Tempt the Stars

initiates.”
    “But this time you saw something.”
    “I saw Ares,” she said, looking off into the distance. “Towering over a field in front of a storm-racked sky. He was here, in this world, fighting our forces. And we were losing . . . badly.”
    “Was anyone else with him?” Jonas asked sharply.
    “What?”
    “Any other gods?”
    She shook her head. “I only saw him. But it was so quick—just a flash. I was going upstairs with some cold medicine. One of the children had arrived with the sniffles and had given a nasty head cold to half the dorm, and it just . . . hit me. All of a sudden, I was somewhere else and seeing these terrible things, and there was lightning and thunder, and people were screaming and trees were crashing to the ground and the sky flooded red and . . . and I dropped the tray.”
    “I probably would have, too,” I told her, because she was white and shaking again, her voice barely above a whisper.
    “Yes, but the stairs are marble; everyone heard,” she said, looking at me with so much pain in her eyes that I finally got it; I wasn’t the only one feeling responsible for tonight. “And I was so upset . . . the adepts made me tell them, and at the time I didn’t realize . . . I couldn’t see any reason not to . . . until I saw. They were happy. They were
pleased
about it. Then they saw me looking at them, and changed their expressions. But I knew, I’d
seen
—”
    “And so you came to tell me.”
    She swallowed. “No. I should have done, but there were such rumors about you, they were saying . . . It wasn’t until the coronation that I realized—you couldn’t be what they said. The power had gone to you, the Circle had accepted you, and then at the coronation, you killed the Spartoi. You killed him!”
    And suddenly, I knew why she looked familiar. “You were there.”
    She nodded again. “I saw you, but I—it was obvious you were trying to be inconspicuous and I didn’t—”
    “But you knew who I was.”
    She looked surprised. “Of course.”
    “Even though someone else was pretending to be me?”
    She blinked again, like I wasn’t making much sense. “Yes, but I knew that wasn’t you. There was no power, no aura, no—” She waved it away. “It was obvious.”
    So much for my great disguise.
    “But the others didn’t see you, and by the time I got away from them, you had disappeared. And then when I saw you again—” She gave another graceful little hand flutter, maybe because she didn’t know a polite way of saying “you were battling a Spartoi in your birthday suit and almost getting fried.” “But then the vampires took you away, and I didn’t know how to reach you—”
    “So you went to the covens.”
    “Yes. My cousin—”
    “And the covens brought you to me.”
    “Yes.”
    “So you could tell me what? What are they planning?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know! I tried following the adepts around, to let them think I agreed with them, hoping to find out more. . . . But I’m not an actress, and they’d seen my face that night. They didn’t believe me!”
    I didn’t tell her it was okay, because it wouldn’t have helped. She didn’t look like a girl who needed platitudes. She looked like a girl who needed something to do.
    I knew the feeling.
    “I’ll go back,” I told Rosier. “I’ll stop the spell from being laid—”
    “You will be prevented,” Adra said gently. “That is why it was done here, to preclude such a possibility.”
    “Then give me the counterspell! I’ll go back in time, I’ll find his soul—” He just looked at me. “Pritkin did nothing wrong! If you have to hurt someone, hurt me!”
    “They won’t hurt you. They need you,” Rosier choked. “But my son . . ”
    Adra didn’t agree, but he didn’t refute it, either. And the worst part was, there was no hate in his eyes, no malice. This had been a policy decision to him, nothing more. A threat had been identified; a threat had been removed. But to me . . . 
    It felt like the end of the world.
    “How many acolytes are there at present?” Jonas asked.
    “It varies,” Rhea said, looking at me. “Most of the court is composed of junior initiates, who have just been brought in—young girls who have been identified with unusual promise. And senior initiates, that’s most of us, who have training but carry none of the power. The adepts are only a small group, chosen from the most