Haywood and Commander Rainstone from many years ago—they had seemed completely taken with each other.
Commander Rainstone shook her head. “No, we were very, very good friends, but never more than friends. The one I loved was . . .”
She looked down at her hands before her gaze came to Titus. “The one I loved was Her Highness, sire, your mother.”6
Iolanthe and Titus didn’t even go to bed, but fell asleep on long sofas in the solarium. At some point she became aware that Titus was speaking to her.
“. . . approved of the transfer of power. I have to go. I love you.”
She made some sounds. They were probably a series of mm-mms, but she felt he would know that she told him she loved him with a ferocity that would frighten most wyverns.
When she woke up again, it was afternoon and a steady shower fell outside. She walked out onto the covered balcony and sucked in a breath: the great bell tower of the Conservatory, less than half a mile away! And the red roofs of the colleges, soaring above the tree line. And if she squinted really hard, she could even convince herself she was looking at the flow of colorful umbrellas on University Avenue.
“I see you are up, Miss Seabourne,” came Dalbert’s voice.
She spun around. “Oh, Master Dalbert, I know you have no time to spare. But would you happen to have a lackey you can send out for a copy of last May’s upper-academy entrance examination?”
Dalbert smiled. “Consider it done. In the meanwhile, I have a visitor waiting for you.”
Dalbert conducted her to the reception room, where Vasudev Kashkari was waiting. The family resemblance was obvious—the brothers had the same build, same dark, expressive eyes, and same elegant mouth. Yet the difference immediately struck her; there was a great gentleness to the elder brother. The younger brother, for all his impeccable manners, was driven. But Vasudev Kashkari was the kind to smile and laugh easily.
Or at least he must have been once.
They shook hands.
“Please have a seat,” she said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“The honor is mine. You have accomplished what mages have been aspiring to for generations.”
“Not without help. Not without the sacrifice of many.” She already had tears in her eyes. “We could never have done it without Durga Devi.”
“I went to see her just now,” he said softly. “I was told that she looked like you, but still it was . . . it was something of a shock.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t look upon her face one last time.”
“I already did that before she left the desert. She told me exactly what she meant to do.”
“So you knew she was a mutable?”
He smiled slightly. “I have never told anyone this story—her mutability was something we had to keep a secret—but I fell in love with her when she looked very different.”
“Oh,” said Iolanthe.
“You know that mutables can take anyone’s form when they are children, but can only change form once when they are full grown?”
She nodded.
“We met during a time when she probably should have stopped assuming the appearances of others. But she was reluctant to give up the freedom not to be stared at everywhere she went. So I first saw her as her cousin Shulini.”7
Iolanthe had met Shulini, who was a pleasant-looking young woman, but hardly a beauty of Amara’s stature. “What a story that must have been. I wish . . . I wish I’d had the chance to know her better.”
“You saw how she conducted herself under the most extreme of conditions. In a way, you couldn’t have known her any better than that. But yes, I wish you had met her under different circumstances, when she was simply a warm, wonderful person to be around.”
Iolanthe’s eyes once again welled with tears. “Did you . . . did you ever ask her not to do this? Not to go on a venture from which she would not return?”
He looked outside the window for a moment, at the rain that was still steadily falling. She noticed for the first time that he wore Amara’s troth band around his wrist.
“I wanted to,” he said softly. “I wanted very much to beg her not to leave. But she was more than the woman I loved; she was a fighter. And one does not hold back a