He raised her hand to his cheek, beyond grateful—no one who toppled the Bane could be said to have lived anything less than a remarkably full life.
“Look at that!” cried Kashkari.
A few miles ahead, a silver-blue flare shot high in the air. It expanded to take on the shape of a giant phoenix, shimmering against the night sky.
Titus was astonished. “It is the beacon of an ally—an ally of the House of Elberon.”
He rushed to apply a far-seeing spell. Beneath the beacon, on the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle, stood a man, waving.
And that man was none other than one of Titus’s greatest allies, Dalbert.
After Titus’s speech on the balcony of the Citadel, mages had started launching incendiaries at the scores of armored chariots that hovered above Delamer and kept the city in a state of siege. The situation escalated rapidly. After some hesitation, Commander Rainstone, who had led the force that came to Titus and Iolanthe’s aid in the Sahara Desert, decided not to wait anymore before taking down the armored chariots.
As it turned out, the raid on the facility under the Serpentine Hills that had so dismayed Titus had not destroyed the entire cache of war machines. In fact, the raid had been allowed to happen to fool Atlantis into thinking that the resistance had been brought to its knees.
With newer and better war machines that had been hidden elsewhere, mostly in the Labyrinthine Mountains, the Domain’s forces downed the armored chariots and took over the Inquisitory. This last had happened only a few hours ago, and everyone had been waiting, in a state of finger-biting tension, to see what Atlantis’s reaction would be.
The Bane’s demise shifted the advantage decisively to those who had long opposed him, but the situation remained fluid and dangerous. Atlantis had a large standing military and contingents stationed all over the mage world. Who would control that structure in the power vacuum left behind by the Lord High Commander’s death?
“We will need your help in making crucial decisions, sire,” said Dalbert, after he summarized the events of the past few days.
All three copies of the Crucible that Atlantis had confiscated had been kept at the Inquisitory in Delamer—the Bane had not wanted anything that could possibly function as a portal for his enemies on Atlantis itself, but he had not wanted to destroy them in case they could be useful to him. Dalbert had made it a priority to retrieve the copies after the sacking of the Inquisitory and had brought them to a villa on the shoulder of the Serpentine Hills, where Titus’s parents had often met during their clandestine courtship.
And so it was that Titus and his friends also found themselves in his parents’ former love nest, a small, airy house with warm cream walls and decor in the colors of the sea. Dalbert had remedies, baths, and nourishment waiting for them, and while they refreshed themselves, he saw to West’s leg.
Titus scrubbed himself clean. Then, in a soft, blue tunic that smelled of cloud pine and silver moss, he sat down in the dining room, next to a busily eating Fairfax.
“Hmm, already frowning,” she said. “I see the joy of being alive doesn’t last very long with you.”
The one he loved knew him all too well. “Unfortunately, it is beginning to sink in that since I lived, I will be expected to actually govern. It almost makes me wish I were dealing with the Bane instead.”
She rolled her eyes. “You idiot. Have you already forgotten what it was like to deal with the Bane? Run your damned realm and be grateful.”
He laughed. “I deserved that, did I not? ‘Shut up and govern.’”
“Yes, you deserved that.” She shoved a chocolate croissant into her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment in undiluted bliss. “But here’s another thought: you will do very well at it. In fact, someday you might be spoken of in the same breath as Titus the Great and Hesperia the Magnificent—not by me, mind you, just historians who don’t know any better.”
He laughed again, feeling light and blissful.
Outside, the horizon was at last turning a pale shade of fire. The longest night of his life had come to an end. A new day was beginning.
Kashkari had just joined them when Dalbert ushered in Commander Rainstone, who was on their side after all. Titus greeted her warmly and offered both her and Dalbert a seat at the table. Commander Rainstone analyzed the situation in greater detail.