For a few days I showed Shulini around the base. She was a nice girl but there was no spark between us whatsoever, which made me even more incensed. Amara I ignored altogether.
But she didn’t give up on me. She got us assigned to night patrol duty together. In the dark, when I couldn’t see her face, but only hear her voice—that was why she’d spoken so little to me since I came to live at her base, because she still had the same voice. And I loved her voice, the sound of her laughter, the precision of her vowels, and especially the way she sometimes hummed a little to herself.
From there we started our reconciliation. It took me a while to fall in love with her face—I used to start every time I saw it, especially if we’d been sitting side by side for a while, talking without looking at each other. Later she would joke that she wanted to marry me because I was the only man who preferred her in the dark.
[Smiles again.]
And there you have it, our story.
Interviewer:
After you were reconciled, how long were you together?
V. Kashkari:
Three years eleven months.
Interviewer:
Too short a time.
V. Kashkari:
All good years are short, as are all full lives.
—From The Last Great Rebellion: An Oral History
8. Prince Titus VII:
The morning of the state funeral, I was informed that the Atlanteans had handed over Miss Aramia Tiberius. That afternoon, I had her brought in along with Alectus and Lady Callista.
In the short time since the Bane’s downfall, Alectus had become an old man: he stooped and wore an expression of perpetual confusion. Lady Callista seemed to have lost much of the elegance for which she had been so admired—it was a twitchy woman who curtsied to me. Aramia simply looked terrified.
I addressed her first. “I see you are safe and sound, Miss Tiberius.”
She had the sense to not say anything.
“Your Highness, why was I not allowed to attend my daughter’s funeral?” Lady Callista interjected. “Why, indeed, was I not mentioned at all in the account you gave of how the Bane was brought down? My daughter was the great heroine of her generation, and you would have the populace believe that she was the child of those paupers from the Conservatory?”
I stared at her until she fidgeted and curtsied again. “I apologize for my outburst. Please forgive me, sire.”
“Miss Seabourne was not your daughter,” I told her.
“I might not have raised her, but I gave birth to her. My blood ran in hers and so did the blood of Baron Wintervale, the greatest hero of my generation.”
“Baron Wintervale betrayed my mother.”
“No, that is not possible.”
“Ask his widow about it, if she will condescend to meet with you. As for your kinship with one of the bravest mages this realm has ever known . . .”
A blood assay had already been readied. I picked up the glass beaker. “Sanguis densior aqua.”
The clear liquid in the beaker turned jellylike and slightly opaque. “I require a drop of blood from you and from Miss Tiberius.”
They hesitated. Miss Tiberius pricked her finger first, squeezing out a drop of blood. The blood drop fell through the jellylike substance as a pebble in water, reaching the bottom of the beaker with an audible plink.
Lady Callista did the same.
I swirled the beaker. “If you are unrelated, your blood will not react.”
The drops of blood, like two tiny marbles, tumbled along the bottom of the beaker. And then, as if they were magnets, they moved toward each other until they had joined into a single oval.
“Very close kinship, I would say.”
“This—this can’t be true. Perhaps through some coincidence we are distantly related.”
Without a word, I performed another blood assay, this time using blood from myself and Alectus. Our two drops of blood also approached each other, but instead of merging together, formed something in the shape of a dumbbell.
“He is my great-uncle. And your kinship is far closer than ours.”
“No,” mumbled Lady Callista. “No.”
She collapsed into a chair.
Miss Tiberius held completely still, staring at her mother, the woman for whose love she had committed treason.
I could have told her time and again not to bother to win Lady Callista’s approval: Lady Callista disdained all who loved her—the only one to whom she had ever been devoted was Baron Wintervale, a man who only thought of himself, who took and took from those around him.