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 
18
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
“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?”
“I’m not sure. My hands hurt a minute ago, but not anymore. Is it a side effect of transmogrification?”
“No, but it might be a side effect of your breaking the otherwise spell, though.”
“What otherwise spell?”
“The one that was laid on you earlier, to make you believe you couldn’t manipulate air.”
“Maybe I was just late developing it.”
He shook his head. “I read your guardian’s letter to you and—”
She cocked a brow. She had never offered him the letter to read.
“Well, you already know I am unscrupulous.”
She sighed. “Go on.”
“These are his exact words. ‘I can’t help but wonder how your power would have manifested itself. By causing the Delamer River to flow in reverse? Or shearing the air of a sunny day into a cyclone?’ Which tells me that you did have power over air as a toddler.”
“But I thought you couldn’t apply an otherwise spell when the subject already knows about something.”
“Power over air is the easiest to disguise. You cannot explain away the sudden appearance of fire or water, or stones flying off a wall. But movement of air can always be blamed on a breeze from the window. And this way he could pass you off as an elemental mage III—much less noticeable.”
“I still don’t see why my hands should hurt now, after I broke through the otherwise spell, if that’s what it was.”
“Do something with air. Make the curtain flutter.”
She tried, but the curtain moved only the tiniest bit. “I don’t understand. I swung the entire chandelier last night.”
“Now you are no longer in the midst of extraordinary circumstances. An otherwise spell is not easy to cast off completely, when it has controlled you for so long. But you are already much further along than you used to be—the pain is likely a physical manifestation of the potential you have unlocked struggling against what is left of the otherwise spell.”
She tried again to flutter the curtain; the result was not much more impressive. It was disheartening. She’d thought her control over air would be easy and absolute from this point onward. “So what do I do now?”
“Train harder. All of elemental magic is mind over matter. You must keep pushing yourself.” He sat up and winced in pain. “We all must keep pushing ourselves.”
Mrs. Hancock’s smile was as pleasant as ever, her day dress as brown and sacklike. “Your Highness, if you
