“You interfering little snot,” snarled the Bane. “You think you can keep me from what I want? I always get what I want.”
Titus could not speak. He could not even scream. The pain ratcheted tighter and tighter. He was blind with agony.
He barely felt the shudder in the floor beneath him. The sound, like enormous millstones grinding together, only vaguely registered. But the next second his pain stopped. He collapsed to the floor of the containment cell, gasping.
The Bane stood listening. Titus could hear nothing—they were too far into the center of the hill on which the Commander’s Palace stood. Which made the noise from a moment ago all the more remarkable. What had happened?
“Is Iolanthe Seabourne behind this?” demanded the Bane.
“I do not know.” But he certainly did not think it was beyond her. What had she done? Caused an actual earthquake?
The entire palace lurched, again and again, as if its levels were being sheared off one by one. The jolts went straight to Titus’s stomach. He clenched his teeth against repeated surges of nausea. Yet another hit. The ceiling of the crypt cracked. Stone and plaster rained down; dozens of wood carvings thudded to the floor.
The sounds changed, from those of brutal impact to something almost like a needle scratch, if the needle was the length of a street. Titus sucked in a breath. Skytower. Its great rock formation had a blunt end, but one of Skytower’s secrets was that it could extrude a huge spike from that blunt end. And the helmswoman who piloted Skytower was said to be an artist with that spike, and could carve her name on a piece of stone no bigger than the seat of a chair.
It must be Fairfax. She had found a way, as she always did. He was on his feet, his face pressed against the wall of the containment cell, his fist pounding. Come on, Fairfax. Come on!
Something that resembled a wasp’s stinger, if the wasp was the size of a phantom behemoth, tore through the ceiling near the southern wall of the crypt. He gasped. Beyond the shredded ceiling was the sky itself—Fairfax and Kashkari had managed to bulldoze the Commander’s Palace.
In that jagged band of the harshly lit night sky, Atlantean forces were madly maneuvering. Titus tried to recall what he could of Skytower’s crew. Did they have enough mage power to hold the wyvern battalion, the armored-chariot-carried colossal cockatrices, and all the other soldiers and war machines the Bane had at his disposal?
He glanced at the Bane, expecting to see the latter’s face twisted with rage. Instead, the Bane was smiling. Titus’s nascent hopes turned to ash. Why was the Bane delighted? What were his plans?
Wildly he looked about. Then he saw it, the round, transparent base of the other containment cell, gliding toward the opening in the ceiling. That very moment Kashkari and Fairfax streaked in on their carpets. Before Titus could shout in warning, they passed directly over the base of the cell.
Instantly the walls of the cell closed about them.
CHAPTER 23
AS FAIRFAX’S AND KASHKARI’S CARPETS struck the invisible barrier, they cried out and fell in a heap.
“No! No!” Titus screamed.
It could not be. They had not demolished the Commander’s Palace to be caught like rats in a trap.
The Bane laughed. “Why, thank you, my dear Fairfax, for taking the trouble to deliver yourself to me.”
Titus fell back against the far wall of his own containment dome, his hands over his face. Not this. Not this bitter, senseless end. Not after everything they had gone through, all the sacrifices that had been made, and all the lives that had been irrevocably lost.
Inside the other containment cell, Fairfax was getting up. “You all right, Kashkari?”
Kashkari was slower to rise to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said, wincing.
Fairfax’s gaze landed on Titus. She raised her hand and rested it against the wall of her cell. “Your Highness.”
Titus could only shake his head, trying not to break down and weep openly.
“Where is Durga Devi?” she asked.
From her spot, the pillar upon which the Bane had dashed Amara blocked the line of sight to where the latter lay.
“She is here.”
“Is she . . .”
“I do not know.”
Her containment cell glided across the floor toward the Bane. Kashkari gave a cry as they rounded the pillar and he saw Amara’s crumpled form. Fairfax’s throat moved at the sight of her own face on that too-still body.
The din of battle rose to a deafening pitch outside—the defenders of the