her imprecation. “They are towing spell accelerators.”
“Are they?” Titus’s question was sharp.
And his voice was unsteady.
“Did your mother mention spell accelerators in her vision?” Her voice too had risen an octave.
He said only, “Give me your wand.”
Dum spiro, spero.
What happened to hope, when there was no more breath?
She handed him the wand and gripped his hand. “It’ll be all right.”
“I love you,” he said. “And you will always be the scariest girl I have ever met.”
A lump lodged in her throat. “Shut up and fight.”
Several miles behind them, three cowl-like nets were being readied. Titus released his spells one after another; Kashkari did the same. After a minute or two of this rapid firing, Kashkari wrenched all the carpets up and to the right.
West yelped, his fingers gripping hard onto the carpet’s edge.
“Kashkari has to keep the carpets steady when he and Titus aim, but then he has to swerve to avoid being hit by the spells cast by our pursuers,” Iolanthe explained, panting with relief that they had not been hit. At least not this round.
West’s response, after a pause, was, “The prince called you the scariest girl he’s ever met. You are a girl?”
Eton College seemed to belong to the misty reserves of history, but it had been mere days ago that West, Kashkari, and Iolanthe met regularly for cricket practice. Of course West had every reason to continue to think of her as a boy.
She waved a hand. “That’s not important right now.”
They had covered approximately one-third of the distance to Black Bastion. That was important. Also important, that together Titus and Kashkari had stunned several of their pursuers.
She wiped a hand across her brow. She was perspiring, and not just from nerves—the night, quite cool earlier, had turned unseasonably warm. The weather inside the Crucible always reflected that outside. Why would it have suddenly become hot on Atlantis?
Skytower had been directly on top of the Commander’s Palace when they brought it back into the Crucible. Which meant the Crucible would have dropped right down into an inferno.
“Titus, can the Crucible catch fire?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“We might be inside the remains of the Commander’s Palace.”
“Or we might have been deliberately set on fire,” he said grimly, “to finish us off.”
No matter what had happened, the result was the same. They were in for a broiling.
Sparks leaped on the grassland below. Smoke was already rising. The air rushing past her face was so hot she might as well have stuck her head into an oven. Titus and Kashkari, however, seemed to pay no attention to these developments, their focus solely on their spell-casting.
The grassland burst into flames. Distant woods too caught on fire, their burning branches crackling. Smoke obscured the sky, muffling the screeches of the wyverns in the distance.
What had Titus told her long ago about the vision of his death? My mother saw a night scene. There was smoke and fire—a staggering amount of fire, according to her—and dragons.
All the conditions had been met.
“Yes. That’s all of them!” shouted Kashkari.
She started. It took her a moment to understand that he was talking about their pursuers. While she’d been preoccupied with fire and doom, Titus and Kashkari had stunned every last wyvern rider in their wake.
And there, ahead, was the silhouette of Black Bastion through the billowing smoke, much closer than she had thought it would be. Hope shot through her, a starburst of happiness. The future that she had given up on was now back in her embrace, full of laughter and promises.
She turned to her beloved. For the first time since the Bane’s fall, she wanted to celebrate. He was gazing at her too, with wonder in his eyes. They had done what they needed to do and they had survived. Now they would have all the time in the world to be young and frivolous. They would play; they would sit around; they would spend entire days not doing anything useful and not preparing for any great, awful task.
He smiled, he who so seldom had reasons to smile. She grinned from ear to ear. Oh, how lovely it was to be alive—and together.
He leaned toward her, his hand outstretched. The next moment he stiffened, his expression one of pain and surprise. Beyond him, in the firelight, Kashkari’s face filled with horror. Spells that had been distance-cast took a while to reach their targets. And in his jubilation, Kashkari had forgotten to swerve one last time.
Titus fell.
CHAPTER 24
“NO!” WEST SCREAMED. “NO!”
Iolanthe summoned a fierce updraft. I will