“Quite capable.”

I stared at him. “Are you—Did you see?”

“I saw him protect your mother from four demigods for a protracted period of time.”

“He did no such thing! She was driving the carriage—”

“Yes. Because it is difficult for anyone other than war mages to keep up a shield and to concentrate on anything else at the same time.”

“I didn’t see a shield.”

“No more did I. But I saw several direct hits bounce off of something. He wasn’t able to keep it up for the entire chase, but he certainly helped. And last night—”

“All he did was enchant a suitcase.”

“And it proved useful, did it not? The Spartoi must have had them cornered, but he broke through their ranks—”

“Because he was acting like a crazy man!”

“—and protected your mother during a firestorm of spells such as I have rarely seen.”

“He was screaming the entire time!”

Mircea’s lips quirked. “It is only in the cinema that heroes have to look a certain way. I have been in many battles, dulceață, and can tell you from experience that what matters is what works. Ladislas’s charge looked heroic—banners streaming, armor glinting, five hundred horses galloping in one great wave—but it was the height of folly. Your father’s tactics were . . . less impressive . . . but they succeeded. Which is the most heroic, in the end?”

“But he didn’t look anything like that!” I said, grasping for straws. Because Mircea could say whatever he liked, but being related to that guy . . . no. Just no. “The kidnapper was tall and blond and you said my father was—”

“I told you how he appeared to me. But he was in hiding; it would not be surprising if he used a glamourie. In fact, it would have been more so if he had not.”

“But you said nothing was supposed to happen at the party—that your men had checked! If he was my father, if he was supposed to be there, to elope with my mother or whatever the hell they were doing, wouldn’t your people have known?”

“By all accounts, the party was supposed to be uneventful,” Mircea agreed. “I would hardly have taken you there otherwise. Your mother was not reported missing for several months.”

“There. You see? He can’t be my father!”

“Yes, but, dulceață, the important term is ‘reported.’ My people were not at the party; they did not see for themselves. They were going on the official reports. Reports that may well have been . . . adjusted.”

“Adjusted? But why—”

“To give them time to find her.” He waved a hand. “The Pythian court likes to appear infallible, mysterious, all knowing. This is not a reputation that would be enhanced by losing their heir to a set of circumstances none of them foresaw. It would not be surprising for them to wait some time before admitting that they had lost her. They would want a chance to locate her and bring her back without anyone realizing there had ever been a problem.”

“You think they lied about when she left.”

He shrugged. “I think it possible, yes. I always found it odd that they maintained that your father knew her for such a short time before they eloped. Eight days is not much in which to persuade the heir to the Pythian throne to leave it all behind for a life on the run!”

“But . . . but at the party, he was trying to disrupt things! That’s what the Guild does,” I insisted.

Mircea cocked his head. “But if that were the case, why not focus on Lady Phemonoe? She was Pythia; your mother was merely the heir. And one due to disappear soon, in any case. Removing her from her position a few months early would hardly seem likely to make a huge impact on history.”

“No! There were spells everywhere—”

“Yes, thrown by war mages attempting to shield your mother and the Pythia.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the spells were frozen, dulceață. If your father had thrown them, they would not have been trapped in time any more than he was.”

I shook my head. “My father was a member of the Black Circle, not the Guild.”

“Is there any reason he could not have been both?”

I sat back in my chair and glared at him. “Okay. So he’s part of some crazy cult that wants to change the world, but then one day he gets bored and decides—just for the hell of it—to join the most infamous group of dark mages around and try to take them over? And when that doesn’t work, he thinks, oh well, and elopes with the Pythian heir? Is that what you’re saying?”

Mircea laughed. “I thought your father was an interesting man. I just had no idea how much.”

“He isn’t interesting; he’s a nut. And he isn’t my father.”

Mircea shook his head. “As you say. But perhaps we can discuss it later, in our time?”

“You just want to see how badly the guests trashed your house.”

His lips quirked. “With representatives from five of the six senates in attendance, it is a concern.”

“All right.” I drained my coffee and grabbed another scone. “But we hit the suite first. I need some clothes.”

“And afterward, if it remains standing, I will show you around the house.”

“Deal,” I said, grabbing his hand. And shifted.

And knew immediately that I was in trouble.

One clue was the slick, wet feel of damp grass under my feet, instead of the suite’s plush carpet. Another was the Cheshire cat grin of Mircea’s glass ballroom, glowing gold against the night—a night that should have been over. And a third was the fist slamming into my jaw, hard enough to send me sprawling.

“Pathetic, weak, idiot child. You killed the great Apollo?” Something reached into my brain like a rain of quicksilver, clean and cold, but burning down all my nerves. “Obscene.”

I couldn’t see what was attacking me—the transition from watery daylight to thick darkness had left me half blind—but I really wasn’t that curious. I reached for Mircea, intending to shift us out of there, but I didn’t find him. His strong grip was no longer on my hand, and I doubted that he’d have just let go. For one thing, I couldn’t remember him materializing with me. And for another—

For another, he usually objected when people kicked me in the ribs.

The pain was breathtaking, like a dagger through my flesh, robbing me of breath and bringing tears to my eyes. But it wasn’t bad enough to keep me from shifting. That was something else, grabbing me, jerking me back the second I tried.

“Oh no. Not this time, little Pythia.” A booted foot came down on my wrist, crushing it into the dirt, sending pain lancing up my arm—and trapping my daggers against the ground. My hand spasmed, still holding a warm scone, which tumbled into the mud.

“This time, there won’t be any running away—or any powerful friends to save you. This time, I have you all to myself.”

I looked up to see boiling, dark clouds laced with distant lightning, backlighting a face. It blurred across my watering eyes, or maybe that was the rain, which was still coming down. But for a moment, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at.

And then my vision cleared and I still couldn’t.

On the surface, it was a sharp-faced brunet with slickedback hair, thin cheeks and a long nose, vaguely familiar although I didn’t . . . and then it snapped into place. Niall, the officious pain-in-the-ass from the publicity department. It had taken me a second to recognize him, because while the face was the same, the eyes—

The eyes were horrible.

No, not horrible. They would have looked perfectly fine in the face of his alter ego, the dragon that had chased Pritkin and me through an office building. But seeing those same firelit orbs in a human’s face, complete with elongated pupils and reptilian, nictitating membranes . . .

A wave of visceral revulsion washed over my skin, making every hair stand on end.

I guess I knew where the fifth Spartoi had gone, I thought wildly, even as I panicked and tried to shift again. But the same thing happened—I was slammed back onto the dirt at his feet, hard enough to hurt, like I’d been grabbed by one of the Circle’s lassos. But I didn’t think that was it. Because the creature standing over me held something up.

Lightning flashed off a slim gold chain, and the familiar charm dangling from the end of it. “Recognize this?” Niall asked pleasantly. “I took it off your good friend the war mage. I told him Jonas had sent me after it, but he didn’t seem to believe me.”

I stared at the innocuous-looking little thing, swinging slowly to and fro, and remembered with a lurch that I hadn’t seen Pritkin today. I hadn’t thought about it; had assumed he was resting. But what if instead—

My blood ran cold.

“What—what did you do?” I asked thickly. Blood dribbled down my chin. I didn’t bother to wipe it off.

“Let’s just say, I don’t think you should count on having him come to your rescue yet again. Or anyone else, for that matter. The coronation has begun; the lockdown is in place. And by the time it ends”—he smiled—“I do not think there will be much left to rescue.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” I snarled, and shifted.

Of course, I didn’t go very far. The damned necklace that I was going to grind into powder if I got out of this saw to that, jerking me back almost immediately. But that got my arm free, and when I rematerialized, I was a couple of yards away—behind Niall.

He spun, some sixth sense warning him of danger just as two ghostly daggers shot out of my bracelet. They looked brighter than usual in the dim light, but had all of their normal enthusiasm for any kind of violence. As they demonstrated by slamming into his torso with enough force to send him hurtling back into a tree—and to pin him there.

For about a second. His hands were free, but he didn’t bother to use them. He just leaned forward, against the knives, which disappeared into his blood-drenched shirt up to the hilts. And then vanished completely when he simply walked right through them. There was a little pause as the hilts caught on something—his heart, his rib cage; who the hell knows?—and then he tore free with a sucking, squelching sound that left me a little dizzy, even before I saw the knives quivering in the wood behind him.