the basket.
Out here he was still in a daze, still numb with shock and disbelief. The moment he saw her he would fall to pieces.
A door opened in the rectangular base of the lighthouse, where the guestrooms were located. Light spilled out, limning a figure in the doorway, peering. It was her, checking for his return, becoming worried that he was taking too long.
He could not face her. He could not face the rage and the grief that were beginning to pulsate in his veins. He could not face a future in which he lived only for duty, not after he had at last known what it was like to hope with every breath and every thought.
He lifted his wand and pointed it at his head. It was the most cowardly of choices. But he would allow himself this: a few hours free of the knowledge of her impending death.
A few hours of him, her, and a future that included sunny days underneath a starflower tree in bloom, with friends about to drop by any moment.
CHAPTER 8
IOLANTHE WAS DEBATING WHETHER TO clear the fog so she could see farther out when Titus emerged from the swirling vapors.
She ran to him. “What took you so long? Fortune shield me, your hands are frozen. Where have you been?”
His lips too were icy as they pressed against her cheek. “Sorry. I was just standing outside.”
She pulled him in and shut the door tight—his teeth were chattering. “Why? What did Kashkari tell you?”
He leaned back against the door, his eyes half-closed. “He told me what he saw this morning in his prophetic dream.”
Her heart stopped. “What did he say?”
Titus exhaled slowly, carefully. “I have suppressed that memory for now. It will come back by tomorrow, but at the moment I have no idea what he said.”
The only other memory he had ever suppressed concerned the details of the prophecy about his death. She felt light-headed, as if she stood on the edge of a chasm, and its bottomless depths were drawing her forward.
Her fingers tightened around his—so cold, his hand. She ignored the fearful clamor in her head and tugged him down the corridor toward the bath. “There is a hip bath inside. I already filled it with hot water. Get in and get warm.”
“You probably filled it for yourself. I do not want to take away your soak.”
She indicated the pajamas she wore—ever since they’d started preparing to leave school at the drop of a hat, the laboratory had become much better equipped with such supplies as food, linens, and spare clothes. “I had my wash—you go thaw yourself out.”
The inside of the bath steamed, an echo of the conditions outside, except it was warm and smelled of the handful of dried silver moss she had found in the laboratory and tossed into the water.
“I am sorry,” he said, as they stood on either side of the doorway. “I am sorry I bring terrible news without being brave enough to tell you what it is.”
The ravage of the desert was still on him. His eyes were hollow, his cheeks equally so. Her heart broke. “Let’s not think about it.”
“How? How do you not think of an impending disaster?”
How indeed. She set her hand on his lapel, the wool still damp from the fog. “Do you remember the reason I brought down my first bolt of lightning, in Little Grind-on-Woe?”
“You said you were trying to correct a batch of light elixir that had been ruined.”
“I’d volunteered to make the light elixir for a wedding—not out of the goodness of my heart, mind you. The villagers were complaining about Master Haywood, because he wasn’t a very good schoolmaster to their children. And I was hoping that by doing everything I could for Rosie Oakbluff’s wedding, her mother, who had the power of dismissal over Master Haywood, would let him remain in place until after the qualifying exams for upper academies.
“Except I hadn’t been properly schooled since we got to Little Grind. With luck I might pass the qualifying exams, but the chance for me to do well enough to be awarded a grant was almost nil. Our finances were quite depleted at that point; without a sizable grant, an upper academy education would have been beyond our means.”
And no university would look at a candidate who hadn’t been through the rigorous preparatory program of a good upper academy.
“But every day, after I finished teaching Master Haywood’s students, after I corrected their homework, scored their tests,