And on the other side of the river sprawled Luxor, with its ancient ruins and modern brick buildings, both very nearly the same color as the desert beyond.
About fifty feet away, Kashkari sat on a small outcrop, his head in his hands.
A thought came to Titus. “You think he has dreamed of my death?” he asked under his breath.
Her hand tightened around his. “He had better not.”
His mother’s vision of his early demise was easier to deny on its own. Corroborated by Kashkari, it would be that much harder to pretend that there was any escape from a fate that had already been written.
Kashkari rose and headed in their direction.
“Will you drop in on my guardian in Paris, if you can?” Fairfax asked Titus.
“That is already on my itinerary,” he told her. “And will you take some rest? You have been awake too long.”
She nodded.
When they met up with Kashkari, Titus asked outright, “You have any prophetic dreams I should know about before I head out?”
Something flickered across Kashkari’s face, but his answer was mild and even. “I’ll let you know when I do. In the meanwhile, may Fortune walk with you.”
They shook hands. Titus embraced Fairfax. Then he took a deep breath and vaulted.
Iolanthe stared at the empty spot where he had been.
Every good-bye could be their last.
“He loves you,” said Kashkari quietly, “in a way that is beyond me.”
She turned to him. “Thank you . . . and is it gauche to admit that I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean?”
Kashkari smiled a little. He seemed back to his old self. “What I mean is that you are everything to him. When he sees you, he sees the one with whom he has been to hell and back—the one who would accompany him to hell again, no questions asked.”
Whereas he and Amara did not have that history of shared struggle. That as much as he loved her, it was as a bystander, looking in from the outside.
“Titus and I have been fortunate in each other,” she said.
And how she missed him.
It wasn’t his absence that she minded—the Master of the Domain was always off somewhere, doing something; that had been the way ever since they first met. It was this fear she could not shake, now that they were close—and edging ever closer—to the moment of truth.
Could she save him—or would it prove all hubris and wishful thinking? And if she couldn’t . . .
“Why don’t you take some rest?” said Kashkari. “You look tired.”
She would have preferred for them to start for Cairo right away, but she had promised Titus that she would rest, and she was beginning to feel drained. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”
“We’ll be in Cairo before the end of the day,” Kashkari assured her.
No, she thought, he was not back to his old self. She knew the old Kashkari, she knew his resolve, his courage, and his secret heartache. None of it had gone away, but there was something different about him.
He was . . . saddened. He hid it well, but he was weighed down, in a way he hadn’t been before he’d awakened in the cave, gasping for breath.
What exactly had he dreamed of?
Her own slumber was blissfully free of dreams, but when she woke up her head was crammed full of memories that had been suppressed for years and years.
Memories of herself as a baby, inhaling the subtle narcissus perfume of the warm body that cradled her own, falling asleep in a cloud of contentment.
Memories of herself as a toddler, running her fingers over the rich silk velvet of the overrobe of this unbelievably beautiful woman who was her mother. Her mother.
Memories of herself as a little girl, wishing this one day every two years that she could spend with her marvelous mother would never, ever end, that the clock would stop one minute short of midnight and not move again.
Memories of herself as a slightly older girl, her eyes wide at learning that her father was none other than the hero of the January Uprising. And two years later, she and her mother weeping together over Baron Wintervale’s sudden passing.
That would be the last good year before Master Haywood’s troubles began. Before she started to plead with her mother to help the man who cared for her, whom she loved like a father. Before she received the answer that had chilled her to the bone: He is only the help, my darling; you don’t need to worry