“But if someone didn’t know them well enough to know that—”

“Then they wouldn’t know why they’re meeting in the first place. They’ve been using the coronation and some other stuff as cover while they hash out the details. Like who gets to lead—”

“And Mircea is attempting to use you as an argument for his consul.”

“ ‘Attempting’ would be the right word.”

Pritkin swallowed a bite of fatty goodness. “Why? You just said—”

“That I’m seen as a vamp-friendly Pythia, yeah.” I shrugged. “But it takes a little more than that. Half the senators aren’t convinced that I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s easy for them to imagine me being under Mircea’s thumb; it’s a little harder for them to believe I’m strong enough to be a real asset.”

“And without believing it, they’re bickering and feuding over leadership instead of doing anything about the war.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Typical.”

I didn’t say anything; from what I’d seen, Circle politics were no different, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. “Anyway, the point is that I’m better off where I am right now—”

“That’s debatable.”

“—but to be able to work with the Senate, I have to be accepted by them, and not as a servant. A servant takes orders; she doesn’t give them. But that’s sort of my job now, isn’t it?”

He looked at me with exasperated eyes, brilliantly green in the harsh lights of the diner. “The former holder of your office gave orders, and they were obeyed.”

“Were they?” I munched crust. It was slightly burnt on the bottom and chewy, with little dough bubbles here and there. Perfect. “How often did Agnes persuade the Senate to do something they didn’t want to do?”

“I’m sure there were any number of times.”

“Name one.”

He scowled.

“Yeah. They might have fiddled around a little, debating some issue they didn’t really give a damn about, and then let her think she’d had a victory. Particularly if they wanted something in return. But to actually give up part of their sovereignty to someone they viewed as being in the Circle’s back pocket?”

“The Pythia is supposed to be neutral.”

“Try telling that to a vamp.” I caught his hand as he reached for more red pepper flakes. “Seriously?”

“What?”

I nodded at his current piece of pizza, which was almost completely red—and not because of sauce. “You’re going to give yourself heartburn.”

“I don’t get heartburn.”

“What? Never?”

“No.”

I let him go. That was completely unfair. I ate antacids like they were candy.

“Anyway, we weren’t at war in Agnes’s reign, so it didn’t matter as much,” I said, digging a half-finished pack of Rolaids out of my shorts. “It does now.”

Pritkin cocked an eyebrow. “And you think that going out for the evening is going to make them respect you?”

“More than staying in would have.” I chewed a couple of tablets while he thought that over.

“It still sounds like something an enemy would do,” he said. “Pushing you, testing you—”

“An enemy would use the information to hurt me,” I pointed out. “Mircea would never do that. At least, he wouldn’t intend it that way. But burying me under a stack of guards, restricting who I can see, where I can go . . . it is hurting me.”

“It’s also safer,” Pritkin said, looking sour. Probably because he was being forced to agree with a vampire.

“You can say that after the last few days?” I sat back against the seat. “Nowhere is safe. Nowhere has ever been safe. I’ll take reasonable precautions, even unreasonable ones sometimes. But I’m not going to live like a prisoner.”

“It’s only been two months—”

“It’s been my whole life!” I said, harsher than I intended, because nobody got that. Not Mircea, not Pritkin, not Jonas, who would have loved to add a couple dozen war mages to the crowd of guards already milling about the suite. Nobody understood that ever since I could remember, I’d been locked away. Like I’d done some crime I didn’t recall, but kept having to pay for.

It was getting really old.

“You’re talking about that other v—Your old guardian,” Pritkin said.

I nodded and popped another antacid. Tony had that effect on me.

“But you ran away from him.” Pritkin sounded oddly hesitant suddenly, as if he were sure I wouldn’t talk about this, that I’d shut down, shut him out. Maybe because that’s what he’d have done, if the situation were reversed. He was the most closemouthed person about his life of anyone I’d ever met—okay, barring a certain vampire—and while I knew more about him than most people, I didn’t know much.

But I didn’t mind telling him. In fact, I wanted to, wanted someone to finally get it. “I ran away twice, actually. But I never really got away. Tony was always there, at least in my mind, right on my trail.”

“Because you set him up for what he did to your parents.”

I nodded. “I tried to ruin him, to get him on tax fraud, because I didn’t know how to kill him. It didn’t work, but I knew he’d never forget it, never stop looking for me.”

“And part of you didn’t want him to.”

I had been scraping a fingernail over the label on Pritkin’s empty beer bottle, but I looked up at that. Because until he said it, I hadn’t fully realized it myself. “Maybe,” I said slowly. “Maybe part of me did want that showdown I never got. But I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d come looking for me. I’m not a trained assassin, and even if I had been . . .”

“You’re not a killer,” Pritkin said flatly.

“Sometimes, I really, really wanted to be.”

He didn’t ask, didn’t say anything. But I could tell he wanted to. I hesitated, because I hadn’t planned to talk about this. I never talked about this. But there was no way he’d understand without it.

“Eugenie,” I finally said, and I was proud of myself. It came out pretty steady.

“Eugenie?”

“My governess. Tony told his people that she’d helped me escape, that she knew where I was. But he lied. I knew that even before I saw his face as she lay there in pieces, bleeding out at his feet.”

“He killed her for no reason?” Pritkin asked carefully.

I laughed and ripped the label off. “Oh, he had a reason. He was a miserable, sniveling, cowardly, vindictive bastard who was furious that some little human had come so close to bringing him down. Somebody had to pay for that. Somebody had to bleed. And if it was somebody whose death he knew would hurt me, so much the better.”

And it had hurt, as much as if I’d been there, bleeding myself. But even worse was the crippling fear that had followed. I went from being somebody who had risked everything just to watch him fall to being too scared to leave my own apartment.

“The first six months after I left him were the worst in my life,” I said. “Because he wasn’t keeping me a prisoner anymore—I was doing it to myself. I was so sure he’d find me, so sure I’d end up like Eugenie, that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t go anywhere, except to look for work, buy groceries—just what I had to do. And then I went straight back home. People in actual prison probably have more human contact than I did.”

“But you had a roommate,” Pritkin said.

“That was later. After I started going places again, meeting people . . . after I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“That this was my life now. And that I could let some bastard decide how I was going to live it, let fear decide or I could decide. And I decided; I wasn’t going to give Tony that kind of power. I wasn’t going to give him any more of my life.”

“You just woke up one day and stopped being afraid.” Pritkin’s expression hadn’t changed, but for some reason, he sounded almost angry.

I flashed on my performance a day ago, slumped in a sniveling heap on the bathroom floor, and grimaced. “No. I mean, you don’t, do you? At least, I never have. And I kind of think it would have happened by now if it was going to.”

“Then what do you do?” He’d leaned over the table, close enough for me to map the ring of jade around each iris, and the pale amber-green layer that darkened to golden brown around the pupils. There were striations, spokes of gold, and specks of brown and emerald, all of which blended to just green at any distance at all.

Beautiful, I thought randomly—for a second, until he abruptly pulled back and looked away.

“You go on, anyway,” I said, after a pause. “And, yes, you’re scared sometimes. But it’s better than being scared all the time. Better than letting your life be about fear and nothing else. So, no, I’m not going to let them shut me away ‘for my own good.’ I’ll take precautions, as many as I can. But I’m going to live.”

Pritkin ran a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “You are.”

Chapter Twenty-three

We walked out a few minutes later to find a trio of vamps loitering in the parking lot, next to a shiny black SUV. Pritkin swore, but I wasn’t exactly surprised. I had at least three trace spells on me that I knew about, and two of them were the Senate’s. The point of leaving hadn’t been to get away; it had been . . . well, to make a point.

Which I obviously hadn’t done, or they wouldn’t be here.

It was late or, to be more accurate, really early, and the lot was dark. A lone streetlamp leaked a watery yellow puddle in one corner, illuminating cracked pavement and a sagging chain-link fence. But alongside the building, most of the light came from the flickering sign outside the diner. It cast a ruddy tint across the vamps’ faces, enough for me to see that they weren’t looking too happy.