Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“—gall to dare—they should be down on their knees, both of them, thanking you—especially her. Jo was her damned acolyte!”

I didn’t say anything. Rhea’s facts were a little skewed, because she’d arrived late and hadn’t seen everything, but this wasn’t the moment to point that out. Agnes’s slap mark was still visible on her face, a testament to how strong it had been. It would probably bruise, although I doubted the physical pain was the biggest problem here.

To say that Rhea had mommy issues was to put it mildly.

And with cause. She’d spent her younger years with the covens, learning enough of their magic to be considered a coven trained witch. But that wasn’t why she’d been sent there. Agnes had some coven-affiliated relatives and had thought of them when she needed a place to stash the daughter that nobody could know about—at least until Rhea was old enough to join the court under a different name.

How she’d covered up the pregnancy I didn’t know, but strongly suspected a trip back in time, followed by a return with the baby, likely only seconds after she left. Of course, that sort of thing was a no-no. Pythias weren’t supposed to time travel except in emergencies, and to benefit others, not themselves. But maybe she’d felt that keeping the Pythian reputation intact qualified.

We all had our own definitions, didn’t we?

I didn’t feel like I was in a position to judge Agnes, especially now. At the very least, Mircea should have been in a chrono cell, a literal “time out” where he’d sit until we figured out how to solve this. But as I’d pointed out to Gertie, while that might assure that he couldn’t go joyriding around the time line, it wouldn’t help his psyche at all.

And the more it deteriorated, the worst the war was likely to go.

What she’d understood and Rhea didn’t, despite having grown up at court, was that this job wasn’t so cut and dried. Your power showed you things—sometimes—and if you were lucky you might even understand what they meant. But even then, it was you and only you who had to decide what to do about them.

It was why I’d gotten a blessing out instead of something worse, and then a cup of hot tea before being bundled off to bed. Gertie might be furious with me right now, but she knew that Pythias sometimes had to make truly gut-wrenching decisions without any help or even any assurance that they were right. It was what I would have told Marco, if I’d thought he would understand.

To be Pythia was to be alone.

Come to think of it, that was probably how Agnes had ended up in a relationship with Jonas Marsden. That was a no-no, too, considering that the Pythia was supposed to be the impartial arbiter of disputes in the supernatural community, something made a little hard when you were dating one of its chief members. But sometimes, the deafening silence from your power, which wasn’t human, after all, and couldn’t talk to or commiserate with you, got to be too much, and you just wanted someone to hold.

I could relate there, as well. In fact, the longer I had this job, the less Agnes felt like either the unknowable, perfect paragon I’d first thought her, or a vicious bitch, and more like a very human woman just trying her best. Only, unfortunately, her best hadn’t always been good enough.

I wondered if, someday soon, I’d be able to relate to that, too.

“If you want to talk about Agnes,” I began, thinking that maybe Rhea could use a sympathetic ear.

Only it seemed not.

“Why would I want to do that?” she snapped.

Rhea never snapped.

“This is my fault,” I told her carefully. “I get that—”

“How is any of this your fault?” she demanded, looking up from examining what appeared to be a water bottle, before tossing it aside.

“You didn’t interact with your mother, the last time you were here. Things were crazy and . . . well, there wasn’t time—”

She laughed, and it was bitter. “When was there ever?”

“—but I should have thought that being here, doing research, possibly for days . . . you were bound to run across each other. I’m sorry. I was so focused on—”

“Stop saying that!”

I blinked. “What?”

“You always apologize! When nothing about this is your fault!”

“Okay,” I said, because meek little Rhea was definitely gone, and in her place was the spitfire from downstairs, who I was starting to suspect was a lot closer to the real woman than the version I usually saw. Considering who her parents were, that wasn’t too surprising. There was no way she was going to turn out to be a fluffy kitten.

Although, at the moment, she was looking more like a pissed off tigress.

One that was suddenly in my face.

“You want to know about my mother?”