Iolanthe sucked in a breath.
“What is it?”
“I know that place—my guardian used to take me there all the time. It had become a sweets shop by then, but it still had some of the old signs. The one I liked the best said something along the lines of ‘Books on the Dark Arts may be found in the cellar, free of charge. And should you locate the cellar, kindly feed the phantom behemoth inside. Regards, E. Constantinos.’”
“‘The warp and weft of destiny weave in mysterious ways; only in hindsight does one see the threads of Fortune taking shape,’” he quoted.
She exhaled slowly and read on.
31 August 1013
A most fantastical day.
I slipped out of a command performance of Titus III, evaded my ladies-in-waiting, and hurried to the Emporium of Fine Learning and Curiosities, Constantinos’s shop. As I walked into the shop, the vision repeated itself an unprecedented seventh time.
This time, I saw clearly the distinctive ring on the hand wielding the stylus.
When the vision had faded, I lifted my own hand in shock. On my right index finger is an identical ring that had been wrought for Hesperia the Magnificent. There is not another like it in all the mage realms.
The woman is me.
Iolanthe’s hand came up to her throat.
I laughed. Well, then.
Once I had a vision of myself telling my father that a particular Atlantean girl was going to be the most powerful person in the Domain. Then, when I saw the girl in truth, I told him what I had seen myself tell him—since one cannot deliberately change what has been seen to happen. He was terribly displeased to be faced with the possibility that he, a direct descendant of Titus the Great, would one day no longer be the absolute master of this realm.
But this time I would offend no one.
I found the book, dragged it to the table, lifted the stylus from its holder, and vandalized the book as I had done in the vision.
Only when I was finished did I remember the desk calendar. In the vision it is always 25 August. But today is 31 August. I looked at the calendar on the desk. 25 August! The device had stopped working a week ago.
I am not often cheered by how right I am: the ability to see glimpses of the future is frustrating and hair-raising. But at that moment, I was ever so thrilled.
On impulse, I opened the book again, turned to the section for clarifying draughts, and tore out the last three pages. The recipes given on those pages are riddled with errors. I was not going to let some other poor pupil suffer from them.
They turned the page, but there was nothing else. They kept turning pages. Still nothing. The prince eventually closed the journal and put it back into his satchel.
He glanced at Iolanthe.
She realized she ought to say something, but she did not dare to speak aloud her thoughts—for fear she might truly find the long arm of destiny clasped tightly about her.
For fear she might come to accept the idea that her fate and that of the prince’s had been interwoven since long before their births.
“Tell me about the vision in which she saw you dying,” said Fairfax, returning to her supper. “Did you also read it in that diary?”
Titus slowly lay himself back down. Damn the truth serum. And damn the blood oath that prevented him from lying. One might as well blind a painter or chop off the fingers of a sculptor—he was an artist with his lies. “Yes.”
“When will it happen?”
“I am described as in my late adolescence. So . . . any day now.”
She blinked a few times, looked down at her food, then back at him. “Why?”
“There is no why. Everybody dies.”
“You said that the diary only shows what you need to know. Why is it necessary for you to learn that you’ll die young?”
“So I will prepare accordingly. It concentrates the mind, knowing your time is limited.”
“It could have had the opposite effect. Another boy might have abandoned the whole venture altogether.”
“That boy must not worry about meeting his mother in the afterlife with nothing accomplished in this one. Besides, you cannot escape your destiny. Look at how much effort has been expended in helping you elude the ineluctable—and look where you are now.”
A pot of tea had come with the supper tray. Her gaze dropped to the teapot. Tea jetted out of the spout by itself, arcing a graceful parabola in the air before filling a cup without a drop spilled. She wrapped her hands around the cup, as if she felt cold and needed a source of warmth. “So I might be alone at the end, facing the Bane.”
The thought haunted him almost more than his impending death. “As long as I live and breathe, I will be with you. And I will shield you.”
Her fingers flexed, then tightened around the teacup. “I never thought I’d say this, but I want you to live forever.”
He did not need to live forever, but he would like to live long enough to forget the taste of fear. “You can live forever for me.”
Their gazes met—and held.
She rose, went into the bedroom, and came back with a blanket. As she tucked the blanket in around him, forever became a distant thought—he would gladly exchange it for a few more moments like this.
“Sleep,” she said. “The great elemental mage of our time will stand guard over you.”
A few sparks of fire floated below the ceiling, providing just enough illumination to see. Iolanthe gazed at the prince’s sleeping form, one arm slung over his head, the other kept close to his person, his wand in hand.
Gathering the sparks nearer herself, she took out his mother’s diary and flipped through the pages again. Nothing, except for one particular page which bore a small skull mark that she hadn’t noticed before at the bottom right-hand corner.
When she reached the end of the diary, she turned the pages backward. Still nothing. She sighed and returned the diary to his satchel.
In her heart she was beginning to understand that it was truly written in the stars, her destiny. Yet it still seemed utterly impossible that she would ever find the audacity to face the Bane, she who had lived such a small life, so tightly focused only on the well-being of her own family.
Especially if the prince was right about his death.
Upon his passing, the blood oath would cease to be binding. She would be free to walk away from this mad venture, snatch Master Haywood, if she could, and disappear into hiding.
There was nothing to stop her.
Except the knowledge that he had given his life to the cause, and she would have abandoned the entire foundation he had built.
Not to mention the question that was beginning to tug at the edge of her mind: if she had the power to overthrow the Bane, could she live with never trying, just keeping herself and Master Haywood safe in some pocket of the Labyrinthine Mountains, while Mrs. Needles and countless others like her rotted in Atlantean prisons?
Could she live with herself, cowering, while the world burned?
CHAPTER
IOLANTHE WOKE UP HISSING WITH pain. Her fingers felt as if they had swollen to three times their normal size, her skin about to burst from the pressure.
But they appeared no different. She stared at her hands in puzzlement. When she closed her hands, her knuckles protested. She opened and closed her hands a few more times. The discomfort went away rather rapidly, leaving her bewildered.
“What is the matter?” asked the prince from where he lay, his voice rough with sleep.
“You’re awake. How is your head? Want me to find you some breakfast?”
“No breakfast, thank you. And my head is terrible, but that is par for the course. What is the matter with you?”