I clear my throat, and Desma breaks the kiss, blushing.
“Apparently,” I answer, my eyes bouncing back and forth between the two of them so fast it gives me vertigo.
“But why? Why you?” Desma asks, still pink.
“Because I’m cute and funny?”
They stare at me.
“No, really,” Desma insists. “Why you?”
I sigh. “He needs a Magoi with my skills. He thinks I can be helpful in diplomatic situations. Alliances and treaties. Things like that.”
Aetos chokes on something. “You? Diplomatic?”
“I know!” I throw my hands up. “I guess he thinks insult first and kill after will be good for the realm.”
We all laugh, but it feels forced.
“There’s more to it,” Desma prods.
I shake my head. “He’s Hoi Polloi. He needs Magoi. I’m a soothsayer.”
“You’re more than that.” Aetos doesn’t ask. He states a fact.
When I don’t say anything, Desma asks, “How does Beta Sinta know you’re more than that? Why work so hard to save you when he could just abduct himself another soothsayer?” She frowns, obviously hurt. “You didn’t just tell him whatever else you are, did you?”
“Of course not!” I say hotly. “It was an oracular dream.” I roll my eyes. “Thanks a bunch, Poseidon.”
Silence. It lasts so long I get sleepy. Magical healing saps my energy like nothing else.
“Poseidon?” Aetos eventually echoes.
I yawn. “Because of him, Beta Sinta watched me, put two and two together, and found some old scroll confirming it all.”
Silence again. Then Desma asks, “Will you ever tell us, Cat?”
It’s getting hard to focus. Fatigue turns the multicolored tent into a kaleidoscope. “I don’t know. It’s not what I want to do with my life. It’s what I ran away from.”
Blue lines pull tight around Aetos’s mouth. “But you’ll do it for him?”
I don’t answer, and my eyelids sag.
*
I wake up sometime late in the afternoon and then eat like a person three times my size. An embarrassing amount of roast chicken and an entire tray of spice cakes, which I’m guessing Desma left by my bedside, disappear in less than an hour. I feel stronger but stickier than the cakes I just inhaled.
A parade of visitors keeps me from leaving the tent for a bath. Dozens of circus residents pop their heads in to see if I’m awake and to check on me. I get tired again fast, but I’m too happy to see everyone to say so. Tadd and Alyssa bring me a pot of honey from the beehive they carry around with them everywhere the circus goes, and Zosimo and Yannis tell me about the performances I missed while I was gone. Vasili and his wife give me a new knife, clearly under the impression I need more blades.
“In case you lose one in the warlord’s gut,” Vasili says with no expression whatsoever.
Who me? Do I look violent and prone to slaughter?
Finally alone, I get up to tuck the knife into my satchel and discover just how weak I still am. I groan, taking baby steps across the tent. My legs wobble, feeling like dough that’s been rolled out but not baked hard.
Kato, Carver, and Flynn show up just as I’m crawling back onto the cot. Instead of collapsing like I want to, I sit, greeting them with a sour expression. “Didn’t you all die?”
Flynn smiles, his brown eyes alight with humor. “Almost.”
I grimace. “Maybe next time.”
Carver looks more serious. “You didn’t let us die.”
I glance down and pluck at the sheet, uncomfortable with his gratitude. “You didn’t let me die, either.”
“That was mostly Griffin,” he says. “He rode like a bat out of the Underworld to get you here. We showed up with Kato while Selena was finishing with you.”
“Well,” I say, ignoring the warmth spreading through my middle, “Kingmakers only come around every two hundred years or so. When you’ve got one, it’s best to keep her alive.”
Kato shakes his head, giving me a look that says I’m as stubborn as a Cyclops. “It’s not just that. You gave your word. You’re part of Beta Team now. Griffin will keep you alive, or die trying.”
I roll my eyes. “This again?” Beta Sinta wouldn’t die for me. Sacrificing himself would defeat the purpose of, well, everything. He was overconfident outside of Velos, even though I told him to run. He won’t take a risk like that again.
“This always.” Flynn’s tone is reproachful. “What’s more important—”