It made even the Pythian power pale by comparison. I could travel to other places, and see things and people long gone. But I didn’t have a connection with them. Other than for Gertie and her court, I didn’t have a connection with much of anything from the past.

But the fey… it was both wonderful and terrible, what they could do. Wonderful when it worked the way it was intended. Terrible when they lost… so much. More than humans would ever know or understand.

More than I could understand.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, while realizing the complete inadequacy of the phrase.

“It is the way things are,” she said, with a deliberately casual shrug. “Are you ready to proceed?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

I finally got up from the bench and moved a little closer to the still-frozen group across the terrace.

A recent gust of wind had sent the king’s long, silver hair flying. It partly obscured his face, but I’d know that haughty chin anywhere. And when I got closer still, I could see storm-colored eyes gleaming at me through the blowing strands. I knew he couldn’t see me; that I wasn’t really here, but it made a shiver go up my back, nonetheless.

It was easy to joke about Aeslinn when he wasn’t around, to laugh and wonder how life was treating him without a hand. Or to act calm and cool with Gertie, when he was so far away. It was different when standing right in front of him.

Some villains like to pose as avuncular types, like Zeus, playing the charming All Father, even though he hadn’t needed to with me. We’d both known the score, but his attitude was like an old sweater he’d worn for so long that he’d forgotten he had it on. He was charming because he was always charming.

But not Aeslinn.

There was no artifice in him, no polite mask. He looked like what he was: a predator, a tiger who would go for your jugular as soon as he saw you, and the only regret he’d feel was that there wasn’t more meat on your bones. I was standing there, in a memory, hundreds of years removed from the scene, and yet I felt the same menace that I had on the Thames.

But this close, it was impossible not to notice that he was looking… a little downmarket. His cloak was a plain gray that was just slightly darker than his equally ordinary tunic and leggings. They had the knobby look of homespun, and were no nicer than what his guards had on. I couldn’t help contrasting this outfit with one I’d seen him wear at a banquet in the sixth century, which I’d attended after chasing Pritkin’s soul back in time.