Tempt the Stars
Page 57

There was no pretense of amiability now, no calm demeanor, no mask. Rosier was on his feet, backing me into the wall, the face that was usually so like his son’s suddenly alien as it twisted in pain, in fury.
“Through thousands of years, across hundreds of generations, even your people could not forget the vague but persistent memory of the greatest hunt of them all! It’s in your statues, on your vases, in virtually every depiction of her ever made. The memory of the methodical, the tactical, the relentless butchering—”
“No!”
“Yes! The butchering of the greatest among us. The Great Reaping of the demon lords.” My back hit the wall, but he didn’t stop coming. “Just where, my dear, do you suppose my father went? Why am I Lord of the Incubi, and not him? Did you never wonder what became of him? Never crossed your mind? No?”
I shook my head. This couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be. The demons . . . they could be terrifying, but they weren’t . . . they couldn’t have deserved . . . it wasn’t true.
“She killed him on a whim. Happened across him one day when she was raiding elsewhere and followed him home. Might not have bothered to venture into our world otherwise, as her daughter would so recklessly and thoughtlessly do, for we incubi, we’re not worth the effort. But when he fled for his life, in mortal peril, the instinct of the hunter—”
“I don’t believe you! Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t need to take my word for it. You wish to have your day in court? Please. Feel free. Go plead your case in front of the survivors of your mother’s massacre, and see how far you get! But this one,” Rosier said, grabbing the shoulder of the son who still hadn’t moved. “The one you took from me, as your mother took my sire—no. No, little child of Artemis, no. Him you do not take!”
And suddenly, something came over me at the sight of Rosier’s hand clenching on Pritkin, of his fingers digging into his flesh. Something wild and strange and unexpected. Something I didn’t understand except as a trickle of that dark emotion I’d felt on seeing Pritkin again, trapped and coddled at his father’s court, dressed in finery he had no use for, surrounded by sleek, sterile perfection instead of his usual cheerful mess, with none of the things he loved in sight, no potions, no books, no crazy weapons for fighting the creatures that were his jailers now.
Just a man lost and bitter and alone, in a world he hated. A man surrounded by the jealousies of a court who would happily see him dead. A man who was suffering for one reason, and one reason only.
Because he had dared to help me.
And suddenly, the trickle became a flood.
“I will take him,” I said, knocking Rosier’s hand away, “anywhere I damned well please, demon!”
“Ah, there it is,” he hissed. “There it is! The arrogance of the goddess. Unfortunately, you are not your mother, girl. You do not have the power to back it up. You don’t have the power to do anything. Why you’re not dead yet, I will never understand, but I have the strong suspicion that it has a great deal to do with bewitching my son.
Somehow.” He looked utterly baffled. “Somehow you managed to tie him to you, to drag him into your fights, to endanger his life again and again. But no more!”
“That’s for the council to decide.”
“It’s not their concern!” Rosier snapped, and pulled on his son’s arm. “Any more than it is yours. Come, Emrys.”
Pritkin didn’t move.
His father made a disgusted sound. “You know how this will end!”
“He doesn’t know!” I said. “None of us do, until the council rules. And my mother said—”
“Your mother hasn’t seen the council in thousands of years! She doesn’t know anything about it! She was lying to you, girl, probably to get you to stop plaguing her life!”
I flinched, because I’d had a similar thought myself. But I didn’t really believe it. And even if it was true, it wouldn’t change anything.
What other choice did we have?
“I don’t know what will happen if we go in front of the council,” I told Pritkin honestly. “But I know what will happen if you go back there, back to that life. And so do you.”
He didn’t look at me—it was almost like he didn’t even hear me—and Rosier smiled.
“Yes, he knows. He’ll be the prince of a great house. You would have him a pauper. He’ll rule a large court, and have influence in countless others. You would have him a servant, running your errands, cleaning up your endless debacles! I will give him a vast kingdom—what would you give him?”
I looked up, so angry I could hardly see. “His freedom!”
Rosier snorted out a laugh. “That hoary platitude. Sometimes I forget what a child you are.”
“It isn’t childish to want to choose your own life!”
“No, it’s criminally naive. The only free person is the beggar in the gutter. And he’s only free to be cuffed about by his betters. Everyone of any substance has obligations. It is time for Emrys to live up to his.”
He pulled on his son’s arm again, and this time, it worked. Pritkin got up. And I grabbed his other arm in both of mine, because this wasn’t happening.
“Pritkin, please. Mother wouldn’t have sent me here if she didn’t think there was a chance!”
Nothing.
“Why won’t you play for that chance?” I said, my voice rising in panic because I didn’t understand this. I didn’t understand any of this!
“You’re better off if I don’t,” he told me, lifting his head.
“What?” I asked incredulously. Because he looked like he meant it.
“Finally, he comes to his senses,” Rosier said, pulling his son away, only to have Caleb step in front of him. “Have a care, war mage! I have taken no oath to spare you!”
“Right back at you,” Caleb said, eyes steady and feet planted.
“You’re as foolhardy as she is,” Rosier snapped. And then kept on talking, which he liked to do as much as his son didn’t. But I wasn’t listening.
“How can you say that?” I asked Pritkin. “How can you just give up?”
“I’m not giving up. I’m accepting reality.”
“What reality? You don’t want to go back there! And I need you—”
“You don’t, as you’ve made clear these past few days. If you can break into my father’s court, fight off the council’s own guards, force a meeting . . ” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ll be all right, Cassie.”
“No! I won’t be! I need you—”
“Why? What can I give you that others can’t?”
“What?”
Green eyes suddenly burned into mine. “It’s a simple question. You said you need me. Why?”
“I—I told you. This job—”
“Which you’re handling admirably.”
“I am not! I couldn’t even get to my parents without help!”
“There are other demon experts—Jonas for one.”
“But I need you!”
And all of a sudden, Pritkin was backing me around the table. Not like his father had done, in a rush of anger, but slowly, relentlessly. To the point that I kept tripping over chairs.
“Then give me a reason.”
“I . . . there’s so many—”
“Name one.”
“I can name a hundred—”
“I didn’t ask for a hundred; I asked for one. And you can’t give it to me.”
“Yes, I can!”
“Then do it!”
“I . . ” I stared at him, because he looked like there was a lot riding on my answer. Maybe everything. And I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, because I’d told him the truth. There were literally so many things that I didn’t know where to start. How could he not see all the ways he’d changed my life? How could he not know—
But he didn’t. It was in the way he turned his head away, when I just stood there. In the way he closed his eyes. In the small, self-mocking smile that played around his lips that I didn’t understand but knew couldn’t be good.
I had to say something, and it had to be the right thing, and I didn’t know—
Pritkin’s eyes opened, but I couldn’t read his expression. For once, the face that was usually flowing with a thousand emotions was . . . blank. Resigned. He was already distancing himself, already leaving me in every way that mattered, before his body ever walked out that door.
And I didn’t know what to do about it.
“You’re right,” I told him desperately. “I can get others to do what you do. They won’t be as good, but . . . okay. It could work. But it doesn’t matter because no matter how good they are, they can’t replace you. They can’t because I don’t need you only for what you can do. I need you . . . for you.”
I’d learned that the hard way, all week. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on his scowls or his shrugs or his grudging looks of approval to help me figure something out—until they weren’t there anymore. Or how I could talk to some people about a lot of things, but only to him about everything.
And how unbelievably valuable that was.
I stared into his eyes, wondering how to get through. I sucked at emotional stuff; I always had. It was easier to make a joke or some stupid quip than to try to put into words emotions I was never supposed to have. Emotions that were dangerous to have, because they left you vulnerable and I’d learned early that vulnerability was a very bad thing.
When I’d heard that my governess had been murdered by Tony, I hadn’t cried. It had felt like someone had twisted a knife in my gut, but I still hadn’t, because I knew she’d hate it. Knew she’d view it as weakness. “Tears are useless,” she’d told me a hundred times. “Don’t cry; act!”