“And that’s bad?” Marco said, his voice making it clear that he already knew the answer.

“If we don’t get her out, it could tear her apart.”

Yeah, I thought, staring up into Hilde’s concerned brown eyes.

Bad.

Her hand was gripping mine tightly enough to bleach the color from her fingers. It should have been excruciating, since that was, with my usual luck, the hand with the arrow wound in it. Yet I didn’t feel a thing.

Really bad, I decided, just before we were flocked by a bunch of old dames in white. They were my acolytes, although it mostly felt like they were Hilde’s acolytes, since they were all old friends of hers. And I do mean old.

There wasn’t one under a hundred, with many being almost double that, and most of them had known each other for longer than I’d been alive. I frequently felt ganged up on as a result, not that they were trying, but they had a bad habit of talking things out with each other before “bothering” their Pythia. Meaning that they already had the defense prepared before I even knew what was going on.

But putting them in their place was harder than it sounds. For one thing, they really did mean well, and had been a huge help around court. I hadn’t realized how much we’d needed them until they arrived, and everything seemed to magically sort itself out. Tami, my rather frazzled major domo, had been walking around with a smile on her face lately, and the little initiates were noticeably better behaved with a bunch of powerful grandmas around to keep us all in line.

Not that they were the martinet type. They left that to Hilde, who seemed perfectly happy to play the bad guy when needed. Like now, I thought, as she squeezed my hand, and this time, it was hard enough to hurt.

“Ow-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w—"

Another spasm hit and the room juddered, along with my thoughts. I vaguely heard Hilde yelling for the acolytes to help anchor me, but it didn’t feel like they were successful. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel her grip on my hand at all anymore, not like she’d let go, but as if her fingers had simply dissolved into mist.

Or that mine had.

The room went hazy, as if my eyes were dissolving, too, and I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Not the carpet below me, or the air around me, or anything but the mad thudding of my heart. But I could hear, not Hilde anymore, but someone else.

“There you are,” a voice said, seemingly coming from all directions at once.