power of the gods that remained on earth, and then use it to go back in time, to join forces with a mother who may have lost her strength through the centuries, but none of her cunning—”

“I’ve been fighting the gods,” I told him furiously. “Not trying to bring one back!”

“Of course you have. They are rivals, threats that could challenge and overthrow you. They had to be fought off until you could find her, and bring her here—”

“I haven’t brought her anywhere!”

“You brought her thoughts. You opened a connection in the council’s own chamber. Do you have any idea how it felt, to see her again? Standing there, alive and amused— amused—at our consternation, at our shock and fear? To hear her give orders as if no time had passed, as if nothing had changed—”

“She was giving advice, not orders. And her thoughts are not her —”

“But you are in touch with her. You can go back, can find her, whenever you like. You’ve proven that—”

“And yet she didn’t bring her here.” That was Caleb’s angry voice. “If Cassie was part of some elaborate scheme, that would have been the first thing she did on becoming Pythia. There’s no getting around that!”

Adra smiled slightly. “Isn’t there? It’s clear you were not cut out for the political realm, war mage.”

“You let her go into hell ,” Evelyn said. “Yet you won’t let her save her own coven? And when did it become a case of you letting the Pythia do anything?”

“We have an understanding with the council,” Jonas told her. “And I know a council summons when I see one—just as I know a trap! There was no reason to kill those children, no reason at all, unless it was to force Cassie to come to a place and time of her enemy’s choosing—”

“What if it was? Whatever the cause, those children are just as dead—”

“And that is a tragedy. But losing Cassie would be a greater one. And at any rate, one does not willy-nilly corrupt the timeline!”

“You and I corrupted it,” I reminded him numbly. “We went back—”

“To save a world. Not a handful!”

So where do you draw the line? I wondered. At a million? A thousand? One?

Because right now one seemed a terrible loss to me.

“And what does that mean?” Caleb snapped.

“The council suspects that she is Artemis’ daughter in more ways than one,” Rosier said spitefully, answering before Adra could. “That she decided, after meeting my son, after learning not only who he is but what, that she no longer needed her mother. That with his help, she could mine the demon lords for all the power necessary to fight off her rivals, to secure her control, to rule herself—”

“I don’t want to rule!” I choked. “I didn’t even want to be Pythia.”

“And you never should have been!”

“We were talking about the information Ms. Silvanus has brought us,” Jonas said, looking at Rhea over his glasses.

“What information?” I asked, trying to force my attention back to the here and now, when all it wanted to do was go back. To find a solution. To make it right.

But some things don’t have a solution.

“The incubus has been regressed,” Adra told me. “It is an old method of execution that sends the soul back through his or her lifetime, into previous versions of himself. When his soul reaches the beginning of its life journey, it will wink out of existence, and the body will die.”

“That’s a bunch of bullsh—” Caleb began.

“It isn’t,” I said, thinking of Jules. And for a second, my heart sped up as I wondered if I could do the same thing for Pritkin. But there was a difference. Jules’ body had been changed, but his soul hadn’t. It had been in there, encased in a fleshy tomb, but present. Pritkin’s wasn’t. And it was his soul that had been cursed.

Adra had chosen his weapon perfectly.