Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,35

only one person in that court with real power, only one who decided life or death, only one who . . .

Who a young, impressionable girl might have imprinted on.

Oh God.

“Hey.” Long fingers wrapped around my hands, which I realized had the terry cloth in a death grip, probably to keep from shaking. I looked up to find Augustine’s face a few inches from mine. He looked angry, for some reason. “You are not Tony.”

“And you’d know? You never even met him!”

I didn’t know why I was suddenly angry. Maybe because I didn’t like talking about this stuff, not with anyone. And especially not with Augustine! I barely even knew him!

“I met him!” he said, that hair-trigger temper firing again and overriding my own. “Or ones just like him! Where the hell do you think I grew up, hm?”

“I—I don’t—”

“No, you don’t! I don’t talk about it; I never talk about it,” he snapped. And then he proceeded to talk about it. “You may not know this, but I have fey ancestry.”

I blinked at him, from the too tall, too thin body, to the overlarge eyes, to the perfect, if haughty, features. “I . . . wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Yes, well, it’s true. It wasn’t recent, but I was a throwback—or my magic was. It was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.” He got up, looming over me, and then sat back down discontentedly, because there wasn’t really anywhere to go. “They came for me one night—”

“The fey?”

“No, not the fey!” he sneered. “They’re supposed to come back for their children, but that’s a lie. They come back for you, but only if you have some ability they want. My magic is unusual here, but back home—” He laughed suddenly. “Home! As if I had one of those! No, my magic is . . . common. Unremarkable. Unworthy of chasing down, especially if the fey blood is Svarestri, who hate humans and don’t want their precious bloodlines tainted!”

He got up again.

“Then . . . who came?”

“Who do you think?” The blue eyes blazed down at me. “The Circle! Locked me up in one of those “schools” of theirs. And there was no Tami to come break me out. Yes, we talked about that. I can’t believe she dared—but then daring doesn’t seem to be a problem for her.”

“It’s not,” I swallowed. “It never was.”

“Well, I wish I’d known her, or someone like her. As it was, I sat there, rotting, for sixteen years! Until they finally decided that maybe I wasn’t the monster my parents had made me out to be, and let me out—”

“Your parents?”

He nodded fiercely. “I was a throwback, remember? A genetic joke. They didn’t want anyone to know about me, didn’t want the stares and pointed fingers, didn’t even want me to bear their so-illustrious name. So I don’t,” he added proudly. “I am Augustine, just Augustine, and they can go fuck themselves!”

I looked up at him, blinking some more, because I’d never seen him like this. Of course, I’d never seen him much, period. He made pretty dresses that I occasionally bought, that was all—until the battle threw us together.

He suddenly crouched down, his height still leaving us mostly on a level, and looked at me. It was the most earnest expression I’d ever seen on the self-important face. “I overstepped my bounds earlier,” he said. “I’m sorry for that. But I grew up in a place where I was a number, nothing more. They fed me. They clothed me. They gave me a basic education. That was all.

“I never felt for one minute like anyone there knew me, or that anyone cared. Perhaps because no one did. I was merely a number, an annoyance, a duty. Don’t let these girls be numbers, Cassie, please.”

I sat there, staring at him, because I didn’t want that, either. But I also didn’t know what to do about it. I’d rescued my court because they’d been in danger. I hadn’t really thought about what came after that. And now that I did—

It was frankly terrifying.

“You’re afraid of losing them, aren’t you?” Augustine said, watching my face. “Of all this falling apart. It’s understandable—”

I shook my head. “No, that’s—it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

I stared into those suddenly kind blue eyes and wondered how to explain it to him. I wasn’t sure I could, because I wasn’t sure I could explain it to myself. It came out haltingly, slowly, as I tried to find words