But there were problems with loving Mircea—a lot of them. Like the family, which he viewed me as being a part of. I suspected that was why he hadn’t put up more of a fight when I’d peeled off some of his masters recently, to help guard my court. In his mind, any resources I used was fair, as keeping me safe benefitted everyone.

But if I needed to be used as well, and my power co-opted to benefit that same family?

Well, that was fair, too.

We were a unit in his mind, Pythian neutrality be damned. And most of the time, that had turned out all right, since his position on the Vampire Senate meant that a lot of the favors that he wanted helped the war effort, too. I could give him what he asked, and feel good about it, because he was right: it benefitted all of us.

Except when it didn’t.

Like today, when the attack we’d barely survived was a direct outgrowth of my visit to old Romania. I never should have been there; never should have agreed to that. But I had, only not for the reason that Mircea probably thought.

Yes, I was afraid that he’d hijack my power and go on his own if I said no. And yes, I wanted my Mircea back, instead of the obsessed vampire he’d turned into. But I’d also done it simply because I loved him and wanted to help.

And that was the problem.

I’d put Mircea first, even above my responsibilities as Pythia. Agnes would have killed him for trying to joyride around the timeline, and probably Gertie, too. But I had helped him, because Mircea was a man obsessed with family. To have failed one member of it so completely as to let her die, and at the hands of his own brother? It was tearing him up inside, and had been for centuries.

Only, of course, his wife hadn’t died; we’d found that out on a previous trip. But she had been taken away, and by Aeslinn’s fey at that, and no one knew why. And I honestly thought that was worse for him, worse even than her death, which he’d long ago convinced himself that he would find a Pythia to help him undo. But to not know where she was, what had happened to her? What fate he had actually left her to?

Yeah, that was very much not working for him.

Another man would have descended into depression and just given up. Or fallen into self-destructive tendencies, raging and lashing out. Mircea was not another man. He was frighteningly intelligent, utterly determined, fiercely devoted and furious.

He wanted Aeslinn’s head on a pike. He wanted his wife back. He wanted his family made whole again and God help anybody who got in his way.