“Her tale is one of the training grounds in the Crucible—one of the more advanced ones.”
Her lips pulled tight. “You can die in the Crucible?”
“Of course.”
“With no consequences to your real person?”
“It is not pleasant. You die in the Crucible, and it will give you a deep aversion to going back to the scene of your death.”
“You are in the Crucible now.”
“True, but I have no plans to ever visit Black Bastion again. Someday, though, I might send you there for a battle royal against Helgira.”
She shrugged. “Just because you fear her doesn’t mean I will.”
Titus had not slept much the night before, waiting for the armored chariots to depart. As he stared at their barely visible metallic underbellies, he had gone over the events of the day again and again, knowing his actions had crossed a line—and knowing that he would have done exactly the same if he had to again.
At some point he had stopped defending himself. She was right: he was a villain who would stop at nothing to achieve his ends. And looking at her now, drenched, dirt-smeared, but unbowed, he realized had further to go yet.
If anyone could find a way to break a blood oath, she would. He must find some other way of holding her fast.
Or even better, find a way so that she would not wish to leave, even if she could.
But he could think of nothing—yet.
“That is enough for today,” he said, pocketing his wand. “Time for school.”
It was a sunny morning. Uniformed pupils exited residential houses in a steady stream. Along the way, junior boys clustered around various holes-in-the-wall—sock shops, the prince called them—buying coffee and freshly baked buns.
He took her to a bigger place, not exactly a proper restaurant but an establishment with two interconnected dining rooms, catering exclusively to senior boys. She ate a buttered bun and observed—it never hurt to know who was popular, who had information to share, and whom to avoid.
But even as she assessed her new surroundings, she felt herself similarly appraised. This was not new. Ever since they first met, the prince had watched her intensely—after all, he believed her to be the means to his impossible ends. But since their exit from the Crucible, his gaze had seemed more . . . personal.
“What do you want now, Your Highness?”
He raised a brow. “I already have you. Should I want anything else?”
She pushed away her empty plate. “You have that scheming look in your eyes.”
He turned the handle of his own coffee cup, from which he’d yet to take a sip. “That is terrible. I should only ever sport a condescending look. We never want to give the impression that I am capable of—or interested in— strategizing.”
“You’re fudging your answers, prince. I want the truth.”
The corners of his lips turned up barely perceptibly. “I was thinking of how to best hold on to you, my dear Fairfax who would leave me at the first opportunity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Since when is a blood oath not enough to keep a mage enslaved?”
“You are right, of course. I should not doubt my own success.”
“Then why do you doubt your own success?”
He looked her in the eye. “Only because you are infinitely precious to me, Fairfax, and the loss of you would be devastating.”
He was speaking of her as a tool to be deployed against the Bane. She didn’t know why she should feel both a surge of heat and a ripple of pain in her heart.
She rose. “I’m finished here.”
The school was old, a collection of faded, crenellated redbrick buildings around a quadrangle, at the center of which stood a bronze statue of a man who must have once been someone important. The cobblestones of the courtyard had been worn smooth from centuries of shuffling feet. The window frames looked as if they could use another coat of paint—or perhaps some fresh lumber altogether.
“I expected something more elegant,” Iolanthe said. She’d attended grander, lovelier schools.
“Eton has a tendency to make do. They used to stuff seventy pupils in a broom cupboard and conduct class with the door open in winter.”
She could not understand. “Why this school? Why a nonmage school at all? Why not just stick you in the monastery and give you incompetent tutors?”
“The Bane has his own seer. Or had—I have not received intelligence on the seer in years. But apparently he once saw me attend Eton in a vision.”
The first principle in dealing with visions was that one never tampered with a future that had already been revealed.
“Destiny, then?”
“Oh, I am destiny’s darling.”
Something in his tone made her glance sharply at him. But before she could say anything, several boys came around and shook her hand.
“Heard you were back, Fairfax.”
“All healed, Fairfax?”
She grinned and answered the greetings, trying not to betray the fact that she had no idea who anyone was. The boys went on their way. The prince was listing their names for her to remember when she was jostled from behind.
“What the—”
Two beefy boys chortled to each other. “Look, it’s Fairfax,” said one of them. “His Highness has his bumboy back.”
Iolanthe’s jaw dropped. His Highness, however, was not the least bit flustered. “Is that any way to refer to my dearest friend, pretty as he is? Or perhaps you are just jealous, Trumper, since your own dearest friend is as hideous as a crushed turnip.”
So Trumper was the thick-necked one and Hogg the one with a broad, pale, and somewhat squashed- looking face.
“Who are you calling a crushed turnip, you limp-wristed, mollycoddled Prussian?” bellowed Hogg.
“You, you big, virile Englishman, of course,” said the prince. He placed his arm around Iolanthe’s shoulders. “Come, Fairfax, we are running late.”
“Who are they?” she asked when they were out of hearing.
“A pair of common bullies.”
“Are they alone in thinking that we share this particular relationship?”
“What do you care?”
“Of course I care. I have to live among these boys. The last thing I want is to be known as your . . . anything.”
“Nobody has to know, Fairfax,” he whispered. “It can be our little secret.”
The way he looked, between irony and wickedness, made something go awry inside her. “The unvarnished truth, if you would.”
He dropped his arm. “The general consensus is that you are my friend because you are poor and I am wealthy.”
“Well, that I can believe, since I’m sure no one wants to be your friend otherwise.”
He was silent. She hoped she’d injured his feelings—assuming he had feelings to injure in the first place.
“Friendship is untenable for people in our position,” he said, his tone smooth, almost nonchalant. “Either we suffer for it, or our friends suffer for it. Remember that, Fairfax, before you become best chums with everyone around.”
Early school, as the first class of the day was called, was taught by a master named Evanston, a frail, white-haired man who all but disappeared underneath his black master’s robe. As it was the beginning of the Half,
