Agnes Wetherby, the Pythia from Pittsburgh. “Nothing.”
Rhea gave me a little side-eye, but then she continued. “She was brought here as an initiate, at the age of six—”
“Six?”
“Yes, it was very late,” Rhea said, agreeing with a point I hadn’t been making. “But her parents were somewhat influential and fought the process. They managed to hold it up for more than two years.”
“Fought it?” I looked down at the picture in her hand, which suddenly seemed less happy. “You mean girls like Agnes are forced to be here?”
“It’s considered an honor to be selected,” Rhea said carefully.
I shot her a glance. “Did you look at it that way?”
She didn’t answer.
I went back to looking at the photo, trying to imagine what it would have been like to suddenly lose everything so young. To leave your family, your home, your friends. And come to a place where everything was different, from the food you ate to the clothes you wore to the people . . .
“It’s better than the alternative,” Rhea said, after a moment.
“The alternative?”
“The schools the Circle operates. The ones for magical humans with dangerous powers. They call them—”
“I know what they call them.”
I also knew what they really were. The “education centers” were little more than prisons for people with abilities the Circle didn’t like. People like my father, who had been a necromancer but had somehow managed to avoid them. People like me, because I’d inherited his power, not with dead bodies but with spirits. Which wer
e dangerous only to my sanity, when a passel of bored ghosts wouldn’t shut up already. But which would have been enough to have me locked away, possibly for life.
Only it seemed like that might have happened anyway.
“But clairvoyants aren’t dangerous,” I pointed out. “And I’ve seen plenty on the outside, hanging around, doing readings—”
“You’ve seen plenty of charlatans, Lady,” Rhea corrected gently. “Real clairvoyants are rare, and those powerful enough for the court rarer still.”
“But we’re not dangerous,” I repeated. “We’re not firestarters or jinxes or dark mages—”
“Knowledge is always dangerous, and there are always those who fear it. The Circle worries about what we might know about them—their numbers, abilities, plans—and what we might tell others. Unless . . .”
“Unless you’re brought up to think that the sun shines out of their . . .” I caught myself, but Rhea nodded, ducking her head so I wouldn’t see her smile.
I didn’t smile back. She didn’t know it, but she’d just added another problem to my growing list. A big one. Or more accurately, a bunch of little ones that added up to a big one, because I hadn’t actually planned on keeping my court.
I’d intended to talk to Casanova about getting the girls some rooms, yes, but that was temporary, so they’d have real beds to sleep in and enough bathrooms while I figured out what to do with them. And so they’d be away from me. Because shit happened to me.
Shit happened to me all the time.
But even without the safety thing, the plain fact was that I managed to screw up my own life on a regular basis; I didn’t have any business being in charge of anyone else’s. Especially in the middle of a freaking war. Peacetime, sure, run Cassie’s school for talented tots or whatever, but now?
Uh-uh. They needed to go. They needed to go back to their families, as soon as I figured out who they all were. They also probably needed major therapy after the last couple days, but that could be dealt with once they were safely away from me.
Or that had been the plan, anyway. But now I learned that I wouldn’t be sending them home, I’d be sending them to jail, and I somehow didn’t think Jonas would be willing to talk parole right now. And damn it, I didn’t need this!
“The initiates are free to go at sixteen if they don’t choose to accept an acolyte’s position,” Rhea said, watching me.
“And until then? Are their families allowed to visit?”
“It’s . . . thought better if they don’t.”