But will you listen? And then when I misjudge the time, you look at me as if you have been on your knees a thousand years, praying for me.”
She giggled. “I do get pretty pathetic, pining after you.”
“No worse than me. You do not know how hard it is to have to wait a week every time before I can see you again. Sometimes I still think that anyone with eyes could have seen through our secret the day of your graduation gala, even though I tried my best to treat you exactly the same as everyone else.”
Nobody had seen through it, but soon things would change.
She had always planned to assume a false identity to attend the Conservatory. But she had vacillated over whether to also assume a set of false memories, so that she would enjoy a purer, more unencumbered university experience, without being constantly distracted by what Titus had to deal with as the Master of the Domain.
In the end she had decided to give it a try, with many, many safeguards in place, and a blood oath she had demanded of Titus, that he absolutely must summon her to his side when the need arose.9
By and large, she’d had a marvelous time at the Conservatory.10 But now that her time there was near an end, she had become impatient to be who she really was. As soon as she finished her master’s degree, her true identity would be revealed—it still wasn’t a perfectly safe world, but she was no longer deterred by the risks. After that, well, she looked forward to seeing how her life would unfold.
And today she would take the first step on that new path. “Ready for the Fourth of June? Ready for dear Cooper to fawn all over you?”
She hadn’t seen Cooper, or anyone from Mrs. Dawlish’s, since she left England on a hot air balloon.
Titus groaned. “As ready as I will ever be.”
She kissed him, grinning. “Come. Let’s go make him the happiest man alive.”
Cooper squealed and lifted Fairfax bodily off the ground. “My God, I can’t believe it. It really is you.”
She laughed and lifted him in return. “Cooper, old bloke. I heard you’ve avoided becoming a solicitor after all.”
The most unexpected twist in the entire saga was that Titus and Cooper had become semi-regular correspondents—regular on Cooper’s part and semi on Titus’s. Cooper never would have presumed to write to Titus, but his letters to Fairfax, sent to the fake address in the Wyoming Territory that Titus had set up, had come to Titus instead. And in those early years after the Bane’s death, when Lady Wintervale had nearly been assassinated twice, Titus had deemed it too dangerous for Fairfax, who was supposed to be dead, to reply, even if it was to a nonmage.
So he had written back instead, putting his talent for lying into creating fiction. He found it relaxing to spin yarns of Fairfax, first as a Wyoming Territory rancher, then as a San Francisco hotel manager, and of late, a Buenos Aires businessman. He had also come to enjoy Cooper’s long, rambling missives, full of news of their old friends’ doings. Sutherland had not yet married a loathsome heiress. St. John rowed for Cambridge. Birmingham was now a proper Egyptologist, with eager sponsors for his excavations and avid audiences for his lectures.
“Thank goodness for that,” said Cooper. “Being the private secretary to a very important man agrees with me. I am well on my way to becoming an insufferable fart.”
He turned to Titus, blushed a little, and took off his hat, revealing a mop of luxuriant hair.
Titus shook his head. “Vanity, thy name is Thomas Cooper.”
One time, remembering his long-ago dream of meeting Cooper on a Fourth of June, Titus had asked in a letter whether he had become heavy. Cooper replied that he had retained his girlish figure, but had unfortunately lost a great deal of hair. Titus, in a charitable moment, had sent him a case of anti-baldness elixir.
Fairfax slapped Cooper on the back. “My God, that is beautiful, Cooper. Beautiful.”
Cooper turned the color of a beet. The world’s happiest beet. “I’m so glad to see the two of you. It’s been far too long. And . . .” Some of the delight drained from his face. “And we aren’t always guaranteed to meet with old friends again after many years, are we?”
In his latest letter, Titus had at last told Cooper that Wintervale and Mrs. Hancock had died long ago, in the