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I opened my mouth only to close it again when I realized I had no idea where to begin.
But Costas seemed to pick up on what was happening anyway. “Grey is making a move tonight? Even I can sense how unsettled everyone is.”
I nodded. “He’s planning to turn you all against each other.”
“How is that possible? None of us will risk letting him touch our skin. My family are wrong-headed about a lot of things, but they aren’t fools.”
I took a deep breath. This was it. The moment where I was putting everything on the line.
“It’s me. I don’t really have an elements affinity. I’m a healer. A strong one. And Grey has taught me how to mesmerize.”
Costas sucked in an audible breath, confirming my impression that to a Constantine it was unthinkable that the ability would be shared outside the family.
“I guessed there was something different about you,” he said. “I even wondered if you were a healer. But this…”
“I’m so sorry, Costas, but I mesmerized your grandmother under Grey’s instruction. I thought it was a small thing to do, just to ensure our place here. I didn’t realize it would set off such a disastrous chain of circumstances.”
“You’ve only been here two days. How could you know how deep the animosity goes between my father and my uncle, with the next generation following in their wake? Grandmother has been the only one keeping the peace for a while now, and when she greeted Grey so warmly, and then grew more and more pleased with him…” He sighed. “Even I didn’t realize quite how delicate the balance of power had become in my family. But I suppose Grey is to blame for that, as well.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “How could he be to blame for the state of the Constantines before our arrival?”
“I suppose it’s possible it might be someone else.” Costas peered at me. “Does anyone else on the mainland know about our existence? I thought it was only Grey.”
“As far as I know it is only him. Why?”
He hesitated. “Are you aware of some recent attacks on your homeland?”
“The false blight and the storms, you mean?”
“Yes. Ignatius is behind those. Not that he acted alone, of course. But there are plenty of strong plants and elements mages in the town, so he took some of them with him. He even took Barnabas as well to help with mesmerizing. But the two of them came back with very different ideas about what to do next.”
“What do you mean? Are they planning further attacks on Tartora?”
“Barnabas thinks the retaliation was sufficient, and that we should go back to our established life as rulers here—with himself as heir, naturally. Ignatius has other ideas, though. He thinks Tartora is ripe for the plucking. He hasn’t said it directly, but I think he has dreams of something greater than being the next lord of the manor. He wants a crown and a throne.”
I gasped. “He wants to take Tartora by force?”
Costas waggled his fingers, his expression sad. “Not the normal kind of force.”
I shivered. “He won’t find it such an easy thing to keep an entire kingdom in thrall like he does with a single town.”
“Would he really need to, though? Wouldn’t it be enough to entrap key people at the capital?”
“Perhaps,” I said slowly, unsure of the answer myself. But I was very sure I never wanted to see him try.
“But why is this all happening now?” I asked. “And why is Grey to blame?”
Costas’s expression changed to one of surprise. “You don’t know? Did he keep it secret even from his followers? He must have had some of them helping him, at least.”
“I only came to Grey’s camp days before we sailed,” I said. “I know very little about his plans and actions before that.”
“It’s possible I’m wrong,” Costas said, “but I don’t think so. Someone attacked us first, and there’s no one else it could have been but Grey. Of course, originally we had no idea Grey was still out there. We thought the mainlanders must have discovered our existence, so Ignatius convinced the elders to let him take a small boat to the mainland to retaliate. But on their return Barnabas claimed the Tartorans were as ignorant about our existence as ever. And when Ignatius was pushed, he had to agree. So now Uncle Ambrose and Barnabas blame me, saying I made a mistake.”
“You? What does it have to do with you?”
“I’m the only one in the family with an elements seed—I’m the strongest elements mage on the island, in fact, although my family doesn’t value that. I was the one to tell them that the fire which took our crops wasn’t started by lightning but by arson—though it couldn’t have been anyone from the town, for obvious reasons. No one here could manage such a deception. And later, after their return, I was the one to warn them that the storm which sank one of our fishing boats wasn’t natural. In fact, I was the one to turn the storm around and push it back the way it came from.”
He grimaced. “Of course I found out later that Ignatius ordered a whole group of elements mages from the town to combine their power to make it larger and more potent. I had let it go by that point, so I didn’t realize until much later when someone mentioned it in passing.”
