Not compared to the tall girl in the bad eighties ball gown, standing by the side of the former Pythia.
Her dress was electric blue satin with big, puffy sleeves and a peplum. There was a lace overlay on the top and little jeweled buttons down the front. Her shoes were dyed to match. It was absolutely awful, like something a bridezilla would stick on a too-pretty bridesmaid. Yet somehow she carried it off. The blue matched the color of her eyes and complemented her dark hair and pale skin. And when she laughed, you forgot all about the dress, didn’t even see it.
Because you couldn’t take your eyes off her face.
An arm slipped around my waist. “Dulceat?a?, I do not think you want to get so close.”
I suddenly realized that I was halfway across the room, although I couldn’t remember moving. Mircea pulled me off to one side, near a row of floor-length windows that looked out into the night. The one in front of us was as good as a mirror, allowing me to stare at the girl’s reflection without being so obvious.
Mircea is right, I thought blankly. She was beautiful. And delicate and fragile and poised.
She looked nothing at all like me.
“I don’t agree,” he murmured. A warm finger trailed down my cheekbone, tracing the track of a tear I couldn’t remember shedding. “There’s a similarity in the bone structure, in the shape of the eyes, the contour of the lips. . . .”
“I don’t see it,” I said harshly, gulping champagne and wondering why I was suddenly, blindingly angry.
“You said you were prepared for this,” he said, pulling me against him.
His chest was hard at my back, but his arms were gentle. I felt myself relax into his embrace, even knowing what he was doing. All vampires could manipulate human emotions to a degree, but Mircea could practically play me like a violin. It was a combination of natural talent and more knowledge of what made me tick than I probably had. But for once, I didn’t care. I clutched the familiar feeling of warmth and comfort around me like a blanket and told myself to stop being an idiot.
I didn’t know why I was reacting this way. I’d known in advance what she looked like. I’d seen a photo of her once, a faded, grainy thing taken at a distance. But it had been clear enough to show me the truth.
I didn’t resemble my mother in the slightest.
“I’m fine,” I told him, my throat tight, only to feel him sigh against my back.
“You are not fine, dulceat?a?. You are feeling anger, loss, betrayal—”
“I don’t have any reason to feel betrayed.”
“She abandoned you when you were a child—”
“She died, Mircea!”
“Yes, but the fact remains that she left. And hurt you in the process.”
“I wasn’t hurt. I was barely four.”
“You were hurt,” he insisted. “But you do not deal with such emotions, Cassie. You ignore them.”
“That isn’t true!”
“That has always been true. It is one of the defining aspects of your character.”
I scowled at his reflection in the window, but if he saw, he didn’t react. He took the empty champagne glass from my hand and sat it on a nearby table. Then his arms folded around me again, trapping me, although it didn’t feel that way. I didn’t want to talk about this. But suddenly I didn’t want to move, either.
“Do you recall when I visited Antonio’s court when you were a child?” he asked.
“Of course.” He’d been there for a year, fro
m the time I was eleven until I was almost twelve. It had been a lengthy visit, even by vampire standards. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it; Tony often had visitors, and it had made sense to me that his master would eventually be one of them. It was only later that I found out Mircea had an ulterior motive.
He’d discovered that the little clairvoyant Tony had at court was the daughter of the former heir to the Pythian throne. My mother had run away from her position and her responsibilities to marry a dark mage in Tony’s service. That effectively barred her from any chance of succeeding, but made no difference as far as my own odds were concerned.
“You hoped I’d become Pythia one day.”
Mircea didn’t bother to deny it. He was a vampire. Utilizing whatever resources were available within the family was considered a virtue in their culture, and a possible Pythia was a hell of a resource. “Yes, but you were also interesting in your own right.”