Sir Ferro accepted this and bid us goodbye. Once he was out of sight, Demos spun back to me. “Are youtryingto provoke the king?” he demanded in a quiet hiss.
I rolled my shoulders back. “Of course not. I just wanted to talk to him. And it wasn’t your place to tell him he couldn’t come by—you don’t speak for me, Iademos. If I want to talk to a pushy, condescending knight, then I will. And if I don’t want to, I’ll tell him myself.”
The general eyed me. “You truly have changed.”
I arched a brow at him. A white brow, because my black hair was gone with the rest of my humanity. “Like my entire species?”
He didn’t take the bait. “It’s more than that.”
Maybe it was. “I made a deal with Raphael. To truly live—as a vampire, but also myself. Part of that means making my own decisions.” For the next week, at least.
I hadn’t been sure if Raphael had already told his general the terms of our deal, but by his quick look of surprise, it was clear he hadn’t. “Raphael made a bargain with you?”
I nodded in confirmation, then lifted the script I was still holding. “I’m going to put this back and look for something more suitable.”
Except in front of the bookcase stood a hooded woman, contemplating the shelves. As we approached, she faced us, her cloak falling back slightly to reveal a thin face framed with curly blond hair.
“You’re a Librarian,” I murmured before I could stop myself. Her cloak’s material was lighter than what I’d seen of the other Librarians in Apante, more suitable for the climate, but there was no mistaking the deep blue with the cut of it. More than that, the knowing in her pale green eyes seemed to cut right through me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there were any outside the Great Library,” I added quickly.
She pulled her hood back fully. “I’m no simple archivist. But I understand the confusion, Samara Koisemi.”
Even Demos stiffened at the use of my name. “You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.”
“I am known as Pythia.”
I extended my hand, but when Pythia took it, she only clasped my fingers, her fingertips grazing my palm for a long second before she let it drop.
“Your robes—they look like what the Librarians wore in the City of Answers.”
“These are the traditional robes of an oracle.”
An oracle—like Thea. She read the recognition on my face—or perhaps in some other way.
“You’ve met one of my sisters,” she said with a frown.
“I have.” I decided not to say Thea’s name. Maybe she already knew, given Thea’s position in Raphael’s court, but something about the oracle set me on edge in a way Thea never did.
She cocked her head. “She left a mark on you.”
I frowned. “A mark?”
She gestured to my hand again. “May I? I didn’t get a full read.”
I glanced at Demos. I didn’t want him to speak for me, but he had been around Thea for a lot longer than I had and had centuries of navigating strange situations. Did he think it was a bad idea? But he didn’t shake his head or give any condemnation.
When I didn’t protest, Pythia reached for my hand, twisting my palm up.
“Oh, Eka.” Her pale green eyes seemed to darken, her brow furrowing. She traced the perimeter of my hand from my fingertips to my wrist, then ran her third and fourth fingers over my palm. With a shake of her head, she dropped my palm and snatched the other up, repeating the gesture.
I didn’t agree with the fact the king had exiled or executed all oracles, by any means, but if this was a normal experience with them, I understood the mistrust. Creepy.
When she released my other hand and lifted her head, her eyes were still dark. “Your threads are tangled, Samara Koisemi.” Her voice was nothing like the high-pitched tone of before. It had dropped, a slight reverberation echoing over the words. “Too long, too short. If you aren’t careful, they’ll hang you and lay millions dead at your feet.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Amalthea
There was no politeway to decline a royal summons. Especially when you had been the one to request the audience and had waited several days for it to be accepted.
