Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,162

“I can’t,” I said. “I need to talk to the guys first.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Marco didn’t ask why. Maybe he already knew. He just went to collect the boys, after tossing me a throw from off the back of the sofa, although he could have summoned them mentally just as easily. But maybe he thought I needed a moment.

He wasn’t wrong.

Talking with Marco usually helped me sort out my thoughts. He might not always be right, because nobody was always right, and he was rarely diplomatic. But I didn’t need diplomacy; I needed honesty, and he always gave me that.

But sometimes, I couldn’t give it back.

There were things I couldn’t tell Marco, things I had to sort out for myself.

Like Mircea saying passionately that I’d misunderstood, that he’d told me about Lover’s Knot to prove that he wouldn’t go behind my back.

“I’ve known about this for weeks,” he’d said, the dark eyes urgent, willing me to understand. “And I’ve done nothing other than confiscate all traces of the spell! I won’t do anything—”

“And the others?” I’d asked roughly. “Who else knows?”

“No one. The spell is truly lost this time. Even Claude doesn’t have it—”

“And who took it out of his mind? Was it you?”

I’d seen the answer on his face before he’d replied. Of course it had been him. He’d trust no one else with something like that.

So there was someone who still knew it, then.

“I’m not going to use it, Cassie!” he’d said, frustration in his voice as well as his face. He hadn’t understood how I would take this. He really, really hadn’t. “No one will hear about it from me, no matter what you decide.”

“This isn’t more blackmail, then?” I’d asked steadily.

Mircea had started to reply, something sharp, judging by his expression, but he caught himself. I always got under his skin somehow, and I wasn’t even trying. I didn’t want him angry; I just wanted the truth. I needed it, because this was so much bigger than he seemed to think.

“I can hardly blame you for assuming that,” he’d said, after a moment. “But no. I was desperate before. I knew how badly our conversation had gone, when I told you about Elena. I thought I’d lost my last chance—”

“And if you get desperate again?”

“I won’t. You must believe me!”

And the thing was, I did believe Mircea. Or, rather, I believed that Mircea believed Mircea. Maybe I was hopelessly naive, but he was right: he hadn’t had to tell me about that spell. He had plenty of mages under his control. He could have had any one of them cast it on him, which would have also put it on me, through the link between us.

And we did have a link. Our recent breakup had made no difference, magically speaking, not with the marks I still bore on my neck. He might have put them there when he was out of his head, but they had still created a bond that nothing could undo. Under vampire law, I was his.

Whether that would be good enough for this particular spell no one knew, because Mircea hadn’t tried it. He’d said that he wouldn’t risk destroying time for a single woman’s life, and right now, I believed him. But next week? Next month? Next year?

Rian had told me about the insidious nature of the obsession that plagued older vamps, how it crept up on them. How it grew over time, little by little, because of course it did. No master would have been caught out if it was obvious. But if the changes were slight, building up slowly, would Mircea notice? Would anyone?

And when the obsession took him, and he couldn’t see anything but her, what would he do then?

I sat forward and put my elbows back on my knees and my head in my hands, because I didn’t need to ask that question. I already knew. Mircea hadn’t been called Mircea the Bold when he was alive for nothing.

He could say whatever he liked, and even mean it. But when push came to shove, when he didn’t think he had another choice, he would act. That was just who he was: the daring leader of men, not the diplomat standing on the sidelines, as he’d been pretending. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

The consul knew him, too, and arguably better than me. She’d certainly known him longer, and she was worried. I’d thought she was just being paranoid—it’s a popular vampire pastime,