bow,” he said, as if he’d heard her thoughts. Then, after a moment, “How are your studies?”
“They are—fine. Going very well.”
She couldn’t stop gawking at him. His black hair was a little longer than it had been in the official portrait. He wore a simple fawn tunic over a pair of dark-gray trousers and wore it well—the tunic draped beautifully over his lean, spare frame.
“Did you have fun at the match last night?” he asked, smiling a little again.
How did he know she had gone to a sporting event? And why was he gazing upon her exactly as she would want him to, with tremendous admiration and something that approached downright covetousness?
“May I—may I offer you a seat, sire?” She somehow managed to keep her voice even. “And some tea? I also have some chocolate from Mrs. Hinderstone’s shop.”
“No, thank you. I just had breakfast.”
She was beginning to feel terrifically awkward. How did one ask the Master of the Domain what in the world he was doing in her house? And how had he come through the storage closet, which was emphatically not a portal of any kind?
“Me too,” she said, “at Mrs. Hinderstone’s. She mentioned that you had been there in person two days ago.”
“Yes, the picnic basket for us.”
For us. Us! Should it feel so completely disorienting when dreams came true? She was asleep, wasn’t she, this whole thing just one fantastical illusion?
He came toward her, until barely a sliver of air separated them. So close that she could make out the exact design on the decorative buttons on his tunic: a coat of arms unlike any she had ever seen before, with a dragon, a phoenix, a griffin, and a unicorn occupying the quadrants.
So close that she breathed in his scent of silver moss and cloud pine. So close that when she looked into his eyes, she saw every detail of the starburst pattern of his blue-gray irises.
“I have missed you,” he murmured.
And kissed her.
In the mountains where she grew up, sometimes people rafted down steep, fast-flowing streams. His kiss felt exactly like that, full of danger and exhilaration, making her heart rattle and thump, ready to leap out of her rib cage.
He pulled back slightly and traced a thumb across her cheek, a caress like lightning. “You and you alone,” he said softly.
Suddenly her head felt strange, a thousand brilliant dots of light hurtling about. Memories burst into her cranium as if from a geyser. She gripped his shoulder to steady herself.
He wrapped his arm about her. “Everything coming back now?”
A secret life unfurled before her. The diligent, mild-mannered candidate for Master of Magical Arts and Sciences was in fact the power beside the throne. Those long walks that he took in the wilderness of the Labyrinthine Mountains? That was time they spent together discussing, strategizing, and sometimes agonizing over difficult decisions. That historic speech he’d given when he’d announced his Sihar heritage and reforms he planned to undertake to make the Sihar full subjects, instead of merely guests of the crown? She had drafted a large portion of it—not to mention persuaded him to take the monumental step in the first place. And one entire summer, as well as a good chunk of an academic term her second year at the Conservatory, instead of being back in the mountains taking care of her elderly grandmother, as she and everyone else had believed, she had been at his side, in disguise as a male aide-de-camp, waging campaigns against remnants of the Bane’s forces.
Of course, there had been the Last Great Rebellion, in which she had played an instrumental part. Grief shot through her as she remembered those who had been lost—Amara, Wintervale, Mrs. Hancock, Titus’s father, and Master Haywood. She experienced a moment of searing disgust at the thought of Lady Callista and Aramia, who were now in Exile, along with Prince Alectus.8
And then, pure joy, as she looked upon the young man before her.
He was the one with whom she’d come through war and hell. The one with whom she’d changed the world. The one with whom her destiny would forever be entwined.
She smoothed a finger over his brow. “Titus.”
“That is sire to you, young lady,” he answered, teasing.
“Ha. Only when you address me as ‘my hope, my prayer, my destiny.’”
He gave her a dirty look.
She laughed. “And how dare you take advantage of a poor, hero-worshipping girl?”
He gave her another dirty look. “I keep telling you to forget all about me in the meanwhile.