palms perspired, “How many exceptions must there be, before you realize that the rule is only in your head? That you would never wish for yourself to be judged the way you judge the Sihar?”
That night she had sat down and written the prince a long, impassioned letter. To her surprise, within days she had received a two-page reply in his own hand. When they had met at the graduation gala, he had immediately said, “You are the one who sent me the beautiful letter, are you not?”
They had conversed for all of three minutes. Afterward, she couldn’t recall what they had said to each other. All she carried with her was a sensation of phenomenal intensity, the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d spoken to her, the way he’d taken her hand briefly before she’d had to yield her place in the reception line—as if she mattered more than the entirety of the Domain and it would cost him half his soul to let her go.
That was the first and last time she had seen him in person. Other people ran into him, but life seemed to have no plans to bring them together again. She could only watch from afar as he went about his grand destiny.
Truly it was madness, to look upon this distant icon and think that if only they could meet, they would be the closest of friends. He might be an exceptional man, but he was not a friendly one, and she was sure that in private he must be quite difficult in many ways. All the same, day in, day out, year in, year out, he remained the secret undercurrent of her life.
She realized that she had taken the instant portrait out of the cabinet and was tracing her finger along the edge of his charcoal-gray overrobe. This new generation of instant portraits captured the texture of fabrics, so that she felt the elaborately embroidered band that trimmed the hem, the silk threads smooth and evenly oriented beneath her finger.
Muttering an obscenity under her breath, she marched into the study and shoved the instant portrait onto the very top of the shelves inside a small closet.
Ninety minutes later, she had finished with all the reports. She made herself a cup of tea and took out some papers that she had to read for her own classes.
But she was restless. Instead of reading the papers, she left them on top of her desk and approached the window. It had started to rain, but she could still see the Citadel in the distance.
She shook her head. She must stop obsessing over him. What could she hope to happen even if she met him again? No more than another couple of minutes of his time. If he had wanted to know her better, he could have done it two years ago—he knew her name and her university; everything else he could have found out, if he had wanted to.
If he had wanted to.
That he hadn’t contacted her subsequently was ample evidence that he had no such desires, that all the longing on her part was entirely unrequited: hard truths she must force herself to accept, however unhappily.
A rattle inside the small closet brought her out of her reverie. She glanced at the door of the closet, confounded and faintly alarmed. Surely there could not be an intruder in this house: she had done the security spells—and she was quite good at those.
All the same, she pulled her wand from her pocket and silently called for a shield. The closet door opened and out stepped none other than the Master of the Domain himself, a grin on his face, looking gloriously young and gloriously happy.
Iolanthe was thunderstruck. Fortune shield her, had she begun to hallucinate? The prince, though always flawlessly courteous in public, was said to be aloof and solemn by nature, not given to mirth or merriment.
That she’d conjured a smiling version of him had to be proof that she was out of her mind. Right?
“Oh,” he said, as he took in her shock and dismay. He cleared his throat and his expression became more serious. “I apologize. I am early again.”
She was not hallucinating. It really was him, the Master of the Domain, standing not even ten paces away. And what did he mean that he was early again? Early again—when had he been early before?
“Sire,” she said unsteadily. She should bow. Or curtsy. Or was curtsying too old-fashioned these days?