Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,161

turn to look at the stars. “You know, when I first met you, I gave you some bad advice.”

“What?” I frowned, because the advice I’d gotten from Marco had kept me sane, more often than not.

“Not intentionally,” he said. “I thought I was doing you a favor, telling you like it is, helping you fit in to the nice little servant’s position I assumed was to be yours. You were Mircea’s woman—that’s how you were first introduced to me, and that’s how I thought of you. This whole Pythia thing.” He shrugged. “I didn’t understand it. And when I did think about it, I just thought: good. Another weapon in the family arsenal.”

“I’m not a weapon,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself because it was cold. And because it was a thought I’d had more than once myself.

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “A weapon is a tool somebody else uses, with a power under his control. You’re not a weapon, you’re a Pythia, and your power is your own—”

I laughed, a bitter little burst. I couldn’t help it. And then I saw Marco’s face. “I don’t have power,” I told him. “Not enough, anyway.”

“Nobody feels like they got enough these days. But there’s lots of types of power, and lots of types of strength. That advice I gave you was that everybody serves somebody—best to realize it early and get in line. But I was wrong. There are leaders in our world, and you’re ramping up to be one of them. I think a lot of people realized that today. You’ve started pushing back, and while they may not like it, they respect it.”

“And if I don’t respect myself?” I burst out. “When I hate myself because I did something tonight that was exactly what Tony would have done? Things started getting out of hand at court, and his answer was always the same: somebody has to bleed, somebody has to die—”

“That’s enough!”

It wasn’t loud, but it was sharp enough to knock my head back. I blinked at Marco in confusion. Even more so because he was sitting up again, and he looked pissed. He suddenly looked like the centurion he’d once been.

“You’re nothing like that fat piece of shit, and I don’t want to hear that from you ever again, do you understand?”

I sat there, wondering what had just happened.

“Do you?”

My immediate response was sir, yes, sir! But that wasn’t true. And I was tired of taking orders, even well-meant ones. “I acted like him, Marco—”

“Bullshit! You let a necessity do double duty, that’s all. You didn’t go looking for someone to bleed for you, you didn’t take joy in what had to be done. You’re sitting here beating yourself up over it—do you think Tony ever did that?”

“Maybe he did, in the beginning—”

“Like hell!” Marco chewed angrily on his cigar. “I’ve known that fat prick for centuries, even before I came to Mircea’s, and he was always the same. The Change doesn’t change who you are, it just gives losers like him more power than they know how to handle. Mircea should have put him down years ago. But he’s the sentimental type, too, at least when it comes to family—”

“I’m not sentimental!”

“Sure.” Marco leaned forward, and a shaft of moonlight lit the big, handsome face. “That’s why you’re sitting out here, shivering and tearing yourself up, instead of going to bed like you ought to, because you’re fine with it.”

“I’m not fine with it! I just—” I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what I felt anymore. “You don’t use someone’s death like that. You just don’t.”

“Maybe if you’re human, you don’t,” he agreed. “But you’re not one, and you’re dealing with some next-level badasses. Sometimes, you gotta give ’em a slap. That’s true of the master as much as anyone. He’s a good guy, but if you give him an inch, he’ll take the whole fucking continent. You don’t realize it yet, because you’re tired and cold and hurting, but you made a smart play tonight.”

I looked at him, and knew there were tears in my eyes, but I couldn’t help it. “Then why do I feel like this?”

Marco got up and folded me into a hug, and as always, it was like hugging Gibraltar. But it felt good. “’Cause you’re not Tony,” he told me softly. “Now go to bed before I carry you there.”

It wasn’t an empty threat; he’d done it before, with no more difficulty than anyone else picking up a wayward kitten.