“So it really is you,” said Kashkari, shaking his head a little.
She nodded. “You should know, though, the lady of the fortress in this copy of the Crucible looks nothing like me, but fortunately, I was able to convince her that I was a messenger from her beloved Rumis and that he is in trouble. So Helgira is temporarily absent. We’d best leave before she comes back.”
“But—” said Kashkari.
“Miss Tiberius, would you mind keeping my guardian company for a minute?”
Aramia looked at Fairfax, then glanced at Titus. He signaled her to go to Haywood as Fairfax had ordered. She did so, dragging her feet as she went.
When she was no longer a part of their cluster, Fairfax set a sound circle around the four of them. “The Bane will not succeed in sacrificing me.”
“What do you mean?” asked Amara, her voice tense.
“A mage who dies from sacrificial magic looks nothing like the neat, highly recognizable corpse Kashkari saw.”
Relief spiked through Titus, until he realized that not dying from sacrificial magic did not imply that she would live. By coming with them, she would still die.
“My guardian understood this and didn’t tell you.” She shrugged. “But anyway, I’m here now.”
“So you’ve been in the Crucible all this while, waiting for us,” said Kashkari.
“And clearing the way for you. The prince still carries a scar from the last time he came through.”
“But why wait until now to reveal yourself?” asked Amara. “Why didn’t you meet us at the safe house?”
Fairfax looked at Titus. “Because His Highness here would have done everything in his power to leave me behind again—that I will not die from sacrificial magic makes no difference to him. Am I not correct, Your Highness?”
He said nothing. Of course she was right. He would give up his own life, but never hers. Never willingly or knowingly.
He was as selfish about her as his grandfather had been about the throne.
“Well, I for one am glad you are here,” said Amara. “But what should we do about that girl? I don’t trust her and neither does anyone else.”
“Unfortunately, Black Bastion is no place to abandon a battle-hardened warrior, let alone someone who has led a sheltered life—and when the Crucible is being used as a portal, entries and exits are only possible on the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I say we take her there and leave her.”
“The meadow is not always a safe place.” Titus spoke for the first time since they had arrived in this copy of the Crucible. “And the longer the Crucible remains in use as a portal, the more dangerous and unpredictable it becomes. How long were you in the other copy of the Crucible?”
“We were at Black Bastion for about two and half hours before you arrived.” She sounded reluctant, as if she still did not want to speak to him.
“So the Crucible had been open about three hours altogether before I reached the meadow, with Miss Tiberius hanging on to me. It was a scene of lethal chaos.”
“We’ll make sure she has the password to exit.”
“But after she gets out, she will be on Atlantis,” Kashkari pointed out. “It will be no time at all before she is arrested and interrogated. And then the Bane will know we are inside Atlantean borders.”
“Master Haywood is working to suppress her memory of the past twenty-four hours. She will be unconscious after that, which will give us time to travel to the meadow. And we will stay with her until she starts to come to and leave a note in her hand before we go. That way, even if she exits the Crucible directly into the waiting embrace of the Bane, she won’t be able to tell him anything.”
“How can your guardian achieve that?” asked Kashkari. “You are speaking of precision memory magic, and that is contact requisite. How would he have accumulated all those hours of contact with her?”
“She was born Iolanthe Seabourne, the child of two poor students. Her birth was quite a bit premature and necessitated a long stay in the hospital. The physicians recommended as much physical contact as possible, to help her develop. Her parents had to remain in school—their scholarships were their only sources of income—and couldn’t stay with her as much as they wanted to. So they recruited their friends to go in their stead and hold her. My guardian went many times, often for four or five hours at