Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,19

will succeed you. Everyone does.”

“Maybe you’ll enlighten me?”

“Drop the act. We know who Rhea Silvanus’ true parents are. She was raised by a coven, remember? The Silver Circle has been influencing the Pythias for years, and now their leader is to have his daughter on the throne? If there was ever any question who runs things—”

“The power chooses the Pythia,” I told her. “Rhea is Jonas’ daughter, it’s true, and her mother was the former Pythia Agnes—”

“Then you admit it!”

“Didn’t I just say so?”

I glanced around because the distraction technique suddenly wasn’t working so well anymore. Our little group was starting to be hedged by unhappy faces, with enough passive power coming off them to send my hair crackling around my face. Damn, I could use another cup of tea!

But I didn’t have any, so I soldiered on regardless.

“So, yes, Rhea has a strong pedigree. But so did Myra, Agnes’ former heir, yet the power came to me—”

“Considering who your mother was?” Someone laughed. “I’d damned well hope so!”

A murmur went around the group. It seemed that some hadn’t been reading the papers, because there were a few gasps as questions were asked and answered, and a few audible snorts of derision. Yeah, I thought, that’s why I didn’t go around name-dropping.

“And,” I said, raising my voice, since that seemed to be considered normal around here, “there’s the fact that Agnes never wanted Rhea to follow in her footsteps, something she made quite clear to her daughter, who was never trained. She can’t even shift—”

The murmuring got louder.

“—and may never do so. But either way, the power chooses the Pythia—”

“Then why does it always go to a Circle girl, hm? Explain that,” someone else said.

“Because they’re the ones who are trained!” I looked around the ring of faces in exasperation. “The power chooses the best candidate possible. Are you surprised that is usually someone with the right training?”

“And you expect us to believe that there’s no politics, no Circle intervention, involved in that selection?” That was Zara again.

“No, I’m not saying that,” I told her. “Quite the contrary.”

“See! See!” Someone said.

“The Circle has exerted a great deal of influence for some time on which initiates are selected as acolytes,” I said, because it was true. “They want to give the old Circle families, the ones they feel they can trust, the best chance to get one of their daughters on the throne. A lot of arm-twisting is done to get those girls into position, and then it’s usually a cutthroat scrabble between them for the top spot.”

“And yet you wish us to send you girls.” That was Evelyn. She’d stopped trying to distract anyone, since they were all over here anyway.

“Yes, I do.”

I looked around at them and tried not to let the various expressions get to me. Other than from Saffy, I didn’t see any encouragement in the room. Hilde was frowning along with the rest, or maybe at the rest—I wasn’t sure. She was in the back, and it was hard to tell. But a party this wasn’t.

“I’m sorry for how you’ve been treated in the past,” I repeated. “It was unfair—”

I heard somebody snort again.

“—but some of that—a lot of it—was on you.”

That earned me a few gasps. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t, I thought. And carried on anyway.

“When you withdrew your girls from the court, you also greatly lowered the chance of ever having a coven Pythia. Rhea was partly raised by the covens, as you know. If she does end up with the top spot, maybe she’ll be sympathetic to your issues, maybe she won’t. But that’s as close as you’re likely to get if you don’t send anybody to be trained. The power isn’t likely to go to someone who doesn’t know how to use it, and you’re making sure they don’t.

“And by doing that, you’re willfully conceding yet another area of the magical world to the Circle’s control. It’s like expecting to win a game when you refuse to play, even though”—I raised my voice again, because the room had just exploded—“even though you have a Pythia right here, right now, willing to give your girls an equal shot! If you don’t take it, don’t blame the Circle. If you don’t have an advocate, it’s because you don’t want one! If you don’t have equality, it’s because you’d rather blame someone else for your problems than take it when it’s offered!”

“Damn,” Saffy muttered, looking into my cup. “What the hell