She was being stupid, of course. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to see the girl he used to kiss before she came along. And did he stop at kissing? Or did he do a great deal more to that pretty, grateful, pliant girl?
The stairs led to a gilded landing—the gold barely visible under the dust—which opened into a ballroom with moth-eaten velvet curtains. A row of maids, polishing cloths still in hand, dreamed peacefully.
This was where the fancy dress ball to celebrate Sleeping Beauty’s coming-of-age would have taken place.
Past a room in which a wig master snored gently on a great pile of hair, and another room that contained dozens of dressmaker’s dummies, each sporting a different costume, she sprinted up the stairs.
The castle was endlessly vertical. Cobwebbed corridors, windows falling off their hinges, paintings grimy with age. She ran past them all, headed ever higher.
A door burst open. Before she could recoil in alarm, the prince barreled out and tackled her. They fell onto a thick rug, sending up a cloud of dust. She shoved at him.
“No,” he said, his eyes adamant.
She meant to heave him out of her way. For having another girl—however fictional—before her. For not living forever. And for taking away her freedom in making her fall in love after all.
Except, somehow, her fingers spread over his face. Her thumb traced the rise of his dirt-smeared cheekbone, smudged a drop of sweat trickling past his temple, then down to press into the corner of his lips, chapped from the heat of dragon flame.
So little time. They had so little time left.
Pulling him toward her, she kissed him. He turned stone still with shock. She pushed her hands into his hair and kissed him more fervently.
Suddenly he was kissing her back, with a hunger that both thrilled and frightened her.
And just as suddenly they were back in his room, sitting on two sides of his desk, touching nowhere.
“We cannot,” he said quietly. “I had thought love would bind us together in one purpose. I was wrong. The situation is more complicated than that. You must leave me behind at some point, when I am of no more use. And that is not a decision to be made or unmade under the influence of unnecessary emotions.”
Unnecessary emotions.
Heat prickled her cheeks and the shells of her ears. Her windpipe burned, if someone had shoved a torch down her throat.
The utter humiliation of it, to be rejected like this, all in the name of the Mission . . .
But even worse was the absolute certainty in his voice. He lived his life counting down toward its end. She might as well have fallen in love with someone on his deathbed.
“Please,” she heard herself speak past the lump in her throat, “don’t be so melodramatic. Don’t confuse a simple kiss with eternal adoration. I am surrounded by handsome boys—have you not noticed how gorgeous Kashkari is?—but you are the only one I can kiss without getting into trouble.
“Besides, have you forgotten that you are my captor? I can never love you when I’m not free. That you think I could only shows how little understanding you have of love.” She rose. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to be in my room before lights-out.”
The colossus cockatrices roared uselessly outside. The wyverns had been contained in a corner of the great hall. Titus made the long, long climb to the garret of the castle, his footsteps heavy with fatigue and dejection.
Sleeping Beauty was deep in her slumber. He sank onto one knee and cupped her cheeks with his hands.
Very gently, he bent his head and kissed her.
She opened her eyes; they were the color of midnight. Her hair, too, was pure shadow.
He knew the texture of her hair, because he had once cut it himself. He knew the taste of her lips because he had kissed her—and as of today, been kissed by her.
“Iolanthe,” he murmured.
She smiled. “You know my name.”
“Yes, I know your name.” And here, inside the Crucible, was the only place where he dared to call her—to even think of her—by that name.
“I have missed you,” she whispered, her arms rising to entwine around his shoulders. “Kiss me again.”
He had changed her dialogue just before he entered the Crucible. These were the precise words he wanted to hear. But they echoed hollowly against the walls of the garret, meaningless sounds that neither soothed nor reassured.
“Ignore what I said earlier, when I was annoyed,” she went on, her fingers combing through his hair.
But he couldn’t. He knew how much time she spent with Kashkari—they were always walking to or from cricket practice together. And how stupid of him to suppose that she could forget, even for a moment, that she was here against her will.
“And they lived happily ever after,” he said.
Now he was back in his empty room. He rose from his chair and laid a hand upon the wall between his room and hers, as if that could propel his thoughts across everything that separated them and make her understand that it was not her kiss that frightened him, but his own reaction to it.
Because if he loved her, he would never be able to push her into mortal danger.
Yet he must, or he would have lived his entire life in vain.
CHAPTER
UPON THE PLAYING FIELDS, A cricket game was in full progress, penned in by a crowd nine deep. West, the future captain of the school team, struck a ball directly out of bounds, giving his club six runs. The spectators roared with approval.
“Johnny, you must introduce me to West,” a girl to the right of Titus said to her brother. “You simply must.”
“But I’ve never been within a hundred feet of him,” protested Johnny, a portly junior boy.
“Johnny, my dear,” said his stern-looking mother, “is that all the enterprise you possess? If your sister wishes to meet West, then you will endeavor to make it happen.”
Fourth of June was Eton’s biggest annual fete, a daylong celebration marked by speeches in the morning, a cricket game in the afternoon, a procession of boats in the evening, and a display of fireworks at night, the whole heavily attended by Old Etonians and the families of current pupils.
Titus had forgotten what a horde of sisters and mothers always descended, inundating the school in a tide of pastel. Ruffles, ribbons, bustled skirts abounded. Thousands of silk-flower-trimmed hats bobbed and joggled. The air was heavy with perfumes of rose and lilies.
Such femininity struck him as exaggerated, almost caricature-ish. These days, a girl was most beautiful to him in short hair, a uniform, and a derby set at a rakish angle.
He scanned the mob. Fairfax had not returned. She had banded together with Kashkari and Wintervale, who also had no family in attendance, for a picnic. Titus could have joined them, but he did not.
He and Fairfax had not exactly been avoiding each other. They spoke daily concerning news from the Domain, her training, and his search for a spell to permanently incapacitate the Inquisitor. But their interaction had become formal, structured, questions that changed little from day to day, and answers that varied even less.
It was probably for the best.
But he could not help wishing otherwise. All the more so since Dalbert was on leave—his dying mother wished him to accompany her to a spiritual retreat on Ondine Island, near her place of birth. Without Dalbert’s daily reports, Titus felt as if he stood blindfolded in a minefield.
At least the last bit of news Dalbert reported before he left had been the most welcome yet: the Inquisitor had been transported to Atlantis, likely due to further deterioration of her condition.
A commotion behind Titus made him turn around. A group of men were pushing through the crowd, much to the consternation of those being shoved out of the way. To his displeasure, Titus recognized the coat of arms on the livery of the men coming toward him as the invented heraldry of Saxe-Limburg, his fictional place of origin. Behind the men came Greencomb, Alectus’s secretary, dressed in a nonmage suit.