But clearly, Rhea didn’t.
She’d also said something else I didn’t understand, something about Agnes. “What did you mean, you’re like your mother?” I asked now, even while worrying that maybe I didn’t have the right. But it had almost sounded like Rhea blamed her mother for the situation we were in, only that couldn’t be correct.
But I guess it was, because her
face crumpled. “She wasn’t strong enough. She knew how to use the power, but she was blind to what was happening all around her. She let this happen—”
“Rhea, no—”
“She did! She and my father both did! They were too wrapped up in each other to see the growing threat before it was too late. They let people find out about their affair—not many, but enough for it to undermine the neutrality of the court. And if that wasn’t enough, she couldn’t even tell that one of her own acolytes was poisoning her until—”
She broke off and jumped up, her face anguished and turned away from me. “And what did it get them? What was the result of all that? Me—and I’m even weaker than she was! I can’t use the power at all, and I shouldn’t! I’d just screw it up, just like she did, and—”
I got up and put my arms around her, because she looked like she needed a hug.
“If it hadn’t been for you—” she began, but I cut her off.
“If it hadn’t been for your mother, I wouldn’t be here,” I told her firmly. “She saved my life, warned me about an assassination that would have succeeded without her. She brought me back a copy of my own obituary to prove it. I didn’t know anything about this world then, but that got me to run, and saved my life.”
“I . . . didn’t know that.”
“We should have talked about your mother before,” I admitted. “But there never seemed to be enough time. I sent you to Françoise, but I should have explained myself—”
“She wouldn’t talk to me,” Rhea said.
“What?”
Rhea shook her head. The neat chignon she was wearing had partly come down, and that finished the job, causing her hair to fall messily around her tear-stained face. “I tried to talk to her, as you suggested, but she wouldn’t. She said she couldn’t say anything good about my mother, but she wouldn’t say anything bad, either, to a grieving daughter. She wouldn’t say anything at all.”
I stared at her, hearing a record scratch in my head.
She didn’t know, I realized. She didn’t know the truth about Agnes’ death, or the crazy, brilliant, and dangerous game she’d played, and played alone, to help me. For a moment, I just stood there, frowning in shock.
And remembering a woman who looked so like Rhea that it broke my heart every time I saw her. I remembered how Agnes had used the last of her power to shift back to me in time, to a grubby old dungeon in Carcassonne, France. How she’d given me what information she could, while she could, even knowing that she wouldn’t have the power left to shift back, that she would likely die there.
Only, no. Someone else would have died there. But Agnes was cleverer than that, and she had one last errand to do, and one more trick up her sleeve to allow her to do it. Her rogue heir Myra, with more power than all the acolytes combined, was still on the loose, and she had years of training I lacked. Someone had to help me deal with her, and Agnes knew it.
A young French witch named Françoise had been about to get kidnapped and dragged off to Faerie, just another missing person in the long-running fey slave trade. That would have happened regardless; Agnes didn’t change anything there. She just hitched a ride.
She’d shifted to me in spirit form, an old Pythian trick to preserve energy by possessing someone in another time. She’d had no choice, as she hadn’t had enough strength to bring her dying body along, which wouldn’t have allowed her to do what was needed anyway. I could still close my eyes and see her, a ghostly presence pirouetting in the dark, looking for a brief moment like the dark-haired girl she’d once been.
And being there in spirit form had given her more than just freedom; it had allowed her to possess Françoise and wait out the centuries in Faerie, where time flows so differently than here. After what seemed like only a few years, she helped Françoise engineer an escape from the fey and return to earth. Where she possessed another body, Myra’s body, using all her power for one last burst of strength.
And slit her throat.
I could still see her falling gracefully to the floor, the white flutter of her Pythian gown like angel’s wings around her, the brilliant crimson of her blood a spill of rubies. I could see their two spirits, rising up together, because Agnes had known that Myra would try the same trick she had. But she’d denied her that. She had fought her to the very end, grabbing hold and dragging her spirit away with her, to wherever we go after death.
No one had bled more for the Pythian Court than Agnes, no one at all.
I thought her daughter had a right to know that.
“Sit down,” I told her hoarsely. “It’s time I told you about your mother.”
Chapter Twenty
I schlepped back to my room some time later, leaving Rhea looking shocked and thoughtful behind me, but not teary eyed. Hell, I’d cried more than she had. Maybe I’d explained it wrong? I didn’t know how I could have explained it wrong. There were only so many ways to—to—to—
A huge yawn almost cracked my skull.