Hunt the Moon

“You’re saying . . . she went with him on purpose?”

“It would seem the only answer.”

“But . . . why? How would she even know someone like that? She was the Pythian heir!”

“Perhaps the letters will tell you.”

I shook my head, opening one after another. “No. These were all written by my father. It looks like he’d been writing to her for a while and she’d kept them. . . .” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, either. Jonas said that my parents barely knew each other a week before they ran away together. And these . . .” I checked a few more. “They go back more than a decade.”

Mircea hesitated. I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking right at him. And he definitely started to say something and then stopped.

“What?” I demanded.

“I could be wrong,” he said carefully. “It has been many years, and I had no reason to pay particular attention at the time—”

“Attention to what?”

“To your father’s individual scent.”

I frowned harder. “What does that have—”

“I did not notice it at the party. Things were too fraught and there were too many other scents in the vicinity. But last night, when I was standing by the mage, I thought I recognized—”

“No.” I looked at him in horror.

“—the same tobacco, the same cologne, the same brand of hair pomade—”

“No!”

That damned eyebrow went up again. I was starting to hate that thing. “Would you prefer to have been sired by a dangerous dark mage?”

“Yes! If the alternative is . . . is him. He was—”

“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?”