Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,211

Ares on my own, made me more resilient. But it had been damned lonely, and there’d been plenty of nights—

God! So many nights hugging my pillow, my eyes wet, anxiety clawing at my breast for sleepless hour after sleepless hour, because what if I was wrong? What if I made the wrong decision, did the wrong thing, out of ignorance of the magical world, or of the cultures of the different groups, or of all the politics I didn’t understand yet? There were so many things that went into a right decision, and so many ways it could go wrong. But after Pritkin was taken, I’d had no one to talk it all out with, no one to lay the options on the table with clinical efficiency and let me see things clearly.

And now he was back.

He was back and we were alone and oh my God, I could talk!

So I did. It spilled out in half-incoherent sentences, the words almost falling over themselves because I didn’t have to weigh each one, didn’t have to leave it trembling on my tongue while I ran down all the reasons why I couldn’t say that to this person, because to this person, I could say anything. And while his jaw got tighter and tighter as he listened, he didn’t try to interrupt me.

“It’s not that I don’t get it,” I said, long minutes later. I’d sat up against the headboard, the blankets around the legs I’d pulled up to my chin, but my toes sticking out. “The Pythian Court faces some next-level shit sometimes, and despite being time travelers, you don’t always get do-overs—”

“Like yesterday,” Pritkin said, speaking for the first time.

I nodded. “My power isn’t reliable in Faerie. If I went back to try to keep Jo from changing time, I might end up changing it worse, and getting all those people on that train killed. Or like on the search for you. I’d love to pop back to Wales and finish this. But the way things played out, Ares got dead. What if, by killing her—permanently this time—I changed that? So I get why the court is like it is. I do.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“God, no!” I thought back to those little girls clustered around Gertie. Her entire court hadn’t been in the ring, just the acolytes. And some of the younger initiates hadn’t even been in the room. But some of them had.

There’d been one girl, maybe fourteen or so, the same age I was when I ran away from Tony the first time. I remembered how scared I’d been then, how my heart had seemed to hammer in my ears constantly, how I almost never slept, not for days, so sure that he or his men were right behind me. How I’d stopped even looking in the mirrors in the bus stations and fast-food places where I briefly stopped, because I didn’t like my expression.

The same one I’d seen on her face today.

She hadn’t wanted to be there; she hadn’t found it exciting. Some of the others had, their eyes shining, their fists clenching at their sides, so wanting to be in there! I could get that, too. Women in this period didn’t have a lot of chances at power, and the idea could be intoxicating for some. But for others . . .

Whatever happened to being a kid? Playing with freaking dolls, or coloring books, or whatever they played with here? What ever happened to not shouldering the cares of the whole world before you’d figured out how to ride a bike?

“No,” I told Pritkin now. “I don’t like it.”

“Then do your court differently. Every Pythia’s court is different, some radically so. Your court can be whatever you want—”

“Pritkin! I don’t have a court!”

I threw off the blankets, even though it was cold, because it was cold underneath them, too. I’d taken off the ruined dress, and had been napping in what they called a “chemise,” which was less Victoria’s Secret and more Granny’s Closet. I had to remember not to trip over the flounce as I paced around.

“I don’t have a court,” I repeated. “I have a bunch of little girls I can’t protect—”

“Little girls? Like the ones I saw the other night?”

I ran a hand through my hair. “Yes, the initiates are all that’s left, with an average age of maybe eight. Some of them are barely walking yet! They take them from their families early, plop them into court, and don’t care if