Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“Yes, I dare. I would dare a great deal to avoid burying a second Pythia inside a year!”

“And you think I wouldn’t?” The blue eyes were now slits. Not a great sign in one of the most powerful mages on Earth.

But Pritkin met them steadily, nonetheless.

“If it gave you a win? Yes, I think you wouldn’t.”

For a moment, it felt like time itself held its breath. I certainly did, freezing in place. And wondering how we somehow went from snow fights to this.

“May I remind you,” Jonas said, in the flattest voice I’d ever heard from him, “that you work for the Corps, and that your loyalty—”

“Is to the woman I pledged myself to protect,” Pritkin growled. “The one I have endangered by my silence and my absence. No more. And in case it needs to be said, I quit.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Pritkin slashed a hand across the mirror, scattering Jonas’s image and blurring the features horribly. The rosy cheeks smeared into bloody lines, the blue eyes popped, and the open mouth elongated into grimace territory. And then abruptly winked out.

“Um,” I said.

Pritkin shot me a glance. His eyes were still glowing, and his color was high. But he also looked a little abashed. “Sorry,” he said curtly. “That . . . has been building for a while.”

“You’re sure you’re not just upset about today?”

That won me another look, this time incredulous. “You think I made a mistake?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I want you back with me, you know that. But . . .”

“But?”

“We’re at war. The Corps needs you—”

“You need me.”

“—and I don’t want you to do anything you might regret.”

“What I regret is being away this long. I knew damned well where I needed to be, and yet I let Jonas talk me into playing his game.” He took my hand and grabbed the thermos of coffee. “Come.”

I didn’t know where we were going, but I didn’t question it. It turned out to be a window in the bedroom, which faced the cliffside and should have been just decorative, but which let out onto a little path. We followed the trail around the side of the building and up a set of steps carved into stone. And then, after a longer than expected climb through the rocky hillside, we emerged onto a natural plateau.

I was gasping by the time we reached the top, and Pritkin shot me a glance. “How many runs have you done since I left?”

I wondered if running from the fey in old Romania counted. If so, the answer was one. “Plenty,” I told him.

That got me a look, but it was true.

One was plenty for me.

But this . . . was almost worth it. I could still see the crossroads below, if I looked down from the very edge. But we were really high now, not three stories up, but more like eight, maybe nine.

It left me with a completely different view than before. There were still a lot of people down there, milling about, but it was darker now. I guessed the Corps had the lights on some kind of timer, to better simulate the normal progression of a day for those staying long term. The stars had been out when we first arrived, but the late afternoon lighting had still been in effect, giving everything a weird, twilight glow.

That was no longer the case. It was full-on evening now, with the blue-black darkness lit up by silver moonlight from above and golden firelight from below, the latter cascading through the windows of numerous pubs and restaurants. The snow glittering everywhere was correspondingly either silver white or golden, depending on which light source was touching it, and silver and gold tinted flakes drifted down from above or swirled like whirling dervishes in the air.

It was beautiful.

But that was only half of the story. Because Pritkin pulled me back against him, using the cliff face as a backrest and allowing me to do the same to him. And pointed up.

It was like being inside a giant snow globe, I thought, staring up at the sky. The trees were now just dark silhouettes against the night, like curtains framing a stage. The real star was the moon, riding a raft of pale clouds, the stars twinkling brightly around her.