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  I should have believed her, especially as she too is a seer. Perhaps not one with the power of the Pythia, but a seer nonetheless. I could not have found a better surrogate mother for my newborn daughter.

  That the child was a girl had come as a shock to both myself and Lucia, but there was no turning back. Lucia had worn rags wrapped around her belly to mimic a pregnancy. She’d maintained the charade as we had agreed that she take the child and raise it as her own. The baby being a girl did not change the agreement, though it may have caused it to adjust itself.

  Should the girl reveal the powers of the Pythia, Lucia swore that she would do everything she could to ensure the child took her rightful position. I trust Lucia implicitly and believe she will do as she has promised.

  If I should die tomorrow, I will die happy knowing my precious daughter, Kassandra, is safe from him.

  He is home, and I have paid dearly for my absence when he arrived. The beating was so terrible this time that I’ve begun to bleed profusely. The womb is a fragile thing, and I believe the injuries will ensure I do not conceive ever again. If I survive the agony, I will be happy in the knowledge that no more children will arise from our marriage bed.

  I am still unsure what I have done wrong. Perhaps I have grown too old for my once-beloved husband. He has through the decades, retained his youthful looks, so much so that he still receives many an admiring glance from the prettiest of girls, unwed or not matters little. They admire him more than they should, and perhaps they feel I am too old anyway, as why would they remember that we have been married for almost thirty-five years.

  Time, and Goran’s dark passions have stolen my youth, but they have only infused his beauty.

  Allegra sat frozen in shock at the words Lydia had penned. That the woman had suffered so deeply at the hand of her husband was horrific, but her revelation, and confirmation of Neptune’s recent advice, that Lydia had borne a baby girl who had grown to be the next Pythia, had stunned Allegra.

  What did that really mean? That Lydia was the first of their line?

  Allegra left the room, leaving behind the codex of Lydia, unable to read any further. She suspected already that Lydia’s end was near and from what she’d read, Allegra was certain that the first Pythia had died at the hands of her very own husband.

  The Immunis who was meant to be her protector, the one who was meant to guard her life at risk to his own.

  But Goran had transformed into something despicable, and Allegra did want to know what had happened to him. The thought that Allegra’s only bloodline could be traced to this awful man was something she found really hard to process.

  Now, she took a deep breath as voices drifted toward her.

  Her own Immunis was home, and Allegra thanked her stars that Max was nothing at all like Goran.

  Chapter 33

  Max couldn’t believe what Allegra was saying. Not that he didn’t believe her. Just that he found it hard to wrap his head around the fact that they’d just met Neptune.

  “Max you met Apollo, and you didn’t appear to find it so unbelievable then,” Allegra muttered, poking a fork into her salmon.

  “It’s not that. And besides, I met Pienius, not Apollo. He was in mortal disguise.”

  “It’s not like Neptune was a hundred feet tall or anything. And it’s not like you haven’t met a god before,” Allegra said, jerking a chin at Athena who responded with a glare.

  “Athena? She’s a demi-god. Emphasis on the demi. Means she’s more mortal than god.”

  “How would you know, mortal?” asked Athena, her green eyes glowing for a moment, her skin rippling from human to panther, the effect a little creepy, but enough to make a point.

  “Fine. I get it. Still. I may need a bit to really digest it. But in the meantime let’s get back to the important issue here. Langcourt.”

  Allegra nodded. This was the part she wasn’t at all looking forward to. “There’s a bit of information about Langcourt that you all need to know.”

  Max’s eyebrows rose. “There was more to hear?”

  Allegra recounted Neptune’s discovery of the bomb, and skimmed over his mention of Aurelia’s incorrect prediction.

  “Wait, I remember that. It was just before I arrived. Mara and Aurelia would talk about it often enough that I got the whole story only in fragments. Aurelia had a vision, and it ended up being the wrong place, and an entire island of people were killed.”

  “That’s about the gist of it,” said Allegra. “But Neptune’s theory makes so much sense to me. He believes Langcourt was behind the eruptions and earthquake activity. And I agree. I think Langcourt realized that if he sets the earthquakes and natural disasters up, then the oracles will come to him. He doesn’t have to go looking.”

  “Then all he has to do is identify her, and follow her back to where she lives. The question is, did this method work for him and for how long?”

  “What you are asking is how many Pythias has he managed to kill using this method of his.”

  “Well, Aurelia? She died of natural causes. And then there was Cordelia, but I thought she died in the Plague of 3053?”

  Max shook his head. “Aurelia mentioned it a few times. That they believed Cordelia had been deliberately infected.”

  “Which brings me to the next question. What disasters did Cordelia predict in the years leading to her death?”

  “Hawaii,” Mara’s voice came from the doorway. “And Reykjavik before that.” The old woman entered the dining room bearing a plate of fruits and cheeses.

  “Was there anything unusual about those two visions, Mara? Can you recall anything that we can use to investigate those incidents further?”

  Mara shook her head evading Allegra’s eyes. “She did not share much with me. She received the visions, went with the teams, saved a lot of people in Reykjavik, although from what I recall Hawaii turned out to be a failure. She came home unhappy, moped around alot, and distrusted her ability when she received the Reykjavik prophecy. Unlike her previous visions, these two affected Cordelia deeply. But she kept the details from me.”

  “But you were pretty young at the time, Mara. Would you think that maybe they may not have told you everything? Just because you would have been afraid, as being so young and new to the role?” Max’s question hung in the air between them, his gut insisting that the old woman wasn’t sharing everything she knew. Now was not the time to hold back crucial information.

  Mara’s face twisted into a blend of amusement and regret. “Perhaps they did. I wouldn’t have known.” She turned and walked off without another word.

  “Oh dear,” said Athena.

  Allegra glanced over at the demigod. “I do not envy you.”

  “Do I have to?” asked Athena staring at the empty doorway.

  “What’s going on?” Asked Max staring from Allegra to Athena and then back again.

  Allegra chuckled. “Athena will be replacing Mara as my handmaiden.”

  Max glanced over at Athena, his gut twisting. “Oh dear,” he said sadly, unable hold back the smile as he imagined what life for Athena was going to be like for the next year or two. Mara was a supremely hard taskmaster, and even though Athena was more or less a god, Max had a feeling the old crone would do everything in her power to make the experience supremely difficult for the demigod.

  “Shut up,” muttered Athena. She leaned forward and wrapped a few pieces of fruit and cheese. “Can we get back to the plan? Allegra wants to draw Langcourt in.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Allegra glared at Max. “We have to do something, or else I will spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder wondering when the bastard will pop up. And given that he doesn’t die, he’ll outlive me, and persecute any children that I may bring into the world. I can’t sit back and wait for the next island he decides to blow up in order to draw me out.”

  Max sighed and rested his elbows on the table before placing his forehead in his hands. “This is so not a
good idea,” he said shaking his head as he stared at the table.

  “But you agree we need to do it?” Allegra asked angling her head to peer down at Max’s face.

  He nodded and straightened, placing his hands on the table. “But let’s just get one thing straight,” he said, glancing from Allegra’s face to Athena’s both of which looked fake-innocent.

  “Which is?” asked Allegra before taking a bite of cheese.

  “The plan isn’t the plan unless I say so. We need to be one-hundred percent sure before we move on it,” Max said firmly, staring at the women as hard as he could. Then he raised an eyebrow and focused on the Pythia. “And Allegra sits this one out.”

  As Max tensed waiting for Allegra to fight him on it, he found himself somewhat disappointed because all she did was grab a slice of pear and smile before saying, “That was two things.”

  Max restrained the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t think the day would ever come that Allegra didn’t test his patience.

  And he hoped it never did.

  Chapter 34

  Allegra wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with herself. She paced the floor of her study, then wandered to the patio. The day was dreary, dark gray clouds scudded across the sky, reflecting her own frame of mind.

  But the rain held, and the air was still humid enough that Allegra felt as though with every breath she swallowed a few drops of water.

  She let out a sigh and paced some more, her sandaled feet making soft thugs on the stone floor.

  It was easy enough to say that all she had to do was wait until a vision arrived, but there was also an element of uncertainty to it that left Allegra with an uneasy ache in her gut.

  Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that she’d been so well manipulated by her adversary. Even knowing that the Pythias previous to her had also been moved around like mere chess pieces didn’t make her feel any better. Langcourt had succeeded most brilliantly.

  Allegra had to admit it. Arranging eruptions and quakes in order to bring the Pythia out where he could find out who she was and perhaps begin to stalk her, even track her back to wherever she lived—it all spoke to Langcourt’s ability to change with the times, to use the tools around him to achieve his goals.

  An intelligent opponent was always the most dangerous, and Allegra knew she had to acknowledge his smarts. Pretending they could easily outsmart the man was foolishness in the extreme.

  Mara’s admission that Cordelia’s visions that had led her to Hawaii and then to Reykjavik had underscored Langcourt’s ruthlessness. Cordelia had failed to save the villages in Hawaii and had gone to Reykjavik, her outlook despondent. Her failure had shadowed her every move, and even though she’d succeeded in saving the people in Snæland, she lived her last few months feeling as though she’d failed.

  Allegra could understand that. She herself had come so close to having the very same experience, and had it not been for Neptune’s discovery, Allegra would have watched the people of Bali lose thousands of lives.

  And she planned to take advantage of what the god had offered. She had spent a few thoughts on Apollo, who’d helped her when she’d first become Pythia, but the god had been strangely silent all these months, and Allegra had about given up on any sort of assistance from the gods.

  Her faith had been restored after Neptune’s revelation, and then admission, and Allegra was all too happy to retain her position on the god’s good side.

  Now she had to force herself to play the waiting game, until Langcourt did whatever he did to set things into play. For now, Allegra devoted herself to two things—beginning her own entries into the Pythia Codex and brushing up on the lives of the Pythias of the past.

  Although it was a difficult decision, Allegra decided to continue with Lydia’s codex.

  He challenged me, demanding to know what I had done. At first, still recovering and weak with contained bloodloss, I didn’t understand.

  He hit me then, his palm connecting with my cheek so hard that my neck snapped. But I dared not react, tears would merely encourage further violence as he attempted to quiet me, reluctant to bring his treatment to me to the attention of the household or the priests.

  Little does he know that both the household and the priesthood were well aware of his behavior, and they’d slowly withdrawn their support of him.

  My silence encouraged him to speak, and he went onto describe the encounter he’d had with the most senior of the Pythian priests who had only moments ago demanded that Goran hand over the amphora he’d taken from Atlantis, citing historical significance and it being the property of all citizenry.

  I denied all knowledge which of course had been a lie. I am guilty of turning my husband in, of revealing his theft of the amphora to the senate who would have sent the priests to discuss the issue with him.

  But that discussion with the senate had taken place more than ten years past, and I wonder why they’d taken so long to do something about him. Still, I have never spoken of his treatment of me. There is far too much shame in that.

  Perhaps the oracles who come after me will learn from my mistakes and take more care in the choice of their life mates. I have made my request with the Pythia Council for a more strict decision-making process in the choosing of the Immunis. The ability of a male to be immune from the touch of the oracle does not necessarily make him the automatically chosen mate of the Pythia.

  I know of two other males, a senator and a laborer in a neighboring villa who were immunis too, only not officially recognized. Is it but a fable that there is only one? I often wonder if perhaps there is an element of truth to this.

  Goran did not take the demands lightly, announcing that he would take the amphora and leave. And his expression was particularly strange, trancelike, and he spoke without looking at me, as though I were not there at all.

  He lives in a strange world, one he had only muttered about in passing, and as each day draws by, I have grown more and more afraid for him

  And today he stood in front of me, announcing his intention to do the one thing I knew would spell the end.

  I should have listened to my gut, should never have given into the ever-present desire to please my husband. I’d chosen to give him his dreams, only to have his reality taken from him. Had I caused him to lose his mind this way? To move so far apart from reality that he no longer made sense within our world.

  I see before me a man who looks no older than thirty, a man who I know is no younger than fifty years of age. How can he evade the ravages of time in this way? Has he managed to delude himself into believing himself to still be the bright young man I had fallen in love with all those years ago?

  And he barely even knows it, that is how far he has gone, how deeply he has become embroiled in this delusions.

  Allegra blinked, trying to squeeze the gritty feeling out of her eyes. Lydia’s life had taken a turn for the worse, and as Allegra turned the page, she found nothing more. The codex of the Pythia Lydia had ended with a small entry by her successor indicating the year of her death.

  Just like that, the woman who was the progenitor of the entire line of Pythias was gone.

  Chapter 35

  Akída, (Fora Islet, Canaries)

  Langcourt paced the floor of his office, his bald head growing hot with fury as he thought about the disaster that was the Bali earthquake. Nothing had gone as he had planned and he was confused.

  For more than a century now, Langcourt had been using a sonic emitter which created vibrations within the earth, vibrations that could lead to tremors and earthquakes. But the core mechanism was outdated and prone to untimely failures. That was what Von Demme had been hired to do.

  To fix the damned core mechanism.

  Something he’d failed to do.

  But had he failed, or had someone helped the Pythia? Given her details in advance that would allow her to destroy his bomb? Or perhaps sabotaged it on her behalf?

  So he found it difficult to identify a singular person wit
hin his employ who would have understood who he was and what he’d intended to do. Even the team he’d hired in Barbarina Town to abduct the Pythia and subdue her familiar hadn’t really known who they were working for.

  An arrangement that had worked to Langcourt’s advantage for centuries. Still, there were times when that arrangement fell apart and the men in his employ turned the tables on him.

  For centuries, Langcourt’s elder brother Claudius had spearheaded much of their attempts to eliminate the Pythias, leaving Severus and his younger brothers to do the dirty work. Had Claudius been in charge, it would have been Langcourt himself who would have been the one to dive to the seabeds or rappel down the sides of rift valleys in order to place the devices and activate them.

  It gave Langcourt a moment of pleasure to know that his dear brother had not lived long enough to avail himself of the most modern of technologies.

  Claudius had met a bloody end during the revolution in Frankia in 2799 where his father and brothers had witnessed him being relieved of his head in a long, gory, and bloody process.

  As much as Langcourt had competed with his brother for their father’s attention, he’d never have wished such a death upon Claudius who had survived much of the attempt and had only drawn his last breath seconds before the final incision.

  His father had been most devastated, his first born having been the apple of his eye. Still, he transferred the mantle of management over to Langcourt who proved far more tactically skilled than the old man had envisioned.

  In fact, before he’d been killed, Langcourt’s father had given him a birthday gift he’d never have expected—a safari to South Alkebulan, to fulfill a long-standing dream to fell an elephant with a single bullet.

  That trip had ended in tragedy, a day that Langcourt would never forget no matter how long he lived. Claudius’ death at the hands of the Pythian assassins had been bloody and deadly, and protracted.